Rules Infants Look By: Testing the Assumption of Transitivity in Visual Salience

What drives infants’ attention in complex visual scenes? Early models of infant attention suggested that the degree to which different visual features were detectable determines their attentional priority. Here, we tested this by asking whether two targets—defined by different features, but each equally salient when evaluated independently—would drive attention equally when pitted head‐to‐head. In Experiment 1, we presented 6‐month‐old infants with an array of Gabor patches in which a target region varied either in color or spatial frequency from the background. Using a forced‐choice preferential‐looking method, we measured how readily infants fixated the target as its featural difference from the background was parametrically increased. Then, in Experiment 2, we used these psychometric preference functions to choose values for color and spatial frequency targets that were equally salient (preferred), and pitted them against each other within the same display. We reasoned that if salience is transitive, then the stimuli should be iso‐salient and infants should therefore show no systematic preference for either stimulus. On the contrary, we found that infants consistently preferred the color‐defined stimulus. This suggests that computing visual salience in more complex scenes needs to include factors above and beyond local salience values.     

Negative (But Not Positive) Parenting Interacts with Infant Negative Affect to Predict Infant Approach: Evidence of Diathesis‐Stress

Temperament by parenting interactions may reflect that individuals with greater risk are more likely to experience negative outcomes in adverse contexts (diathesis‐stress) or that these individuals are more susceptible to contextual influences in a “for better or for worse” pattern (differential susceptibility). Although such interactions have been identified for a variety of child outcomes, prior research has not examined approach characteristics—excitement and approach toward pleasurable activities—in the first year of life. Therefore, this study investigated whether 6‐month maternal reported infant negative affect—a phenotypic marker of risk/susceptibility—interacted with 8‐month observed parenting behaviors (positive parenting, negative parenting) to predict 12‐month infant behavioral approach. Based on a sample of mothers and their infants (N = 150), results indicated that negative parenting was inversely associated with subsequent approach for infants with high, but not low, levels of negative affect. Similar results did not occur regarding positive parenting. These findings better fit a diathesis‐stress model rather than a differential susceptibility model. Implications and limitations of these findings are discussed.     

When Father Steps Forward and Mother Steps Back: The Moderating Role of Simultaneity in Parents' Coparenting Behaviors in the Development of Anxiety in 4‐ to 30‐Month‐Olds

Infant negative affectivity predicts child anxiety. Coparenting might influence the development of anxiety by weakening this association in the case of supportive coparenting, or by strengthening this association in the case of undermining coparenting. Parents can display coparenting behaviors simultaneously (both parents being supportive or undermining), or divergently (only one parent being supportive or undermining). In our longitudinal study, we investigated whether coparenting moderated the relation between infant negative affectivity at 4 months and child anxiety symptoms 2 years later. Hundred‐sixteen couples dressed up their firstborn infants in a clothes‐changing task. We coded cooperative, mutual, neutral, and competitive coparenting behaviors. Both parents rated infant negative affectivity and child anxiety symptoms. Infant negative affectivity significantly predicted child anxiety. This association was moderated by parents' divergent cooperative coparenting: It was stronger when mothers were cooperative while fathers were neutral, and weaker when fathers were cooperative while mothers were neutral. When fathers step forward (i.e., being cooperative) and mothers step back (i.e., leaving space), they may protect their at‐risk child from developing anxiety.     

Does Joint Physical Custody “Cause” Children’s Better Outcomes?

ABSTRACT

Policymakers and researchers are concerned with whether joint physical custody (JPC) produces better outcomes for children than sole custody. Although several review articles summarizing up to 61 empirical articles demonstrate very positive answers, many of the research designs used compromise the ability to claim that it is JPC per se—and not selection effects—that causes the effect. We discuss several research design issues, such as propensity score analysis, that can more powerfully probe the question of causality. Some studies have already been conducted employing these strategies and more are recommended and likely to soon be forthcoming. On the basis of this comprehensive review we conclude that JPC probably does cause benefits to children on average, and that social scientists can now provisionally recommend rebuttably presumptive JPC to policymakers.     

Understanding end-user perspectives to enhance perceived value uptake of harm-minimization tools: considering gambler’s views of a pre-commitment system

Harm-minimization strategies reduce the experience of gambling-related harms for individuals and those close to them. Most policies and particularly discussions of tool design and implementation fail to involve end users and consider their concerns and needs. This study aimed to investigate the best way to introduce a harm-minimization tool for electronic gaming machines (EGMs) that will maximize the perceived value and subsequent uptake by the intended audience of gamblers. Focus groups were conducted with 31 Australian regular EGM gamblers experiencing a range of gambling problems. Participants were asked their perspectives of a pre-commitment system (features including accessing activity statements, setting limits, viewing dynamic messages, taking breaks), including concerns, and how to enhance perceived value and usefulness. Positive attitudes about the system were expressed; however, many gamblers saw the tool as relevant only for problem gamblers. Participants indicated that value could be enhanced by making the system flexible and customizable, but still easy to use. Design and implementation strategies such as incorporating flexibility in features, ease of use, appropriate terminology, and educational efforts may address gamblers’ concerns, particularly regarding privacy and potential stigma. This would enhance user perception of harm-minimization tools as relevant and may subsequently enhance effectiveness.     

Nativity Seen in the Anthropocene: Contemporary Fieldwork and Subjective Challenges

Ongoing political changes, diasporic mobilities and new communication modalities present anthropologists with novel challenges for conducting ethnographic field work. As both configurations of and expectations for varied forms of social identity change, so too has the notion of the native, what Arjun Appadurai once called the technical preserve of anthropologists. Through reflection on contemporary field work experiences in Kazakhstan, the Philippines and South Korea, this set of papers considers how changing political and cultural regimes, diasporic mobilities and social media also tag the native anthropologist, a concept which can be to the advantage of the researcher, but also can create new problems and complexities for research.     

Why are social sciences and humanities needed in the works of IPBES? A systematic review of the literature

Despite the increased attention, which has been given to the issue of involving knowledge and experts from the social sciences and humanities (SSH) into the products and works of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), little is known on what the expectations towards the involvement of SSH in IPBES actually are. The aim of this paper is to close this gap by identifying the range of possible SSH contributions to IPBES that are expected in the literature, and discuss the inherent challenges of and concrete ways to realize these contributions in the particular institutional setting of IPBES. We address these two points by: firstly, assessing the literature dealing with IPBES and building a typology describing the main ways in which contributions from SSH to IPBES have been conceived between 2006 and 2017. We discuss these expected contributions in light of broader debates on the role of SSH in nature conservation and analyse some of the blind spots and selectivities in the perception of how SSH could substantially contribute to the works of IPBES. Then, secondly, by looking at one particular example, economics and its use in the first thematic assessment on pollinators, pollination and food production, we will concretely illustrate how works in a given discipline could contribute in many different and unprecedented ways to the works of IPBES and help identify paths for enhancing the conservation of biodiversity. Finally, we propose a range of practical recommendations as to how to increase the contribution of SSH in the works of IPBES.     

Professionalization through attrition? An event history analysis of mortalities in citizen journalism

ABSTRACT

Despite both scholarly and popular claims that citizen journalism (CJ) represents a growing democratizing force in the journalistic field, recent scholarship in the area has noted the decline of the organizational population of CJ. In this paper, we investigate how individual characteristics of sites and the dynamics of larger organizational population affect a CJ site’s risk of experiencing a mortality. Drawing on the largest sample to date of US-based English-language CJ sites, this study examines the risk of site mortality through an event history framework. Findings indicate that the strongest predictor of a site’s mortality is the age of the site, consistent with organizational population theory’s ‘liability of newness.’ We also find that for-profit and community-based sites have lower rates of site mortality, indicating that adopting legitimate conventions of journalism may serve as a protective buffer to site death. The results offer mixed evidence on whether CJ has become more professionalized via attrition.