Children's Theory of Mind: Understanding of Desire, Belief and Emotion with Social Referents

Preschooler's understanding of belief, desire, and emotion was assessed in a new false belief task that explored childen's mental state reasoning about social situations. The social analog task presented a change in a partner's play activity rather than a change in the location of a physical object. Two main differences from the usual pattern of theory of mind results were obtained. Five-year-olds had more difficulty understanding a false belief about another's current social activity compared to a false belief about a physical situation. The understanding of desire exhibited a 3- to 5-year age change that may have been shown because the social situation involved conflicting desires. When there was a conflict, the younger children tended to disregard the stated desire and exhibited 'social opportunism' by misattributing desires to permit a social interaction. The new results give a more varied picture of the development of theory of mind, and argue for expanding its study into social frames of reference.     

Solving the Multidimensional Assignment Problem by a Cross-Entropy method

The Multidimensional Assignment Problem (MAP) is a higher dimensional version of the linear assignment problem, where we find tuples of elements from given sets, such that the total cost of the tuples is minimal. The MAP has many recognized applications such as data association, target tracking, and resource planning. While the linear assignment problem is solvable in polynomial time, the MAP is NP-hard. In this work, we develop a new approach based on the Cross-Entropy (CE) methods for solving the MAP. Exploiting the special structure of the MAP, we propose an appropriate family of discrete distributions on the feasible set of the MAP that allow us to design an efficient and scalable CE algorithm. The efficiency and scalability of our method are proved via several tests on large-scale problems with up to 5 dimensions and 20 elements in each dimension, which is equivalent to a 0–1 linear program with 3.2 millions binary variables and 100 constraints.     

Ethnic Minorities in Northern Mountains of Vietnam: Employment,Poverty and Income

The Italian National Statistical Office is implementing a new project for computing sub-national Purchasing Power Parities (PPPs) on a regular basis, which is based on an appropriate use of existing Consumer Price Index (CPI) data and new sources of data. Concerning the use of CPI data, in this paper the role of the Country Product Dummy (CPD) method for compiling sub-national PPPs at Basic–Heading (BH) level is analysed together with the specific issues that arise in this context, such as the need to take spatial autocorrelation among price relatives into account. The results of various experiments based on CPI data concerning 7 BHs and 19 Italian regional chief towns are presented and discussed with the aim of exploring the performance of various CPD models and analysing to what extent the type and characteristics of the data affect the estimates obtained. The statistical uncertainty associated with the ranks derived from the regional PPPs was then calculated by means of a simulation procedure. Our findings prove to be interesting and confirm that methods and CPI data for spatial comparisons are reciprocally influenced.     

Actions for Sustainable Policy of Poverty Alleviation in the Informal and Non-Agricultural Sector in Rural Areas in Vietnam

The fruit of fast poverty alleviation is considered Vietnam’s outstanding achievement in the economic innovation period, although the overall rate estimated at 10.6% in 2010 is still high. Poverty in rural areas, especially in the informal and non-agricultural sector, is several times higher than it is in cities. The fact that previous poverty reduction programs hardly concentrated on the poor community working in this sector has influenced policy with regard to the aspects of economy, social justice and the benefits of the policy enjoyed by the inhabitants. To reduce poverty sustainably in the coming years, the Government needs to approach the problem from another angle which focuses on the target object, the poor in the informal and non-agricultural sector in the countryside.     

Black Authenticity: Defining the Ideals and Expectations in the Construction of “Real” Blackness

This review presents an overview of research on Black authenticity. As the definition of Black authenticity is often not made explicit in literature, the complexity and nuance of this cultural resource can be overlooked. We explore two trends of Black authenticity present within literature, which we label as commodifying realness and legitimating membership. Beyond offering a working definition and review of these trends, this review also attempts to highlight the importance of the interconnectedness between controlling images and individuals' negotiations of Black authenticity. We conclude by summarizing the importance of studying Black authenticity and suggesting future directions for research.     

CONSER Updates: The Serials Cataloging Cooperative Training Program at Ten Years and Revision of Integrating Resources: A Cataloging Manual

In this column, CONSER specialist Hien Nguyen recognizes the ten-year anniversary of the Serials Cataloging Cooperative Training Program. She discusses program successes, including the development of new material for Web delivery. CONSER coordinator Les Hawkins gives an update on the revision of Integrating Resources: A Cataloging Manual, the basic documentation used by CONSER and BIBCO members to create and maintain records for integrating resources.     

Tables for the Friedman rank test

This note presents tables for Friedman's test for two-way analysis of variance by ranks. These tables are more accurate than those that are presented in the literature. After intensive simulations, we have found for particular critical values some discrepancies with tables published earlier. The tables are also more extensive than those previously available.     

COMPUTER AIDED-CONSTRUCTION OF D-OPTIMAL 2m FRACTIONAL DESIGNS OF RESOLUTION V

A new exchange algorithm for construction of 2^mD-optimal fractional factorial design (FFD) is devised. This exchange algorithm is a modification of the one due to Fedorov (1969, 1972) and is an improvement over similar algorithm due to Mitchell (1974) and Galil & Kiefer (1980). This exchange algorithm is then used to construct 54 D-optimal 2^m-FFD's of resolution V for m = 4,5,6.     

A generalization of Fisher's exact test in p×q contingency tables using more concordant relations

A randomized test for pxq contingency tables to test independence against non-independence of two categorical random variables, a generalization of Fisher's exact test, is constructed. Based on the power of the test, subsets of the alternative region are identified.     

Body Mass Index,Demographic and Socioeconomic Risk,and Protective Factors of Type 2 Diabetes Among Six Groups of Foreign-Born Asian Americans

ABSTRACT. This study examined the association of body mass index (BMI), demographic variables, and self-reported type 2 diabetes among Chinese, Filipino, South Asian, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese adults. A sample of 3,204 Asian American respondents born outside of the United States was selected from the 2007 California Health Interview Survey. Logistic regression was used to estimate the relationships between BMI, age, sex, marital status, education, poverty level, years in the United States and self-reported type 2 diabetes. The findings revealed that Koreans had the lowest prevalence for type 2 diabetes and South Asians had the highest. Type 2 diabetes had a statistically significant association with BMI and demographic variables but varied across ethnic groups. Due to sampling variations, no meaningful results were found in the Filipino and Japanese samples. BMI and older age are common risk factors for type 2 diabetes among Asians, but whether sex, marital status, education, and years in the United States are risk factors varies among ethnic groups. Culturally specific prevention programs for type 2 diabetes are important for Asian Americans. Given the diversity of cultures and demographic and socioeconomic factors across the Asian American populations, future research should not combine all ethnic Asian groups into 1 sample.