Differential Developmental Profiles of Adolescents Using Sexually Explicit Internet Material

This study used a person-centered approach to examine whether different developmental trajectories of boys’ and girls’ use of sexually explicit Internet material (SEIM) exist, which factors predict these trajectories, and whether sexual behavior develops differently for adolescents in these trajectories. A combination of latent class growth analysis on SEIM use and latent growth curve analysis on sexual behavior was used on four-wave longitudinal data of 787 eighth through tenth grade Dutch adolescents. Among boys, four SEIM use trajectories were identified, which were labeled Nonuse/Infrequent Use, Strongly Increasing Use, Occasional Use, and Decreasing Use. Among girls, a large Stable Nonuse/Infrequent Use and smaller Strongly Increasing Use and Stable Occasional Use trajectories were distinguished. Higher initial levels and/or stronger increases in SEIM use were predicted by demographic, social contextual, personal, and media use characteristics, including a stronger sexual interest, a higher degree of perceived realism regarding sexualized Internet content, and more permissive sexual attitudes. Moreover, initial levels of and, to some extent, developmental changes in sexual behavior varied for boys and girls in the different SEIM use trajectories. Whereas some adolescents showed concurrent low levels, or parallel strong increases in SEIM use and sexual behavior, a subgroup of boys decreased their SEIM use while increasing their sexual behavior.     

Longitudinal Mediators of Relations Between Family Violence and Adolescent Dating Aggression Perpetration

Few longitudinal studies have examined the pathways through which family violence leads to dating aggression. In the current study the authors used 3 waves of data obtained from 8th‐ and 9th‐grade adolescents (N = 1,965) to examine the hypotheses that the prospective relationship between witnessing family violence and directly experiencing violence and physical dating aggression perpetration is mediated by 3 constructs: (a) normative beliefs about dating aggression (norms), (b) anger dysregulation, and (c) depression. Results from cross‐lagged regression models suggest that the relationship between having been hit by an adult and dating aggression is mediated by changes in norms and anger dysregulation, but not depression. No evidence of indirect effects from witnessing family violence to dating aggression was found through any of the proposed mediators. Taken together, the findings suggest that anger dysregulation and normative beliefs are potential targets for dating abuse prevention efforts aimed at youth who have directly experienced violence.     

Training Intraverbal Naming to Establish Matching-to-Sample Performances

The current study evaluated whether training intraverbal naming would be sufficient to establish visual-visual matching-to-sample (MTS) performances in college students. In the first experiment, we used a multiple-probe design across stimulus sets to assess whether six participants could match arbitrary visual stimuli (AB) after learning to tact their two experimentally defined classes (A’ and B’) and then intraverbally relate their names (i.e., “A’ goes with B’”). All participants matched the stimuli accurately after training, as well as emitted the trained intraverbals. In the second experiment, we used a multiple baseline design across four participants to assess whether the same training would produce bi-directional intraverbals in the form of “B’ goes with A’,” and MTS performance consistent with symmetry (BA). All participants responded accurately during matching and intraverbal tests. Across both experiments, participants stated the trained intraverbals while performing the matching task. Results showed that MTS performance can be established solely by verbal behavior training.     

Toward a carnivalesque analysis of hacking: A qualitative study of Iranian hackers

This study sought to analyze Iranian hackers’ lived experiences based on the concept of the carnival of crime in cultural criminology. Fifty-four in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with young hackers. Moreover, their behaviors were observed along with those of other hackers. The data were coded through a thematic analysis using MAXQDA software. The study's findings indicated that cyberspace had created a carnivalesque utopia that allowed the young Iranian hackers to experience the pleasure of crime. By trespassing the rational frameworks of the modern world and altering the trends of knowledge creation as a means for subjugation, Iranian hackers contribute to the meaning-construction policies of those in power and challenge authoritarian aesthetics by invading their electronic domain. It was also found that the carnivalesque lives of hackers provided them with a variety of opportunities for disrupting the rhythms of production and creating an underground carnivalesque economy based on their level of knowledge.     

Gender gaps in skills and labor market outcomes: evidence from the PIAAC

Review of Economics of the Household - Our paper makes the first attempt to address the empirical relationRicship between cognitive skills and gender gaps in labor market performance. We do so in a...     

A framework for the analysis of self-confirming policies

Theory and Decision - This paper provides a general framework for analyzing self-confirming policies. We study self-confirming equilibria in recurrent decision problems with incomplete information...     

What is educational entrepreneurship? Strategic action,temporality, and the expansion of US higher education

Theory and Society - The massive expansion of US higher education after World War II is a sociological puzzle: a spectacular feat of state capacity-building in a highly federated polity. Prior...     

Constructions of ‘the ageless’ asylum seekers: An analysis of how age is understood among professionals working within the norwegian immigration authorities

This article explores how professionals within the Norwegian immigration authorities conceptualise age when doing non-medical age assessments. By using social constructivism, which challenges an ethnocentric quantifying understanding of age, we delve into how socially constructed perceptions of childhood and adulthood manifest in assessment practices and the implications of these. By examining how applicants’ physical appearance, body language and life experience are used as an assessment basis, we argue that the ways age is conceptualised relate to Western ideas and ideals while overlooking other social and cultural backgrounds in which age is embedded.     

Behavioral responses of rural and urban greater white-toothed shrews (Crocidura russula) to sound disturbance

Urban Ecosystems - The development of urban areas imposes challenges that wildlife must adapt to in order to persist in these new habitats. One of the greatest changes brought by urbanization has...