The Goal Trumps the Means: Highlighting Goals is More Beneficial than Highlighting Means in Means‐End Training

Means‐end actions are an early‐emerging form of problem solving. These actions require initiating initial behaviors with a goal in mind. In this study, we explored the origins of 8‐month‐old infants’ means‐end action production using a cloth‐pulling training paradigm. We examined whether highlighting the goal (toy) or the means (cloth) was more valuable for learning to perform a well‐organized means‐end action. Infants were given the opportunity to both practice cloth‐pulling and view modeling of the action performed by an adult throughout the session. Infants saw either the same toy or the same cloth in successive trials, so that the goal or means were highlighted prior to modeling of the action. All infants improved throughout the session regardless of which aspect of the event was highlighted. Beyond this general improvement, repetition of goals supported more rapid learning and more sustained learning than did repetition of means. These findings provide novel evidence that, at the origins of means‐end action production, emphasizing the goal that structures an action facilitates the learning of new means‐end actions.     

Quality of Parent–Child Relations in Adolescence and Later Adult Parenting Outcomes

Data from the Christchurch Health and Development Study, a 30‐year prospective longitudinal study, were used to examine the associations between the quality of parent–child relations in adolescence and adult parenting behaviour 15 years later. At ages 14 and 15 years, cohort members were interviewed about the quality of their relationship with their parents. At age 30, those who had become parents underwent a parenting assessment using self‐report and observational ratings of positive (warmth, sensitivity) and negative parenting (overreactive, inconsistency, and physical punishment/abuse). Results showed that adolescents who reported higher quality parent–child relationships were later characterized by higher levels of parental warmth, sensitivity, and effective child management, and lower levels of overreactive parenting. These associations remained after extensive covariate adjustment. Study findings highlight the importance of close parent–child relations during adolescence in preparing an individual for the challenges of caring for and parenting their own children when they themselves become parents.     

Mind the Gap! Students' Understanding and Application of Social Work Values

This paper discusses a research project that explored the development of student social workers' values during the first year of professional education at one Scottish university. Questionnaires, based on a vignette, and focus groups established baseline information at the outset of the study. These methods were reapplied a year later to identify the extent to which students' values framework had developed, and the factors that had supported this. The study revealed that, by the end of that year, students could both identify and apply values to support them in their work with individuals to a greater extent than they could those to help them challenge structural discrimination. The study also highlighted the need for university-based teaching, and practice learning experiences, to provide more opportunities for reflection and discussion to support the development of values in student social workers.     

The Multiple Meanings of Work for Welfare-Reliant Women

Based on ethnographic and interview data collected at two welfare to work offices, this paper explores the various meanings that welfare-reliant women give to paid work. Although studies show that welfare-reliant women support work requirements and believe that welfare receipt should be temporary, even Progressives often fail to see the multiple meanings work has for poor women, and how similar these are to the meanings most Americans attach to work. Not only do poor women want to work for basic economic survival, but they view paid work as a means to family security, a path to fulfilling personal aspirations, and as their civic responsibility.

Testing for monotonic trend in time series based on resampling methods

In this paper, we propose several tests for monotonic trend based on the Brillinger's test statistic (1989, Biometrika, 76, 23–30). When there are highly correlated residuals or short record lengths, Brillinger's test procedure tends to have significance level much higher than the nominal level. It is found that this could be related to the discrepancy between the empirical distribution of the test statistic and the asymptotic normal distribution. Hence, in this paper, we propose three bootstrap-based procedures based on the Brillinger's test statistic to test for monotonic trend. The performance of the proposed test procedures is evaluated through an extensive Monte Carlo simulation study, and is compared to other trend test procedures in the literature. It is shown that the proposed bootstrap-based Brillinger test procedures can well control the significance levels and provide satisfactory power performance in testing the monotonic trend under different scenarios.     

Everyday Racial Discrimination,Everyday Non-Racial Discrimination,and Physical Health Among African-Americans

ABSTRACT

Past research has identified a link between discrimination and health outcomes among people of color. Perceptions of the cause of discrimination (racial versus other) seem to be important for mental health; however, this relationship has not been fully examined for physical health. Using data from the National Survey of American Life, we find that, among African-Americans, racial discrimination and overall discrimination regardless of attribution are associated with negative health outcomes while non-racial discrimination is not. The results suggest that racial discrimination has a unique adverse effect on physical health for African-Americans that practitioners need to better understand.     

Seven‐Month‐Old Infants Selectively Reproduce the Goals of Animate But Not Inanimate Agents

We tested 7‐month‐old infants' sensitivity to others' goals in an imitation task, and assessed whether infants are as likely to imitate the goals of nonhuman agents as they are to imitate human goals. In the current studies, we used the paradigm developed by Hamlin et. al (in press) to test infants' responses to human actions versus closely matched inanimate object motions. The experimental events resembled those from Luo and Baillargeon's (2005) looking‐time study in which infants responded to the movements of an inanimate object (a self‐propelled box) as goal‐directed. Although infants responded visually to the goal structure of the object's movement, here they did not reproduce the box's goal. These results provide further evidence that 7‐month‐olds' goal representations are sufficiently robust to drive their own manual actions. However, they indicate that infants' responses to inanimate object movements may not be robust in this way.     

Less or more? Maternal requests that go against medical advice

Problem and background

This study explores the experiences of Dutch midwives and gynaecologists with pregnant women who request more, less or no care during pregnancy and/or childbirth.