PEER AND TEACHER PREFERENCE,STUDENT–TEACHER RELATIONSHIPS,STUDENT ETHNICITY,AND PEER VICTIMIZATION IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

This research was supported, in part, by a grant from the National Institute for Mental Health (5R44MH07071‐03) awarded to Dr. Melissa E. DeRosier. Additional support comes from an Institute of Education Sciences post‐doctoral fellowship training award to the University of Florida (R324B1200002). The research was conducted at 3‐C Institute. The authors thank the staff and students of the Wake County Public School System in North Carolina for their cooperation and support in the implementation of this research project. In addition, the authors thank Drs. Janey McMillen, Natalie O'Brian, and Melanie Wilson for their invaluable efforts as project coordinators, as well as the many interns of the 3‐C Institute for their assistance in successfully completing this research project.     

The Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science presented to Judah Folkman

The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania awarded the 2001 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science to Judah Folkman for his founding of the field of angiogenesis research and demonstration that angiogenesis is a necessary factor in the conversion of abnormal cells to malignant tumors.     

Fragile but real: children's capacity to use newly acquired words to convey preverbal memories

There is ongoing debate about children's ability to use subsequently acquired language to describe preverbal experiences. This issue was addressed experimentally in this investigation using a novel paradigm. Two-year-old children who lacked color words were individually taught to activate a bubble machine by selecting a particular color of bubble solution. The children then participated in weekly, experimenter-provided activities that fostered their acquisition of the color labels. After 2 months, their ability to apply the newly acquired words in reporting the original event was assessed. A significant proportion of the children demonstrated verbal recall when prompted in the presence of physical reminders of the event. These findings indicate that some early, preverbal memories are translated into words at a later time.     

The role of gender constancy in early gender development

Kohlberg's (1966) hypothesis that the attainment of gender constancy motivates children to attend to gender norms was reevaluated by examining these links in relation to age. Ninety-four 3- to 7-year-old children were interviewed to assess whether and how constancy mediates age-related changes in gender-related beliefs. As expected, results indicated a general pattern of an increase in stereotype knowledge, the importance and positive evaluation of one's own gender category, and rigidity of beliefs between the ages of 3 and 5. Moreover, the stability phase, rather than full constancy, mediated some of these relations. After age 5, rigidity generally decreased with age, with relations primarily mediated by consistency.     

Individual, family, and neighborhood factors distinguish resilient from non-resilient maltreated children: a cumulative stressors model

OBJECTIVE: Children who are physically maltreated are at risk of a range of adverse outcomes in childhood and adulthood, but some children who are maltreated manage to function well despite their history of adversity. Which individual, family, and neighborhood characteristics distinguish resilient from non-resilient maltreated children? Do children's individual strengths promote resilience even when children are exposed to multiple family and neighborhood stressors (cumulative stressors model)? METHODS: Data were from the Environmental Risk Longitudinal Study which describes a nationally representative sample of 1,116 twin pairs and their families. Families were home-visited when the twins were 5 and 7 years old, and teachers provided information about children's behavior at school. Interviewers rated the likelihood that children had been maltreated based on mothers' reports of harm to the child and child welfare involvement with the family. RESULTS: Resilient children were those who engaged in normative levels of antisocial behavior despite having been maltreated. Boys (but not girls) who had above-average intelligence and whose parents had relatively few symptoms of antisocial personality were more likely to be resilient versus non-resilient to maltreatment. Children whose parents had substance use problems and who lived in relatively high crime neighborhoods that were low on social cohesion and informal social control were less likely to be resilient versus non-resilient to maltreatment. Consistent with a cumulative stressors model of children's adaptation, individual strengths distinguished resilient from non-resilient children under conditions of low, but not high, family and neighborhood stress. CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that for children residing in multi-problem families, personal resources may not be sufficient to promote their adaptive functioning.     

Effects of race of examiner and type of reinforcement on the intelligence test performance of lower-class black children

This study examined the effects of race of examiner and type of reinforcement upon the WISC-R performance of lower-class black children. A total of 120 black males were selected and assigned to either a white or black examiner to form two groups. Within each group, children were given no reinforcement, tangible reinforcement, traditional social reinforcement, or culturally relevant social reinforcement after each correct response. Children given tangible rewards, regardless of race of examiner, obtained significantly higher scores than did children given no reinforcement or children given traditional social reinforcement. Also, children given culturally relevant social reinforcement by a black examiner obtained significantly higher scores than did children given culturally relevant reinforcement by the white examiner.     

A Geohistorical Study of ‘The Rise of Modern Science’: Mapping Scientific Practice Through Urban Networks, 1500–1900

Using data on the ‘career’ paths of one thousand ‘leading scientists’ from 1450 to 1900, what is conventionally called the ‘rise of modern science’ is mapped as a changing geography of scientific practice in urban networks. Four distinctive networks of scientific practice are identified. A primate network centred on Padua and central and northern Italy in the sixteenth century expands across the Alps to become a polycentric network in the seventeenth century, which in turn dissipates into a weak polycentric network in the eighteenth century. The nineteenth century marks a huge change of scale as a primate network centred on Berlin and dominated by German-speaking universities. These geographies are interpreted as core-producing processes in Wallerstein’s modern world-system; the rise of modern scientific practice is central to the development of structures of knowledge that relate to, but do not mirror, material changes in the system.