Frustration in Infancy: Implications for Emotion Regulation,Physiological Processes,and Temperament

A study sample of 162 six‐month‐old children was selected from a larger sample of 346 infants on the basis of parents' report of their infants' temperament and a laboratory assessment of temperament. Infants were classified as easily frustrated and less easily frustrated and compared on a number of emotion regulation, physiology, and temperament measures. Results indicated that male and female infants were equally likely to be classified as frustrated and less easily frustrated; however, male infants were less able to regulate physiologically. Easily frustrated infants used different emotion regulation strategies and were observed to be less attentive and more active than less easily frustrated infants when observed in the laboratory. These infants were also characterized by their parents as more active, less attentive, and more distressed to novelty. Infants classified as easily frustrated were more reactive physiologically and less able to regulate physiological reactivity than their less easily frustrated counterparts. It is hypothesized that this cluster of characteristics may constitute a unique temperamental type that may have implications for other types of behavioral functioning. Limitations of the study are that observations are based on a single brief assessment of the infant, modest effect sizes were found, and the study is cross‐sectional.     

Editorial

Ohne Zusammenfassung

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Editorial

     

Ethnic patterns in the phonetics of Montreal English

Most North American cities no longer display strong ethnic differentiation of speech within the European‐origin population. This is not true in the English‐speaking community of Montreal, Canada, where English is a minority language. Differences in the phonetic realization of vowels by Montrealers of Irish, Italian, and Jewish ethnic origin are investigated by means of acoustic analysis. A statistical analysis of ethnic differences in formant frequencies shows that ethnicity has a significant effect on several variables, particularly the phonetic position of /u:/ and /ou/ and the allophonic conditioning of /æ/ and /au/ before nasal consonants. The unusual tenacity of ethnophonetic variation in Montreal English is explained in light of the minority status of English, and the social and residential segregation of ethnic groups in distinct neighborhoods, which limits their exposure to speakers of Standard Canadian English who might otherwise serve as models for assimilation.     

From critical sociology to public intellectual: Pierre Bourdieu and politics

By the late 1990s, Pierre Bourdieu had become the primary public intellectual of major social scientific status at the head of the anti-globalization movement that emerged in France and in other Western European countries. This article discusses how Bourdieu became a leading public intellectual, a role that seems to contrast with his early years as a professional sociologist. It explores what seemed to change in Bourdieu’s activities and outlook as sociologist and what seems to have remained constant. It identifies several institutional conditions that seemed necessary for Bourdieu to be able to play the kind of public intellectual role he did in his later years. Bourdieu’s movement from a peripheral position to a central location in the French intellectual field, the changing character of the field itself, the growing influence of the mass media in French political and cultural life, the failures of the French Socialists in power, a cultural legacy of leading critical intellectuals in France, a unifying national issue of globalization, and the political conjuncture in 1995 all intersected in ways that opened a path for Bourdieu to choose new and more frequent forms of political action. His responses to that combination of factors at different moments reveal both a striking continuity in desire to preserve the autonomy of intellectual life and a change in view and strategy on how best to do that. The article concludes with a brief evaluation of Bourdieu’s public intellectual role.