ADHD and Brain Anatomy: What Do Academic Textbooks Used in the Netherlands Tell Students?

Studies of brain size of children classified with ADHD appear to reveal smaller brains when compared to ‘normal’ children. Yet, what does this mean? Even with the use of rigorously screened case and control groups, these studies show only small, average group differences between children with and without an ADHD classification. However, academic textbooks used in the Netherlands often portray individual children with an ADHD classification as having a different, malfunctioning brain that necessitates medical intervention. This conceptualisation of ADHD might serve professional interests, but not necessarily the interests of children.     

Adolescents' contact with sexuality in mainstream media: A selection‐based perspective

Most work on adolescents’ contact with sexuality in mainstream media has been framed in terms of media effects upon the sexual self‐concepts, attitudes, and behaviors of youth, even when such causality cannot be inferred. Rarely examined are the sexual characteristics of adolescents that may predict contact with sexual media. Using Steele's (1999) Media Practice Model as a foundation, we reported on these associations for 2,184 Dutch adolescents. This study emphasized sex differences in the characteristics that predict such contact and the role of youths’ critical evaluations of information about sex in the media. Correlation and regression analyses revealed several sex differences in the characteristics related to sexual media contact, with individual characteristics accounting for more variance in females and critical evaluations accounting for more variance in males. This study underscores the need for more comprehensive, longitudinal studies of adolescents’ media consumption and its connections to sexual development in youth.     

Diversity as a Basis for Shared Organizational Identity: The Norm Congruity Principle

Although the social identity approach is generally used to explain the negative consequences of diversity for the formation of a common identity within organizations, we propose that social identity processes can also lead employees to evaluate their differences in a positive way. We propose norm‐congruency as a central principle to understand these issues. We argue that when differences among team members in organizations are congruent with norms and expectations, diversity can become a basis for organizational identification.     

How feedback about leadership potential impacts ambition,organizational commitment,and performance

In the present research we report results from two experimental studies that examine how feedback about leadership potential impacts leadership ambition, organizational commitment, and performance. Study 1 used an experimental vignette methodology that controls for prior performance. Results show that individuals who receive feedback that they have low potential to be a future leader have lower ambition and organizational commitment relative to those who receive feedback that they have high potential to be a future leader. Study 2 provides evidence of the causal behavioral effects of feedback about leadership potential using a real task effort environment. Results show that participants informed to be unlikely future leaders display lower performance in a subsequent task than participants informed to be likely future leaders. The findings from the two studies demonstrate that information about leadership potential affects subsequent ambition to become leaders as well as performance. We discuss the implications of these findings for the importance of followership, talent management, and leadership succession.     

Can 18‐Month‐Old Infants Learn Words by Listening In on Conversations?

Previous research has shown that children as young as 2 can learn words from 3rd‐party conversations (Akhtar, Jipson, & Callanan, 2001). The focus of this study was to determine whether younger infants could learn a new word through overhearing. Novel object labels were introduced to 18‐month‐old infants in 1 of 2 conditions: directly by an experimenter or in the context of overhearing the experimenter use the word while interacting with another adult. The findings suggest that, when memory demands are not too high, 18‐month‐old infants can learn words through overhearing.     

Families on hold: How the context of an asylum centre affects parenting experiences

Migration, especially under stressful circumstances, places pressure on parental capacities. At the same time, being part of a supportive family is of prime importance for the well‐being of migrating children and parents. In this paper, we highlight the impact of the living conditions in a collective asylum centre on asylum applicants' parenting experiences through in‐depth interviews with and participant observations among parents in a Belgian asylum centre. Differentiating between the influences of the organizational and physical environments of the centre, our results reveal that various organizational aspects limit parental agency and well‐being and often render parents powerless in raising and protecting their children. Their physical environment, consisting of a dilapidated building, is experienced as a nonwelcoming, dangerous environment that leaves insufficient opportunity to establish a safe and stable home. We conclude that there is almost no attention paid to asylum applicants' parental role within the collective reception facilities. Further, their individual parental responsibility is emphasized, whereas the difficult environment of the asylum centre in which they have to raise their children is not criticized.     

The wellbeing of foster children and their relationship with foster parents and biological parents: a child’s perspective

Most Dutch foster children live permanently in foster families. It is often assumed that foster children have ambivalent loyalties and attachments to their birth parents and foster parents and are torn between the two. In this study 59 children between 10 and 18 years placed in long term foster care completed standardised questionnaires on the relationship with their parents respectively foster parents and their wellbeing. Results show that, on average, foster children have positive feelings of loyalty and attachment towards both their foster parents and biological parents. However, their wellbeing appeared mainly related with stronger attachment representations towards their foster parents. This study found no indications for a competing position of biological parents and foster parents from the perspective of the child. Nevertheless, foster children who see their foster and biological parents as more vulnerable or experience stronger normative boundaries, feel worse compared to children who experience this feelings less.     

Mobility and the City Improvement District: Frictions in the Human-capital Mobile Assemblage

In this paper, we interrogate the role of the city improvement district (CID) in the intervention and management of mobility within the context of the South African city and the case study of the Groote Schuur Community Improvement District (GSCID), a public–private urban governance scheme situated in Cape Town’s middle income southern suburbs. Using the theoretical lens of bodily-scale mobility, we investigate the CID’s activation and management. This is useful, as we will demonstrate, because it is through the mobility and immobility at the scale of the body, where the CID’s mandate is operationalised and it is through the control of mobility that the CID’s mission, discourses and activities are linked. This work demonstrates that CIDs, as elite-driven urban renewal initiatives closely aligned with capital interests, employ exclusionary spatial practices that have the potential to shape the twenty-first century urban experience in significant ways. We conclude by theorising the co-constitutive nature of human mobilities and capital as the ‘human-capital mobile assemblage’ and by arguing that the CID occupies an ambivalent place in the contemporary city.     

Multiple Perspectives on Inference for Two Simple Statistical Scenarios

ABSTRACT

When data analysts operate within different statistical frameworks (e.g., frequentist versus Bayesian, emphasis on estimation versus emphasis on testing), how does this impact the qualitative conclusions that are drawn for real data? To study this question empirically we selected from the literature two simple scenarios—involving a comparison of two proportions and a Pearson correlation—and asked four teams of statisticians to provide a concise analysis and a qualitative interpretation of the outcome. The results showed considerable overall agreement; nevertheless, this agreement did not appear to diminish the intensity of the subsequent debate over which statistical framework is more appropriate to address the questions at hand.