Scaring the Monster Away: What Children Know About Managing Fears of Real and Imaginary Creatures

Children around 4, 5, and 7 years old (N = 48) listened to scenarios depicting a child alone or accompanied by another person (mother, father, friend) who encounters an entity that looks like a real or an imaginary fear‐inducing creature. Participants predicted and explained each protagonist’s fear intensity and suggested coping strategies. Results showed age‐related increases in judgments that different people will experience different intensities of fear in the same situation. With age, children also demonstrated increasing knowledge that people’s minds can both induce and reduce fear, especially in situations involving imaginary creatures. Suggestions of reality affirmation strategies (e.g., reminding oneself of what is real vs. not real) significantly increased with age, whereas positive pretense strategies (e.g., imagining it is a friendly ghost) significantly decreased.     

Examining alternative items for the assessment of perceived ageism

Ageism is the negative construction of old age. It has real-life implication at the individual and structural levels. To address ageism in large social surveys, the first step is to identify an easy-to-use item, which measures its incidence. The present study compares the utility of two items, which query about perceived exposure to ageism. The fourth wave of the European Social Survey (ESS) contains data from 29 countries in Europe, including Israel. In the present study, I compare two items as potential indicators of perceived exposure to ageism. As many as 33.7% of the sample reported exposure to ageism based on the ageism module item (which assesses one’s individual perceived exposure), but only 1.1% reported perceived ageism based on the regular ESS item (which queries about identification with a discriminated group). The overall Kappa was .02, indicating that agreement between the two items was no greater than chance. Both items were significant predictors of subjective health, but had somewhat different correlates. This study is important as it raises the need for a more careful consideration of items in the assessment of sensitive social issues, such as perceived ageism in large social studies.     

Grading styles and disciplinary expertise: The mediating role of the teacher’s perception of the subject matter

Based on a sample of 312 high school teachers who participated in the Israeli PISA assessment of student academic achievement in 2002, the current study examines the mediatory role of their perception of the subject matter (as “open/flexible” or “closed/hierarchical”) in the relation between their disciplinary expertise (language, mathematics or science) and their grading style (performance-output or effort-input). The mediation hypothesis was completely supported for all disciplines in the case of perception of subject matter as open/flexible. With respect to the closed/hierarchical perception, it was supported only for the comparison of science vs. mathematics.     

Whose Right Is It Anyway? Familiarity with Workers’ Rights Among Older Adults,Family Caregivers,and Migrant Live-In Home Care Workers: Implications for Policy and Practice

Live-in home care provided to older adults blurs the boundaries between private and professional, personal and public matters, and working hours versus off-duty time. As a result, live-in home care workers are at risk for exploitation. The present study examines the extent to which older adults, family members, and migrant live-in care workers are familiar with the rights of migrant live-in care workers. A random stratified sample of adults over the age of 70 who receive home care services was conducted. Overall, 338 migrant live-in care workers, 224 older adults, and 442 family members were interviewed and asked about their knowledge regarding 10 basic migrant live-in workers’ rights. Moderate levels of knowledge regarding migrant live-in care workers’ rights were found. On average, older adults were aware of 4.22 workers’ rights (out of a possible number of 10 rights), whereas family members and migrant live-in care workers were aware of 7.77 and 7.34 rights, respectively. No more than 4% of older adults, 18% of family members, and 10% of migrant live-in care workers were aware of all 10 workers’ rights. It seems that whereas some rights regarding social benefits were well acknowledged, core issues related to the job and to the status of migrant care workers remain unclear. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.     

Gender identity, sex typing of occupations, and gender role ideology among adolescents: Are they related?

The study examined the impact of gender identity ongender role ideology and occupational sex typing among166 Israeli adolescents. The findings indicate thatgender identity affects occupational sex-typing.Specifically, androgynous respondents provided moreliberal evaluations of feminine-typed occupations thandid the undifferentiated group.Regarding gender role ideology, gender identity wasonly found to have an impact among the malerespondents. Specifically, sex-typed andundifferentiated males expressed more traditionalevaluations of feminine-typed roles than did theandrogynous and cross-sex-typed respondents. Inaddition, an effect was found for gender regardless ofgender identity, i.e., the females expressed lesssex-typed evaluations of occupations and lesstraditional perspectives of gender roles than did themales.     

Predicting the decisions of hospital based child protection teams to report to child protective services,police and community welfare services

This study examines judgments made by hospital-based child protection teams (CPTs) when determining if there is reasonable suspicion that a child has been maltreated, and whether to report the case to a community welfare agency, to child protective services (CPS) and/or to the police. A prospective multi-center study of all 968 consecutive cases referred to CPTs during 2010–2011 in six medical centers in Israel. Centers were purposefully selected to represent the heterogeneity of medical centers in Israel in terms of size, geographical location and population characteristics. A structured questionnaire was designed to capture relevant information and judgments on each child referred to the team. Bivariate associations and multivariate multinomial logistic regressions were conducted to predict whether the decisions would be (a) to close the case, (b) to refer the case to community welfare services, or (c) to report it to CPS and/or the police. Bivariate and multivariate analyses identified a large number of case characteristics associated with higher probability of reporting to CPS/police or of referral to community welfare services. Case characteristics associated with the decisions include socio-demographic (e.g., ethnicity and financial status), parental functioning (e.g., mental health), previous contacts with authorities and hospital, current referral characteristics (e.g., parental referral vs. child referral), physical findings, and suspicious behaviors of child and parent. Most of the findings suggest that decisions of CPTs are based on indices that have strong support in the professional literature. Existing heterogeneity between cases, practitioners and medical centers had an impact on the overall predictability of the decision to report. Attending to collaboration between hospitals and community agencies is suggested to support learning and quality improvement.     

Patterns of Verbal Mediation During Problem Solving: A Sequential Analysis of Self-Explanation

The explanations that participants give themselves (self-explanations) while learning or solving problems have been shown to be positively associated with various performance measures. The major aim of this study was to identify patterns of self-explanation that distinguish between good and poor problem solvers. Thirty-two Grade 9 students were asked to solve 3 mixture problems—1 warm-up problem and 2 test problems—while thinking aloud. The problem-solving process was videotaped, protocols were transcribed, and 5 content categories were identified. Through a sequential analysis, patterns of self-explanation that differentiate between good and poor problem solvers were identified.     

Grown-ups are not afraid of scary stuff, but kids are: young children's and adults' reasoning about children's, infants', and adults' fears

Three-, 5-, and 7-year-olds and adults ( N = 64) listened to stories depicting 2 protagonists of different ages (infant and child or child and grownup) that encounter an entity that looks like a real (e.g., a snake) or an imaginary (e.g., a ghost) fear-inducing creature. Participants predicted and explained each protagonist's intensity of fear. Results showed significant age-related increases in knowledge that infants and adults would experience less intense fears than young children and that people's fears are causally linked to their cognitive mental states. Across age, stories involving imaginary beings elicited more frequent mental explanations for fear than stories about real creatures. Results are discussed in relation to children's developing awareness of the mind as mediating between situations and emotions.