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.     

Kurtosis modelling by means of the J-transformation

Summary: The H–family of distributions or H–distributions, introduced by Tukey (1960; 1977), are generated by a single transformation of the standard normal distribution and allow for leptokurtosis represented by the parameter h. Alternatively, Haynes et al. (1997) generated leptokurtic distributions by applying the K–transformation to the normal distribution. In this study we propose a third transformation, the so–called J–transformation, and derive some properties of this transformation. Moreover, so-called elongation generating functions (EGFs) are introduced. By means of EGFs we are able to visualize the strength of tail elongation and to construct new transformations. Finally, we compare the three transformations towards their goodness–of–fit in the context of financial return data.     

Corporate Giving in Australia: An Analysis of Motives and Barriers

This study comprises data analysis of data collected by McNair Ingenuity Research as part of the 2005 Giving Australia study, which estimated the total value of corporate giving for the year 2003‐04 at $3.3 billion. This was contributed by 67% of all Australian businesses. Business giving was found to comprise 68% monetary donations, 16% goods and 16% services. This article concentrates on the monetary donations of businesses, reporting on the motives and barriers businesses named for making donations. More than 80% of businesses are motivated to give, at least in part, by altruism, with larger businesses (by number of employees and turnover) more likely to claim benefits in terms of enhancements to employee morale, the organisation's image, supplier/customer relationships and the general level of publicity they were able to attract. The most significant barrier to giving named by both businesses who made a donation and those who did not was that business resources were committed elsewhere. Looking at how additional giving might be stimulated among those already giving to the sector revealed that the most generous businesses also cited more barriers to giving suggesting that they give greater consideration to their giving and the drawbacks thereof.     

The Boston Area Diary Study and the Moral Citizenship of Care

This paper describes the theoretical foundations, empirical findings, and practical and philosophical implications of the Boston Area Diary Study (BADS), a study of the caring behavior of 44 participants over one calendar year. In particular, the paper presents an identification theory of care and discusses how it shaped the conceptualization, collection, and analysis of the data in a year-long diary study of daily voluntary assistance. The findings from the BADS (1) theoretically confirm the identification theory of care; (2) methodologically capture how individuals perceive and carry out caring behavior as a unity; and (3rpar; empirically document the existence of a moral citizenship in America that is substantially more vigorous than is implied by the usual indicators of civic and political citizenship.     

THE AURA OF "HIGH TECH" IN A WORLD OF MESSY PRACTICE

This study employs interlocking analytical devices from the perspectives of several disciplines to explore members' meanings through definitions of "high technology" given by workers in design engineering. The comparative analysis employs concepts from art history, sociology of culture, anthropology and science studies to explore the appeal of "high technology" in comparison with the aura of original artworks and the status accrued by symbolic tools. Additionally, the role standardization has played in the development of engineering as a profession is explored in historical context as are the recurring themes of speed and "the new." The findings reveal that how engineers use new technologies in the world of messy practice and their conceptual framework regarding so-called "high technology" do not map well onto one another. The study illustrates the perspective of science and technology studies that views all technology as socially shaped and society shaping, its construction accomplished through messy patched-up practices rather than clean, linear paths or perfect techniques.     

Social determinants of life expectancy]

"Life expectancy and mortality increasingly are analyzed in the context of social factors. This study analyzes the impact of social position, marital status, and religious confession on cohort life expectancy. The analysis is based on [German data from the] Socio-Economic Panel Survey, wherein proxy-interviewee's parents have been used to estimate cohort mortality. Results confirm a lower mortality risk of the upper classes and of married persons. However, as opposed to other studies, Catholics do not have a lower, but even a higher mortality risk." (SUMMARY IN ENG)     

The impact and management of cognitive gap in high performance product development organizations

The close alignment of applied research and development units with manufacturing operational structures can provide excellent opportunities for maintaining robust product pipelines and reducing product development cycle times. Within such an integrated organizational model (IOM), however, lies a potentially disruptive psychological mechanism that can lead to the dissolution of this delicate partnership if it is not handled properly. This mechanism is cognitive gap, which can take several basic forms: first, as differences between the nature and difficulty of the problem at hand and the cognitive resources of the problem solvers tasked with its solution; and second, as differences between the cognitive abilities and approaches of the problem solvers themselves. In this paper, we define and discuss cognitive gap within the context of Kirton's Adaption-Innovation theory, a useful framework for understanding problem solving (and problem solvers) in general. Specific implications (both favourable and potentially destructive) of cognitive gaps for high performance product development organizations are discussed, and suggestions for their effective management are offered.