Cognitive function in toddlers with congenital heart disease: The impact of a stimulating home environment

Infants born with congenital heart disease (CHD) are at increased risk of neurodevelopmental difficulties in childhood. The extent to which perioperative factors, cardiac physiology, brain injury severity, socioeconomic status, and home environment influence early neurodevelopment is not clear. Sixty-nine newborns with CHD were recruited from St Thomas’ Hospital. Infants underwent presurgical magnetic resonance imaging on a 3-Tesla scanner situated on the neonatal unit. At 22 months, children completed the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development-3rd edition and parents completed the cognitively stimulating parenting scale to assess cognitive stimulation at home. Level of maternal education and total annual household income were also collected. Hospital records were reviewed to calculate days on the intensive care unit post-surgery, time on bypass during surgery, and days to corrective or definitive palliative surgical intervention. In the final analysis of 56 infants, higher scores on the cognitively stimulating parenting scale were associated with higher cognitive scores at age 22 months, correcting for gestational age at birth, sex, and maternal education. There were no relationships between outcome scores and clinical factors; socioeconomic status; or brain injury severity. Supporting parents to provide a stimulating home environment for children may promote cognitive development in this high-risk population.     

Contemporary Afro and two-sidedness: Black diaspora aesthetic practices and the art market

This paper examines the cases of five mid-career artists with Afro origins – Ghada Amer, Julie Mehretu, Wangechi Mutu, Yinka Shonibare, and Kara Walker – using interviews and other data provided by the artists, dealers, curators, contemporary art historians, and a collector. Such a variety of voices follows Negri [2009. Art and Multitude: Nine Letters on Art, Followed by Metamorphoses: Art and Immaterial Labour. Translated by E. Emery. Cambridge, MA: Polity], who suggests a two-sidedness of art as activity and commodity. Black diaspora aesthetic practices – double consciousness, associated with both Du Bois Du Bois, W. E. B. 1903. The Souls of Black Folk. http://www.bartleby.com/114/100.html. [Google Scholar] [1903. The Souls of Black Folk. http://www.bartleby.com/114/100.html] and Gilroy [1993. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press], and post-black, linked to Golden [2001. Freestyle. New York: Studio Museum in Harlem] – are addressed as part of an evolution of multiple identities. This is about how these artists negotiate the social structure they find themselves inhabiting and encountering to create meaning. These artistic phenomena, as commodities dictated by the circulation of capital, draw attention to the contemporary art market. The management of artistic relationships between artists and their dealers emphasizes what Granovetter [1985. “Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness.” American Journal of Sociology 91 (3): 481–510], [1992. “Economic Institutions as Social Constructions: A Framework for Analysis.” Acta Sociologica 35: 3–11] calls social embeddedness, the interdependence of economic and non-economic actions.     

Estimates for geographical domains through geoadditive models in presence of incomplete geographical information

The paper deals with the matter of producing geographical domains estimates for a variable with a spatial pattern in presence of incomplete information about the population units location. The spatial distribution of the study variable and its eventual relations with other covariates are modeled by a geoadditive regression. The use of such a model to produce model-based estimates for some geographical domains requires all the population units to be referenced at point locations, however typically the spatial coordinates are known only for the sampled units. An approach to treat the lack of geographical information for non-sampled units is suggested: it is proposed to impose a distribution on the spatial locations inside each domain. This is realized through a hierarchical Bayesian formulation of the geoadditive model in which a prior distribution on the spatial coordinates is defined. The performance of the proposed imputation approach is evaluated through various Markov Chain Monte Carlo experiments implemented under different scenarios.     

Why do unemployed people avoid participation in training? An experiment for policy making

Despite active labour market policies being implemented to increase the skills and job opportunities of the unemployed, the number of people who do not participate in training and other services of job orientation remains high. By providing a model that studies the decision-making process of a potential participant, we hypothesise there is a behavioural motive behind it. An experiment is carried out to account for both the individual's preference and the social expectations of agents such as the government and her peers with respect to active occupational measures. Findings show that young unemployed individuals are significantly influenced by their peers when deciding whether to participate or not in a training programme. Particularly, negative expectations from the peers cause unemployed potential participants in a within- and between-subjects experiment to be, respectively, 33 and 42 percentage points less likely to take part in job training.     

Putting Words to the Experience: An Italian Group Intervention for Children of Separated Parents

This article presents an Italian group intervention for children of separated parents and describes preliminary findings about its efficacy. After briefly discussing the state of art for interventions of children of separated parents, the core characteristics of the group intervention are explained and each meeting is described. Then, pre–post research is presented to provide empirical support for this approach. Results reported that participation in the group strengthens the social and interpersonal self-concept dimension in the majority of children. Results are discussed considering both empirical and clinical implications.     

To be,or not to be: Paradoxes in strategic public relations in Italy

There is a paucity of empirical studies of public relations in Italy. This study sought to assess whether public relations departments are managed strategically in Italy and whether public relations contributes to the strategic management of organizations. Using the four generic principles that deal with strategic management, this study gathered data from public relations professionals working in the three major types of organizations: corporations, government agencies, and non-profits. The study found that regardless of the type of organization, few public relations practitioners are represented in the senior management of their organizations. Senior managers of non-profits tended to value public relations more than the other two sectors. Symmetrical communication again proved to be normative. By using a conceptual framework and research instruments that have been employed in studies conducted in other parts of the world, this study has generated data that can be used to compare strategic public relations in different socio-cultural environments – thus contributing to building a global theory of public relations.     

Grandparenting and Childbearing in the Extended Family

The study analyzes the role of grandparents’ childcare provision on their adult children’s fertility behavior using data from the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) for eleven European countries. An important innovation is that we take into account siblings’ fertility behavior and share of grandparents’ time in terms of childcare. We show that availability of grandparents plays an important role in individuals’ decision of having children. Being helped by grandparents increases the chance of childbearing when existing grandchildren are not too young. On the other hand, the probability of having a child is lower when grandparents are already looking after a sibling’s young child. The role of grandparenting appears stronger in the South of Europe, where public childcare for young children is less prevalent.     

Well-Being and Affective Commitment among Ambulance Volunteers: A Mediational Model of Job Burnout

ABSTRACT

Burnout represents a relevant risk for ambulance volunteers. According to the Job Demands-Resources model, role conflict and social support can be considered as antecedents of burnout which, in turn, may lower affective commitment. This study aims to investigate the relationship between social support, role conflict, and affective commitment, as mediated by job burnout. Survey data were collected from 352 Italian volunteers and analyzed using structural equation modeling methods. Social support was confirmed as a protective factor, and role conflict as an antecedent of burnout which, in turn, decreases affective commitment. The relationship between role conflict and affective commitment is mediated by burnout which, on the contrary, does not mediate the effect of social support on affective commitment. Social support may protect against burnout. Because of its positive effects on a personal and an organizational level, affective commitment may be increased raising levels of supervisor support and reshaping role expectations. It could be useful to carry out future longitudinal studies, in order to confirm the antecedents and effects of job burnout; furthermore, this research should be extended to other ambulance organizations, in order to generalize the results; finally, multi-group analyses would allow to bring out possible differences between paid-staff and volunteers.     

Newborns' Memory Processes: A Study on the Effects of Retroactive Interference and Repetition Priming

Newborns' memory abilities have been shown in a number of studies. Yet little is known about whether many of the factors that are known to affect encoding, storage, and retrieval in older children and adults are also integral to memory processes at birth. Here we tested for the presence at birth of the retroactive interference and repetition priming effects using the visual paired comparison paradigm. Newborns' memory performance on a visual recognition task was prevented by the interposition of a distractor stimulus between the habituation and the test phase (retroactive interference, Experiment 1). However, forgetting was offset by further brief exposure to the familiar stimulus (repetition priming, Experiments 2 and 3).