Off the Block but within the Neighbourhood: The Local Slave Trade in São Paulo

This article compares slave-trading networks in the 1860s and 1870s in Santos and Mogi das Cruzes, two largely dissimilar townships in the south-eastern province of São Paulo, Brazil. These local markets had different structural patterns, even though buyers in both places depended on personal connections to procure single or very small lots of slaves. Santos had a more defined network of slave traders, while buyers and sellers in Mogi das Cruzes relied more on family connections. These findings are linked with studies on the internal market in Brazil and other parts of the Americas to show that local slave trading was more important than has been assumed, yet requires greater study to understand fully.     

Trauma-informed care training in a child welfare system: Moving it to the front line

The use of trauma-informed practices in the child welfare system is critically important to prevent system-induced trauma and encourage timely assessment, triage and referral for care when indicated. Ultimately, such measures have the potential over time to decrease the risk for mental health problems in children exposed to a trauma. This study evaluates an initiative in Arkansas to train child welfare front-line staff members in trauma-informed care practices. We evaluated the impact of the training on knowledge and use of trauma-informed care practices among three types of child welfare staff (Caseworkers, Program Assistants and Other front-line staff). Results suggest that this training process was highly successful in improving knowledge of trauma-informed care practices, especially among staff with the least formal education and training. We also found a significant increase in staff use of trauma-informed care practices at the three-month follow-up with little difference observed across staff groups. Barriers that may prevent staff from full implementation of training concepts are described and strategies to address barriers are proposed.     

The Salience of Multimodal Sensory Stimulation in Early Development: Implications for the Issue of Ecological Validity

Studies of infant development concerned with the emergence of specific perceptual or cognitive abilities have typically focused on responsiveness in only one sensory modality. Research on infant perception, learning, and memory often attempts to reduce multimodal stimulation to “noise” and to control or omit stimulation from other sensory modalities in experimental designs. This type of unimodal research, although important, may not generalize well to the behavior of infants in the multimodal context of the everyday world. Research from animal and human development is reviewed that documents that significant differences in infants' perceptual skills and abilities can be observed under conditions of unimodal versus multimodal stimulation. These studies provide converging evidence for a functional distinction between unimodal and multimodal stimulation during early development and suggest that ecological validity can be enhanced when research findings are generalized appropriately to the natural environment and are not overgeneralized across stimulus properties, tasks, or contexts.     

Is Time-Discounting Hyperbolic or Subadditive?

Subadditive time discounting means that discounting over a delay is greater when the delay is divided into subintervals than when it is left undivided. This may produce the most important result usually attributed to hyperbolic discounting: declining impatience, or the inverse relationship between the discount rate and the magnitude of the delay. Three choice experiments were conducted to test for subadditive discounting, and to determine whether it is sufficient to explain declining impatience. All three experiments showed strong evidence of subadditive discounting, but there was no evidence of declining impatience. I conclude by questioning whether hyperbolic discounting is a plausible account of time preference.     

Landscapes: The Social Construction of Nature and the Environment

Abstract A theoretical framework is provided to understand a cultural group's definition of and relationship with nature and the environment. The framework draws on a social constructionist perspective that includes aspects of phenomenology and symbolic interactionism to define “landscape” as the symbolic environment created by a human act of conferring meaning on nature and the environment. This landscape reflects the selfdefinitions of the people within a particular cultural context. Attention is directed to transformation of the physical environment into landscapes that reflect people's definitions of themselves and on how these landscapes are reconstructed in response to people's changing definitions of themselves. Case studies from sociology and anthropology illustrate the social construction of nature and the environment. A discussion of the applied implications of the theoretical framework in social impact assessment and the global implications in the shifting power struggle over competing landscapes concludes the paper.     

ANOVA Problems with Simple Numbers

This article shows how to construct simple numerical exercises in balanced and unequally replicated one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) (and experimental design) such that the estimated effects and residual standard deviations are preassigned whole numbers. Methods for generating single samples and simple linear regressions with exact estimates are already available (see Edwards 1959, Searle and Firey 1980, Posten 1982, and Read and Riley 1983). In this article the basic method of Read and Riley is extended to one-way ANOVA. For small numbers of treatments and replications and small residual standard deviations, tables of basic data are supplied that greatly expedite the construction of ANOVA layouts; the same methods may easily be applied, and the tables extended, to generate exercises involving larger numbers if required. The sets of estimated effects are essentially arbitrary, and so the significance or insignificance of main effects, or of contrasts thereof, can be illustrated by data sets designed for the purpose. This facility is a new and helpful aid to instruction.     

“I Want to Feel Like a Full Man”: Conceptualizing Gay,Bisexual, and Heterosexual Men’s Sexual Difficulties

Current understandings of sexual difficulties originate from a model that is based on the study of heterosexual men and women. Most research has focused on sexual difficulties experienced by heterosexual men incapable of engaging in vaginal penetration. To better understand men’s perceptions and experiences of sexual difficulties, seven focus groups and 29 individual interviews were conducted with gay (n = 22), bisexual (n = 5), and heterosexual (n = 25) men. In addition, the extent to which difficulties reported by gay and bisexual men differ from heterosexual men was explored. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis applying an inductive approach. Two intercorrelated conceptualizations were identified: penis function (themes: medicalization, masculine identity, psychological consequences, coping mechanisms) and pain (themes: penile pain, pain during receptive anal sex). For the most part, gay, bisexual, and heterosexual men reported similar sexual difficulties; differences were evident regarding alternative masculinity, penis size competition, and pain during receptive anal sex. The results of this study demonstrate the complexity of men’s sexual difficulties and the important role of sociocultural, interpersonal, and psychological factors. Limitations and suggested directions for future research are outlined.