From Syllables to Syntax: Multilevel Statistical Learning by 12‐Month‐Old Infants

To successfully acquire language, infants must be able to track multiple levels of regularities in the input. In many cases, regularities only emerge after some learning has already occurred. For example, the grammatical relationships between words are only evident once the words have been segmented from continuous speech. To ask whether infants can engage in this type of learning process, 12‐month‐old infants in 2 experiments were familiarized with multiword utterances synthesized as continuous speech. The words in the utterances were ordered based on a simple finite‐state grammar. Following exposure, infants were tested on novel grammatical and ungrammatical sentences. The results indicate that the infants were able to perform 2 statistical learning tasks in sequence: first segmenting the words from continuous speech, and subsequently discovering the permissible orderings of the words. Given a single set of input, infants were able to acquire multiple levels of structure, suggesting that multiple levels of representation (initially syllable‐level combinations, subsequently word‐level combinations) can emerge during the course of learning.     

Social Protection and Health: Experiences in Uganda

There is an interesting and continuing debate on the nature and role of social protection in poverty reduction. Within the health sector, discussion has focussed on the drawbacks associated with fee exemption schemes and community‐based health insurance, with much less attention paid to the policy option of abolishing user fees. This paper reviews empirical evidence on the impact of the Government of Uganda's decision in 2001 to abolish user fees for health services. The paper finds that this policy intervention has had a significant positive impact on health‐seeking behaviour in Uganda and concludes that this policy measure can make an important contribution towards a more ‘promotional’ policy approach to social protection.     

Democrats, Dictators, and Demonstrators

Using a data set of democratic movements and democratic transitions that took place between 1960 and 1990, I investigate the implications for economic growth of these events. There are two comparisons of interest: successful democratic movements to movements that are repressed, and successful democratic movements to democratic transitions that occurred without such movements. None of these events has a positive effect on economic growth.     

Watching and Listening: A Paediatrician's Career, 1944-1986

The medical model of disability has been much criticised in recent years and the traditional power of the doctor to diagnose, direct practice and provide services is now being challenged. Paediatricians have been accused of making crude assessments of potential ability in children, damaging the quality of family life in the process. Yet, the Cleveland affair admits ambiguities in the public perception of paediatricians. Are they to be advocates for their vulnerable clients or partners of parents? Can they be both? Medical attitudes arise from the political and social culture in which practitioners are learning and operating. In this paper one paediatrician shares his reflections on a 42-year career, during which period medical, social and economic changes were to radically alter his practice and perceptions.     

Social Advocacy for Equal Marriage: The Politics of "Rights" and the Psychology of "Mental Health"

Using the contemporary issue of equal access to marriage for same-sex couples as a case study, we examine two distinctive frameworks within which social advocacy may be pursued. We argue that when we speak as psychologists, we use a discourse of mental health; when we speak as social activists, we use a discourse of human rights and justice. Although these two frameworks may converge in supporting equal access to marriage, they represent radically different ways of understanding inequality and advocating for social change. A discourse of mental health focuses on psychological damage or deficit (caused, for example, by the social exclusion of particular groups or individuals. A discourse of rights asserts universally-applicable principles of equality, justice, freedom, and dignity. Further, the paradigmatic framework of psychology as an approach to understanding human beings in the world seems fundamentally antithetical to the conceptual framework of human rights, as a basis for social justice.     

Sexual needs, control, and refusal: how "doing" class and gender influences sexual risk taking

The poor are disproportionately affected by unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs). We know relatively little, however, about the sexual processes behind these disparities. Despite studies of gender enactment's influence on sexual behaviors, few analyses examine the sexual "doing" of social class. We conducted sexual history interviews with 36 women and men, half middle class and half poor and working class. Most respondents reported that men have greater sexual appetites than women, but the middle class were more likely to cite social influences while the poor and working-class respondents primarily ascribed biological origins. The social construction of sexual controllability among the middle class contributed to perceptions that sex was a containable force. Poor and working-class women described men's sexual needs as physiologically irrepressible, which shaped sexual refusal. Our findings move beyond socioeconomic status (SES) as a "risk factor" and explore two examples of how gender and social class mediate people's sexual selves and health.     

Prevention and treatment of osteoporosis in women

Osteoporosis affects one in three women. There has been some confusion among women and health professionals about the management of osteoporosis since the publication of the Women's Health Initiative and Million Women studies. This guidance regarding estrogen-based and non-estrogen-based treatments for osteoporosis responds to the controversies about the benefits and risks of individual agents. Treatment choice should be based on up-to-date evidence and targeted to individual women's needs.     

The development of a rubric for peer assessment of individual teamwork skills in undergraduate midwifery students

BackgroundPoor teamwork is cited as one of the major root causes of adverse events in healthcare. Bullying, resulting in illness for staff, is an expression of poor teamwork skills. Despite this knowledge, poor teamwork persists in healthcare and teamwork skills are rarely the focus of teaching and assessment in undergraduate health courses.AimTo develop and implement an assessment tool for use in facilitating midwifery students’ learning of teamwork skills.MethodsThis paper describes how the TeamUP rubric tool was developed. A review of the literature found no research reports on how to teach and assess health students’ teamwork skills in standing teams. The literature, however, gives guidance about how university educators should evaluate individual students using peer assessment. The developmental processes of the rubric were grounded in the theoretical literature and feminist collaborative conversations. The rubric incorporates five domains of teamwork skills: Fostering a Team Climate; Project Planning; Facilitating Teams; Managing Conflict and Quality Individual Contribution. The process and outcomes of student and academic content validation are described.ConclusionThe TeamUP rubric is useful for articulating, teaching and assessing teamwork skills for health professional students. The TeamUP rubric is a robust, theoretically grounded model that defines and details effective teamwork skills and related behaviours. If these skills are mastered, we predict that graduates will be more effective in teams. Our assumption is that graduates, empowered by having these skills, are more likely to manage conflict effectively and less likely to engage in bullying behaviours.     

Research ethics committees: values and power in higher education

The rise of research governance structures in universities has created huge disquiet amongst academic researchers. The unquestioning adoption of a medical model of ethical review based upon positivist methodological assumptions has created for many a mismatch between their own ongoing ethical research practice and the process of obtaining clearance from Research Ethics Committees (REC). This paper examines the issues that have contributed to dissatisfaction with the ethical review model that is prevalent within the modern university. Using examples from the authors’ own experiences, the dynamics of values, interests and power in research governance is examined from multiple perspectives including that of REC member and applicant; lecturer/student supervisor; researcher; and university administrator. The paper reveals a rift between the values and objectives of the key players in research governance within the modern university and concludes by asking whether differences can be resolved so that a collaborative approach to ethical review may be incorporated into a renewed academic research culture. It is suggested that the alternative is increasing alienation from anything to do with ‘ethics’, with potentially serious consequences for the ethical standards of social research.     

Still face,moving face

The article examines two sets of photographs of the face: first, a set of images by Suzanne Opton of soldiers returned from tours of duty in Iraq/Afghanistan and second, Robert Lyons’ portraits of Rwandans. In conclusion, it looks briefly at Alfredo Jaar’s The Eyes of Gutete Emerita. It explores what pictures of the face can do. Responses to Opton’s images from passers-by who saw them mounted on huge billboards, as well as the photographer’s account of what she thought she was doing, and Lyon’s motives and reactions to his work are examined. Drawing in part on Ariella Azoulay’s political ontology of photography and Jacques Rancière’s notion of the distribution of the sensible, the article asks what it is that these images of the face do, politically, and whether there might be a way in which the face, or its still image, and the event of photography in which the face is embedded, escapes the dominant regime of signification. The article argues that despite its widespread use in practices of biopolitical control, the face, or in some cases its still image, can prompt or generate action and challenge the dominant regime of signification and visibility.