Home Environment,But Not Socioeconomic Status,is Linked to Differences in Early Phonetic Perception Ability

Infants perceptually tune to the phonemes of their native languages in the first year of life, thereby losing the ability to discriminate non‐native phonemes. Infants who perceptually tune earlier have been shown to develop stronger language skills later in childhood. We hypothesized that socioeconomic disparities, which have been associated with differences in the quality and quantity of language in the home, would contribute to individual differences in phonetic discrimination. Seventy‐five infants were assessed on measures of phonetic discrimination at 9 months, on the quality of the home environment at 15 months, and on language abilities at both ages. Phonetic discrimination did not vary according to socioeconomic status (SES), but was significantly associated with the quality of the home environment. This association persisted when controlling for 9‐month expressive language abilities, rendering it less likely that infants with better expressive language skills were simply engendering higher quality home interactions. This suggests that infants from linguistically richer home environments may be more tuned to their native language and therefore less able to discriminate non‐native contrasts at 9 months relative to infants whose home environments are less responsive. These findings indicate that home language environments may be more critical than SES in contributing to early language perception, with possible implications for language development more broadly.     

The Relationship between Public Long-Term Care Insurance Awareness and Preparation for Later Life in South Korea

An increased focus on individual preparation for later life paired with a shift in family support within South Korea makes it necessary to study factors that influence preparation for later life among South Korean adults. This study examined whether the awareness of public long-term care insurance (LTCI) was related to South Koreans' financial, psychosocial, and physical preparations for later life. Data from the third wave (2009) and third supplement wave (2010) of the Korean Retirement and Income Study (KReIS) yielded a sample of 2,487 middle-aged adults. Multiple regression analyses were used to compare the influence of the awareness of public LTCI on financial, psychosocial, and physical preparation by dividing the sample into negative status and positive status groups based on subjective perceptions of current economic, relationship, and health conditions. The results showed that being aware of public LTCI increased preparation for later life in financial, psychosocial, and physical domains. In addition, participants in the negative status group had higher scores for psychosocial and physical preparation than individuals who perceived themselves as being in relatively better situations. These findings suggest that the policy makers and practitioners should include education on LTCI and the risks it targets across various preparation domains as well as account for differences in perception and preparation among sub-populations of middle-aged adults in order to ensure effective social policies for the elderly population.     

Adolescents' Judgments of Doubly Deviant Peers: Implications of Intergroup and Intragroup Dynamics for Disloyal and Overweight Group Members

Group membership, loyalty, and weight are highly relevant for adolescent peer evaluations at school. This research tested how in‐group/out‐group membership affected judgments of peers who deviated from social norms for weight and loyalty. Two hundred and forty 11–13‐year‐olds (49 percent female; 94 percent Caucasian) judged two in‐group or out‐group peers: one was normative (loyal and average weight) and the other was non‐normative (i.e., ‘deviant’). The deviant target was overweight, disloyal to their own group (school), or both (‘doubly deviant’). Derogation of overweight relative to average weight peers was greater if they were in‐group rather than out‐group members, revealing a strong ‘black sheep effect’ for overweight peers. Disloyal out‐group deviants were judged favorably, but this effect was eliminated if they were doubly deviant, suggesting that their disloyalty was insufficient to overcome the overweight stigma. Consistent with developmental subjective group dynamics theory, effects of group membership and types of deviance on adolescents’ favorability toward peers were mediated by adolescents’ perceptions of how well the deviant members would ‘fit’ with the in‐group school. Implications for theory and strategies to reduce peer exclusion, particularly weight stigmatization, are considered.     

‘Each one teach one’ visualising black intellectual life in Handsworth beyond the epistemology of ‘white sociology’

ABSTRACT

Handsworth, a suburb in north-west Birmingham, became an important generative epistemic location that produced a number of contested discourses on race and racism in Britain during the 1970s and early 1980s. Using archival sources, this article will focus on Handsworth as an important epistemic space where white sociological studies on ‘race relations’ converged and diverged with the counter-hegemonic political activism of the African Caribbean Self-Help Organisation (ACSHO). This group of young Black working class Pan-Africanists in Handsworth were the coordinating committee for a national delegation of activists who attended the Sixth Pan African Congress in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in 1974. Their activism in Handsworth was further captured by the photographer, Vanley Burke. The photography of Burke and his archive not only engages with the politics of creating alternative sites of knowledge production, they also enable us to map, trace and reconstruct some of these important sites of Black intellectual life in Britain.     

Responding to children's disclosure of familial abuse: what survivors tell us.

This study is based on the reports of 384 adults who were abused physically, sexually, and/or emotionally in childhood by family members. It describes the survivors' attempts, as children, to get help by disclosing the abuse to someone who might intervene; those who did not disclose explain their reasons. The results indicate that disclosure usually did not bring an end to the abuse, and that little action was taken to control the perpetrator, even after disclosure took place. The responses received by the children to their disclosure are linked to their levels of self-esteem and family functioning as adults.     

Marriage and Family Therapy Trainees' Reports of Explicit Weight Bias

Discrimination based on an individual's weight has been observed in health care, education, retail, and other public sectors (Puhl & Huer, Obesity, 17, 941, 2007). Such inequity, known as “weight bias,” generates negative short‐term and long‐term consequences for the individuals that experience it (Puhl & Brownell, Weight bias in health care settings, 2007). Past research has shown that healthcare trainees exhibit weight bias (Phelan et al., Obesity, 22, 1201, 2014; Wigton & McGaghie, Journal of General Internal Medicine, 16, 262, 2001), yet little focus is given to weight bias in marriage and family therapy (MFT) education. The purpose of this study was to survey MFT students (N = 162) to explore weight bias and how contextual factors associate with weight bias. Participants in MFT programs reported explicit weight bias, with specific contextual factors associating with more bias. Female participants reported more fear of gaining weight, and individuals who identified as overweight had higher rates of explicit weight bias. Contextual differences and implications for training programs are discussed.     

Sustaining Low Pay in Aged Care Work

This article examines the ways in which employers in the Australian aged care sector justify and sustain low pay for work that is both highly skilled and in high demand. We build on a large body of feminist research that analyses why care work is devalued by showing how such devaluing is produced at the level of the organization. To do so we examine some of the specific discursive mechanisms that sustain low pay. We show that aged care employers actively reproduce a familial logic of care that represents paid aged care work as unskilled and natural for women and therefore not deserving of higher pay. We argue that in order to achieve their goals employers must develop and sustain an opposition between care as love‐centred and work as money‐centred, while upholding the notion that they provide quality care for care recipients.     

Sexual Self-Efficacy and Gender: A Review of Condom Use and Sexual Negotiation Among Young Men and Women in Sub-Saharan Africa

Sexual self-efficacy (SSE), one’s perceived control of or confidence in the ability to perform a given sexual outcome, predicts sexual behavior; however, important questions remain regarding whether gender modifies observed associations. In a comprehensive review of peer-reviewed HIV-prevention literature focusing on youth (ages 10 to 25) in sub-Saharan Africa, we measured and assessed the influence of SSE on condom use and sexual refusal, overall and by gender. Our results, after reviewing 63 publications, show that SSE is inconsistently measured. Most studies measured condom use self-efficacy (CUSE) (96.8%) and/or sexual refusal self-efficacy (SRSE) (63.5%). On average, young men had higher CUSE than young women, while young women had higher SRSE than young men. While cross-sectional studies reported an association between high SSE and sexual behaviors, this association was not observed in interventions, particularly among young women who face a disproportionate risk of HIV acquisition. In all, 25% of intervention studies demonstrated that fostering CUSE increased condom use among young men only, and one of two studies demonstrated that higher SRSE led to reduced frequency of sexual activity for both men and women. Future research and HIV-prevention interventions must be gender targeted, consider improving CUSE for young men, and move beyond limited individual-level sexual behavior change frameworks.