Book
Individuelle Unterschiede in der Gesichterkognition im Kindes- und Jugendalter/Individual Differences in Face Cognition across Childhood and Adolescence
Face perception and memory ("face cognition") are basic facets of social intelligence, and their development is a central topic for developmental science. Nevertheless, there is acute controversy over the issue of early or late maturation of these abilities. In addition, variance in face cognition abilities was ignored so far, leading to the absence of information, how children in a given age cohort differ in these abilities and making it impossible to investigate the association of face cognition abilities with general cognitive abilities; hence, the question about the specificity of face cognition abilities in childhood and adolescence remains open. Based on the earlier differential psychological studies of the structure of face cognition and variance in adulthood, within the current dissertation this approach was adopted to childhood and adolescence. Based on the results of 338 children and adolescents, the following conclusions were formulated: a) the individual differences approach allowed to establish the 2-factorial model of face cognition abilities (face perception and face memory) and to demonstrate invariance of this structure across childhood and adolescence; b) current approach allowed to demonstrate substantial age-related performance differences in both latent factors; c) although the level of maturation of face cognition is highly associated with general cognitive development, face perception and face memory are specific and have a social character compared to object recognition. The current dissertation contains a number of methodological recommendations related to the measurement of face cognition in childhood and adolescence, most important - the development of multivariate measurement.
"Education in Modern times: from criticism of traditional authority to new idea of the person" This study is devoted to works of British philosophers of the XVII century - Tomas Hobbes and John Locke , who had a significant influence on the development of philosophy and history of childhood. Thanks largely to their works, the childhood was conceived as a historical and cultural phenomenon without which and his I (Me) some modernization of society is impossible. The Revolution in public perceptions of the child and the opportunity to think the child as adult in the context of the liberal demands of freedom and equality are directly related in the work of Hobbes and Locke with the deconstruction of paternalistic power and with the problem of interpretation of subjectivity and identity of Me in the new cultural and political meaning.
The factors that contribute to perceptual simulation during sentence comprehension remain underexplored. Extant research on perspective taking in language has largely focused on linguistic constraints, such as the role of pronouns in guiding perspective adoption. In the present study, we identify preferential usage of egocentric and allocentric reference frames in individuals, and test the two groups on a standard sentence-picture verification task. Across three experiments, we show that individual biases in spatial reference frame adoption observed in non-linguistic tasks influence visual simulation of perspective in language. Our findings suggest that typically reported grand-averaged effects may obscure important between-subject differences, and support proposals arguing for representational pluralism, where perceptual information is integrated dynamically and in a way that is sensitive to contextual and especially individual constraints. © 2015 Elsevier B.V.
The aim of the study was to investigate the influence of individual temperament traits on selective auditory attention. The subjects performed auditory selective attention task during 3 experimental sessions. Task performance indexes of each session were found to correlate with the dimensions of temperament, subjects' academic achievement and their level of musical education. The results were interpreted from the viewpoint of Kahneman’s Capacity Model of Attention. It was concluded that temperament affects activation and arousal which are viewed as a physiological basis of attention. It was also summarized that during the experiment automation of auditory selection, depending on individual differences, occurred.
Greed is an important motive: it is seen as both productive (a source of ambition; the motor of the economy) and destructive (undermining social relationships; the cause of the late 2000s financial crisis). However, relatively little is known about what greed is and does. This article reports on 5 studies that develop and test the 7-item Dispositional Greed Scale (DGS). Study 1 (including 4 separate samples from 2 different countries, total N = 6092) provides evidence for the construct and discriminant validity of the DGS in terms of positive correlations with maximization, self-interest, envy, materialism, and impulsiveness, and negative correlations with self-control and life satisfaction. Study 2 (N = 290) presents further evidence for discriminant validity, finding that the DGS predicts greedy behavioral tendencies over and above materialism. Furthermore, the DGS predicts economic behavior: greedy people allocate more money to themselves in dictator games (Study 3, N = 300) and ultimatum games (Study 4, N = 603), and take more in a resource dilemma (Study 5, N = 305). These findings shed light on what greed is and does, how people differ in greed, and how greed can be measured. In addition, they show the importance of greed in economic behavior and provide directions for future studies.
Twenty-four papers examine the state of early childhood development among sub-Saharan Africa's children. Papers discuss the state of young children in sub-Saharan Africa; positioning early childhood development (ECD) nationally--trends in selected African countries; early childhood care and education in sub-Saharan Africa--what it would take to meet the Millennium Development Goals; brain development and ECD--a case for investment; new threats to ECD--children affected by HIV/AIDS; ECD in Africa--a historical perspective; (mis)understanding ECD in Africa--the force of local and global motives; fathering--the role of men in raising children in Africa--holding up the other half of the sky; ECD policy--a comparative analysis in Ghana, Mauritius, and Namibia; participatory ECD policy planning in Francophone West Africa; responding to the challenge of meeting the needs of children under three in Africa; introducing preprimary classes in Africa--opportunities and challenges; inclusive education--a Mauritian response to the "inherent rights of the child"; parenting challenges for the changing African family; ECD and HIV/AIDS--the newest programming and policy challenge; supporting young children in conflict and postconflict situations--child protection and psychosocial well-being in Angola; strategic communication in early childhood development programs--the case of Uganda; the synergy of nutrition and ECD interventions in sub-Saharan Africa; the impact of ECD programs on maternal employment and older children's school attendance in Kenya; the Madrasa ECD program--making a difference; linking policy discourse to everyday life in Kenya--impacts of neoliberal policies on early education and childrearing; community-based approaches that work in Eastern and Southern Africa; whether early childhood programs can be financially sustainable in Africa; and a tri-part approach to promoting ECD capacity in Africa--ECD seminars, international conferences, and the Early Childhood Development Virtual University. Garcia is Lead Human Development Economist in the World Bank's Human Development Department, Africa Region. Pence is Director of the Early Childhood Development Virtual University and Professor in the School of Child and Youth Care, Faculty of Human and Social Development, at the University of Victoria. Evans is Director Emeritus for the Consultative Group on Early Childhood Care and Development. Index.
"Children and society: social reality and innovation" is a collection of more than 170 papers by Russian sociologists from different regions of the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Poland, Kazakhstan, Germany at the all-Russian scientific-practical conference with international participation "Children and society: social reality and innovation". The book presents studies of regional offices and the scientific committees of the Russian society of sociologists, research teams, supported by the Russian Foundation for Humanities, groups of educational institutions, which deal with the problems of education, health, family and childhood, ecological and ethnonational problems of childhood, culture and social life in terms of processes of transformation and modernization of the Russian society. The13 parts of the book-lit topical issues of implementation of National strategy of action for children for 2012-2017. That‘s presented actual wide field of contemporary assessment and examination of public policies and civil society efforts to improve the situation of children in the Russian Federation for sociologists, protection of children‘s rights, consideration of the ability of children as independent subjects of social life
The distractive effects on attentional task performance in different paradigms are analyzed in this paper. I demonstrate how distractors may negatively affect (interference effect), positively (redundancy effect) or neutrally (null effect). Distractor effects described in literature are classified in accordance with their hypothetical source. The general rule of the theory is also introduced. It contains the formal prediction of the particular distractor effect, based on entropy and redundancy measures from the mathematical theory of communication (Shannon, 1948). Single- vs dual-process frameworks are considered for hypothetical mechanisms which underpin the distractor effects. Distractor profiles (DPs) are also introduced for the formalization and simple visualization of experimental data concerning the distractor effects. Typical shapes of DPs and their interpretations are discussed with examples from three frequently cited experiments. Finally, the paper introduces hierarchical hypothesis that states the level-fashion modulating interrelations between distractor effects of different classes.
This article describes the expierence of studying factors influencing the social well-being of educational migrants as mesured by means of a psychological well-being scale (A. Perrudet-Badoux, G.A. Mendelsohn, J.Chiche, 1988) previously adapted for Russian by M.V. Sokolova. A statistical analysis of the scale's reliability is performed. Trends in dynamics of subjective well-being are indentified on the basis the correlations analysis between the condbtbions of adaptation and its success rate, and potential mechanisms for developing subjective well-being among student migrants living in student hostels are described. Particular attention is paid to commuting as a factor of adaptation.