The Components of Young Children's Emotion Knowledge: Which Are Enhanced by Adult Emotion Talk?

This research adopted observational and experimental paradigms to investigate the relationships between components of emotion knowledge in three‐ to four‐year‐old children. In Study 1, 88 children were assessed on the Emotion Matching Task (Morgan, Izard, & King), and two tasks requiring the generation of emotion labels and causes. Most tasks were significantly associated with age and language ability, and similar tasks were significantly but moderately correlated. In Study 2, 58 of these children were allocated to one of three conditions: emotion cause talk, in which they received four sessions of training focusing on emotion labels and causes; non‐emotion cause talk, focusing on causal relationships in general; or were allocated to a no‐training control. Children in the emotion causes condition showed improvement in their use of emotion labels but not other components of emotion knowledge. The findings suggest that, in three‐ to four‐year‐old children, emotion knowledge is constituted by related but separable components and that training in emotion language targets separate rather than all aspects of emotion knowledge.     

Stages of sexual readiness and six-month stage progression among African American pre-teens

We examined the range of sexual intentions and behaviors preceding sexual initiation among 211 African-American pre-teens assigned to the control arm of a longitudinal community-based intervention trial. Stage of sexual readiness was assessed using the stage of change construct from the Transtheoretical Model, and patterns of stage movement during a 6-month period were examined. Overall, 90% of participants were in precontemplation at baseline, with the proportion of participants in this stage declining with each year of age. There was substantial stability in stage of sexual readiness during the 6-month period (87% stable). While definitive conclusions regarding exact patterns of movement are not yet possible, stage movement does not appear to be linear for all pre-teens, and there is evidence of both stage progression and regression. We present emerging patterns of stage movement, which suggest potential variation by age, gender, and baseline stage, and discuss potential implications.     

Strengthening home and community-based care through Medicaid waivers

States are increasingly using the Medicaid 1915c waiver program to provide community-based long-term care (LTC). We examined state predictors of waiver utilization and expenditures for waivers serving both older and working-age individuals. State level data for the period 1992 to 2001 were used to estimate random effects panel models. States with increased community-based care (e.g., home health agencies) and decreased nursing home bed capacity were positively associated with state per capita rates of use, expenditures, and the share of Medicaid LTC dollars supporting 1915c waivers. States appeared to substitute Medicare for Medicaid services for individuals eligible for both. State per capita income was positively related to each measure. State policies that facilitate decreased institutional and increased community- based capacity appear essential to state efforts to expand access to community-based services. Federal policies that address state resource issues may also spur growth in community-based LTC, which, in most states, continues to be limited.     

Domestic violence cases involving children: effects of an evidence-based prosecution approach

This article reports findings from the evaluation of a city-county criminal prosecution unit for domestic violence involving children. Data from 446 cases prosecuted in the first 2 years of the Joint Prosecution Unit (JPU) were compared to a matched group of 446 domestic abuse cases prosecuted by both the city and county attorneys' offices in the 2 years prior to inception of the JPU. Results of the comparisons indicated that fewer cases were declined or dismissed by the new unit, and that cases were prosecuted at a significantly more stringent level. Multinomial logistic regression analysis indicated that child and weapon factors were associated with increased likelihood of a more serious (i.e., felony) plea for the new prosecution unit, relative to the comparison group. Results are presented in the context of addressing the difficulties inherent in the prosecution of domestic abuse and in light of the increasing awareness of the detrimental effects of domestic violence on children.     

Slavery: Annual bibliographical supplement (1983) Part I

Author: ELTIS, DAVID; The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas; Reviewer: Stuart Schwartz; Author: GOMEZ, MICHAEL A.; Exchanging our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South; Reviewer: Philip Morgan; Author: WALVIN, JAMES; Making the Black Atlantic: Britain and the African Diaspora; Reviewer: Howard Temperley; Author: NEWTON-KING, SUSAN; Masters and Slaves on the Cape Eastern Frontier; Reviewer: Clifton Crais; Author: ROSS, ROBERT; Status and Respectability in the Cape Colony, 1750-1870; Reviewer: Clifton Crais; Author: MORRISON, MICHAEL A.; Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War; Reviewer: S-M. Grant; Editor: INSCOE, JOHN C.; Appalachians and Race: The Mountain South from Slavery to Segregation; Reviewer: Tim Lockley; HODGES, GRAHAM RUSSELL; Root &; Branch: African Americans in New York &; East Jersey, 1613-1863; Reviewer: Edward Countryman; Author: YOUNG, JEFFREY ROBERT; Domesticating Slavery: The Master Class in Georgia and South Carolina, 1670-1837; Reviewer: Ingeborg Dornan; Author: JEFFREY, JULIE ROY; The Great Silent Army of Abolitionism: Ordinary Women in the Antislavery Movement; Reviewer: Christopher L. Brown; Author: SMITH, JOHN DAVID; Black Judas: William Hannibal Thomas and The American Negro; Douglas Ambrose; Author: KOUSSER, J. MORGAN; Colorblind Injustice: Minority Voting Rights and the Undoing of the Second Reconstruction; Reviewer: Stephen Tuck     

Slavery: Current bibliographical supplement (1987)

Belief in the afterlife was of central importance to slave converts, who ascribed double-meanings to heaven and hell, as places to which the dead would go, and as metaphors for freedom and slavery. After the war, the continued prominence of the afterlife in ex-slave religion found vocal critics among the black intellectual elite, who saw it as a vestige of the past. Yet many black intellectuals were believers too, and developed their own visions of a progressive and redemptive hereafter. This article argues that, despite class, educational, and religious differences, which translated into contrasting visions of the afterlife among ex-slaves and black intellectuals (material vs. mental, physical vs. abstract), African Americans in all walks of life took a doctrine that could encourage ignoring the inequalities of the present in anticipation of a better life after death, and turned it into a central tenet of an activist faith in an era of hope and disillusionment.