No praise without effort: experimental evidence on how rewards affect Wikipedia's contributor community

The successful provision of public goods through mass volunteering over the Internet poses a puzzle to classic social science theories of human cooperation. A solution suggested by recent studies proposes that informal rewards (e.g. a thumbs-up, a badge, an editing award, etc.) can motivate participants by raising their status in the community, which acts as a select incentive to continue contributing. Indeed, a recent study of Wikipedia found that receiving a reward had a large positive effect on the subsequent contribution levels of highly-active contributors. While these findings are suggestive, they only pertained to already highly-active contributors. Can informal rewards also serve as a mechanism to increase participation among less-active contributors by initiating a virtuous cycle of work and reward? We conduct a field experiment on the online encyclopedia Wikipedia in which we bestowed rewards to randomly selected editors of varying productivity levels. Analysis of post-treatment activity shows that despite greater room for less-active contributors to increase their productive efforts, rewards yielded increases in work only among already highly-productive editors. On the other hand, rewards were associated with lower retention of less-active contributors. These findings suggest that the incentive structure in peer production is broadly meritocratic, as highly-active contributors accumulate the most rewards. However, this may also contribute to the divide between the stable core of highly-prodigious producers and a peripheral population of less-active contributors with shorter volunteer tenures.     

Analysis of the changing relationship between peer acceptance and academic achievement in adolescents / Análisis de la relación variable entre la aceptación entre iguales y el rendimiento académico de los adolescentes

Peer interactions in the context of group-level relationships have significant consequences on social adjustment across the lifespan of children and adolescents. Indeed, peer relations change systematically with individuals’ development. This study examined the effect of positive peer interactions measured as peer acceptance on academic achievement during the adolescence developmental stage. Participants were 766 students aged 11–16 years old. Adolescents completed a sociometric measure of peer acceptance. Academic achievement data were obtained from students’ report card grades. Regression analyses indicated that peer acceptance predicted academic achievement, and also a moderation effect was found displaying a higher impact of peer acceptance on academic achievement for younger adolescents than for older adolescents. It is suggested that improving peer relationships within the group, especially at early adolescence, can be a target of intervention to improve academic functioning at school.     

The academic achievement of socioeconomically disadvantaged immigrant adolescents: a social capital perspective

A sizable body of literature reports that social capital, derived from relational resources embedded in micro social contexts, is crucial for student achievement. This study aimed to examine whether this applies as well to socioeconomically disadvantaged immigrant adolescents in the US. In so doing, the study first identified the types of relational features that were strongly associated with immigrant adolescents’ academic achievement, before exploring how high- and low-achieving immigrant adolescents coming from similarly socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds differed in terms of these relational features. To this end, the study used the dataset of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS). There was a significantly positive association found between academic achievement and a number of positive characteristics of social relationships with friends and teachers. In addition, a significant disparity in these relational features was found between high and low achievers among the socioeconomically disadvantaged. The findings illuminate the salience of peer contexts and of interpersonal trust in shaping immigrant adolescents’ educational outcomes in a way that transcends socioeconomic boundaries. It is pertinent for educators and policy-makers to empower immigrant youth as independent agents capable of generating academically relevant social capital on their own outside their families and ethnic communities.     

“Don't Cry,You're Not a Baby!”: Emotion,Role and Hierarchy in Korean Language Socialisation Practice

I examine how South Korean children learn culturally specific emotional knowledge, especially affective hierarchy and the association between emotional displays and social roles, through participation in peer talk. An analysis of children's and teachers’ everyday emotional discourses shows that children, rather than passively adopting adult emotional discourses, creatively employ a range of linguistic and communicative features regarding emotions to construct their own culture‐laden emotional world. Findings articulate the role children's peer talk has in cultural reproduction and dynamic aspects of the language socialisation processes.     

Children's Creative Collaborations: The Importance of Friendship when Working Together on a Musical Composition

This study examined the social processes involved in children's collaborative musical compositions. The communication (verbal and musical) between same-gender pairs of 11–12 year olds was analysed using measures of the relative distribution of transactive and non-transactive elements. Results suggested that mutual friendship pairs were characterised by different communication patterns in both their music and talk compared to those of non-friend pairs, with significantly more transactive communication in both channels. Previous experience of instrumental lessons also had an effect, with experienced children playing and talking in a more transactive way than those without such experience. On teacher's ratings of the final composition, those produced by pairs of friends received significantly higher scores than those of non-friends. Multiple regression analyses suggested that this final score could be predicted from the amount of transactive communication observed between the children. The results indicate some of the ways in which friendship influences the collaborative process in a creative, open-ended task by facilitating a high level of mutual engagement during the interaction and with the outcome of higher quality compositions.     

考虑网络交互影响效应的评价者权重分配方法

确定评价者的权重是评价理论与方法重要的一步.提出了基于网络博弈框架的新的评价者权重分配方法,并就解和参数的性质进行了详尽的讨论与验证.将评价者视为网络节点,评价者的评价行为形成评价者之间的联系,构成网络的边,根据评价者的评分信息定义他们之间的“合作”和“冲突”矩阵构成网络的权重矩阵,建立了网络博弈的模型,其最优解即为权重值.给出了模型最优解的求解方法,并证明了该最优解是Nash均衡的内点解,并且是这一问题唯一的Nash均衡解.分析了最优解与网络中心性测度之间的联系,较为本质地分析了最优解在网络科学中的含义,将决策理论与网络科学的知识关联起来.通过数学证明和仿真分析,揭示了模型中参数的含义,其对于解的“保序性”和“稳定性”两个优良性质是此消彼长的关系,提出了根据数据集特征选择参数值的相机抉择的管理思想;并在真实的数据集上进一步做模型的应用分析.本文提出的考虑网络交互影响效应的权重分配方法具有实用性,能够平衡解“保序性”和“稳定性”两个良好属性,具有理论意义和实践价值.     

Role of Various Fault Attributions and Other Factors in Children's Anticipated Response to Hypothetical Peers With Undesirable Characteristics

Two studies examined the role of various fault attributions and other factors in children's anticipated response to hypothetical peers described as having an undesirable characteristic. The children were found to distinguish among various fault attributions (i.e., general, onset, and perpetuation; study 1), and they tended to agree more strongly that the peers were responsible for the perpetuation than the onset of these characteristics (studies 1 and 2). In study 1, perceiving an aggressive or overweight peer as similar to a friend and believing that the overweight peer will overcome this undesirable characteristic were found to be associated with a relatively favorable response to these peers. The more strongly the children agreed that (1) an aggressive peer is generally at fault for his/her undesirable characteristic (study 1) and (2) peers who are aggressive, overweight, shy, or a poor student are at fault for the onset of their undesirable characteristics (study 2), the less favorably they anticipated responding to these peers. Unexpectedly, attributing responsibility to forces ‘outside the peer's control’ (i.e., parents and biology) for his/her undesirable characteristic in study 2 was not found to be associated with a relatively favorable response to any peer with an undesirable characteristic.     

Daily links between school problems and youth perceptions of interactions with parents: A diary study of school‐to‐home spillover

This study examined how academic and peer problems at school are linked to family interactions at home on the same day, using eight consecutive weeks of daily diary data collected from early adolescents (60% female; M age = 11.28, SD = 1.50), mothers and fathers in 47 families. On days when children reported more academic problems at school, they, but not their parents, reported less warmth and more conflict with mothers, and more conflict and less time spent around fathers. These effects were partially explained by same‐day child reports of higher negative mood. Peer problems were less consistently associated with parent‐child interactions over and above the effects of academic problems that day. A one‐time measure of parent‐child relationship quality moderated several daily associations, such that the same‐day link between school problems and child‐report of family interactions was stronger among children who were closer to their parents.     

Executive function and theory of mind as predictors of aggressive and prosocial behavior and peer acceptance in early childhood

Executive function (EF) and theory of mind (ToM) are related to children's social interactions, such as aggression and prosocial behavior, as well as their peer acceptance. However, limited research has examined different forms of aggression and the moderating role of gender. This study investigated links between EF, ToM, physical and relational aggression, prosocial behavior and peer acceptance and explored whether these relations are gender specific. Children (N = 106) between 46‐ and 80‐months‐old completed tasks assessing cool and hot EF and ToM. Teaching staff rated children's aggression, prosocial behavior, and peer acceptance. EF and ToM predicted physical, but not relational, aggression. Poor inhibition and delay of gratification were uniquely associated with greater physical aggression. EF and ToM did not predict prosocial behavior or peer acceptance. Added to this, gender did not moderate the relation between either EF or ToM and social outcomes. The correlates of aggression may therefore differ across forms of aggression but not between genders in early childhood.     

Relating mothers' social framing to their children's entry competence with peers

The purpose of this study was to examine how mothers view and construct meaning their children's social interactions, and to understand the interpretive frames they bring to filtering the social world and conveying meaning to their children. Maternal narrations to their children' videotaped entry behavior revealed narration patterns related to their children' entry behavior and the group's response. Generally, when their children were behaving competently, mothers appeared to have a broad based, context embedded view of the interaction, but focused more specifially when difficulties arose, These narration patterns were influenced ny the mothers' own remembered childhood social competence and recollections of positive and anxious peer experiences. Implications of these results for the socialization process were discussed.