Factors reflecting children’s use of temporal terms as a function of social group

Author(s):  
Celia Renata Rosemberg ◽  
Florencia Alam ◽  
Alejandra Stein

The study analyzes the relationship between the temporal terms used by four-year-old children from different socio-economic backgrounds — marginalized urban neighborhoods and middle-income families — and the use of these terms in the spontaneous situations in which they participate in family and community contexts. The analysis assumes that the child develops knowledge about temporal expressions as they are used by others and as the child uses them herself (Nelson 2007; Tomasello 2003). Findings show that children from marginalized urban neighborhoods use fewer temporal terms than children from middle-income backgrounds. These differences correlate with differences in the input of both groups. The analysis shows differences in the interactional and discursive patterns of use of the terms in the homes of both groups of children.

Author(s):  
Dimiter Toshkov

AbstractThe link between age and happiness has been the subject of numerous studies. It is still a matter of controversy whether the relationship is U-shaped, with happiness declining after youth before bouncing back in old age, or not. While the effect of age has been examined conditional on income and other socio-demographic variables, so far, the interactions between age and income have remained insufficiently explored. Using data from the European Social Survey, this article shows that the nature of the relationship between age and happiness varies strongly with different levels of relative income. People in the lowest decile of the income distribution experience a ‘hockey stick’: a deep decline in self-reported happiness until around age 50–55 and a small bounce back in old age. The classic U-curve is found mostly in the middle-income ranks. For people at the top of the income distribution, average happiness does not vary much with age. These results demonstrate the important role of income in moderating the relationship between age and happiness.


PeerJ ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. e10860
Author(s):  
Jianmei Li ◽  
Wei Luo ◽  
Yudong Zhu ◽  
Qinlong Dai ◽  
Guoqi Liu ◽  
...  

An increasing body of research has revealed that social behavior shapes the animal gut microbiome community and leads to the similarity among the same social group. However, some additional factors (e.g., diet and habitat within each social group) may also contribute to this similarity within the social group and dissimilarity between social groups. Here, we investigated the potential correlation between social behavior and the gut microbiome community in 179 musk deer from four breeding regions in the Maerkang Captive Center, Sichuan. The dominant gut microbiome phyla in the musk deer in this study were Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, and Proteobacteria. We found significant effects on the alpha and beta diversity of the gut microbiome due to the breeding regions. The similarity within breeding regions was higher than that between the breeding regions. Due to their solitary lifestyle, captive musk deer are raised in single cages with no direct social contact most of the time. Deer in all of the breeding regions have the same diet and similar living conditions. However, during each mating season from November to January, in each region, one adult male and about six adult females will be put together into a large cage. Social behavior happens during cohabitation, including mating behavior, grooming within the same sex or between different sexes, and other social contact. Therefore, we speculated that high similarity within the breeding region might be associated with the social behavior during the mating season. This was a simple and straightforward example of the relationship between animal social behavior and the gut microbiome.


Author(s):  
Alejandro Lavopa ◽  
Adam Szirmai

This chapter analyses economic development through the lens of a newly developed index: the structural modernization index. This index combines two dimensions that have been widely invoked as prime drivers of economic development namely, structural change and technological catch-up. For each country, the index calculates the productivity gap with respect to the world frontier in activities that typically represent the modern sector of the economy and weights this relative productivity by the employment share of those activities in the total labour force. The index is calculated for a sample of 115 countries over the period 1960–2014. It is used to explore the relationship between structural modernization and the ability to escape poverty and middle-income traps.


Author(s):  
Jeong-Dong Lee ◽  
Keun Lee ◽  
Dirk Meissner ◽  
Slavo Radosevic ◽  
Nicholas S. Vonortas

This chapter begins with a brief overview of the current literature on economic growth and innovation, and the process of technology upgrading. It defines the key concepts that will be used throughout the book and sets the stage for the challenges and issues around economic growth that will be addressed in later chapters. It then outlines the contribution of each chapter and the Schumpeterian or neo-Schumpeterian perspective in which they’re framed, and the four major themes that run throughout the book: the relationship between technology capability and economic growth from new methodological angles, including the middle-income trap; technology capability upgrading from structural, sectoral, and micro-level perspectives; the emerging paradigm of technology capability upgrading which is about sustainability, green growth, inclusiveness, and socio-economic and political determinants of technology capability building; and the several dimensions of innovation policy which reflect a state of transition or changing policy philosophies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 444-467 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHELE I. FEIST ◽  
SARAH E. DUFFY

ABSTRACTThe Moving Ego and Moving Time metaphors have provided a fertile testing ground for the psychological reality of space–time metaphors. Despite this, little research has targeted the linguistic patterns used in these two mappings. To fill that gap, the current study uses corpus data to examine the use of motion verbs in two typologically different languages, English and Spanish. We first investigated the relative frequency of the two metaphors. Whereas we observed no difference in frequency in the Spanish data, our findings indicated that in English, Moving Time expressions are more prevalent than are Moving Ego expressions. Second, we focused on the patterns of use of the verbs themselves, asking whether well-known typological patterns in the expression of spatial motion would carry over to temporal motion. Specifically, we examined the frequencies of temporal uses of path and manner verbs in English and in Spanish. Contra the patterns observed in space, we observed a preference for path verbs in both languages, with this preference more strongly evident in English than in Spanish. In addition, our findings revealed greater use of motion verbs in temporal expressions in Spanish compared to English. These findings begin to outline constraints on the aspects of spatial conceptualization that are likely to be reused in the conceptualization of time.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (18) ◽  
pp. 7586
Author(s):  
Andrea Parra-Saldívar ◽  
Sebastián Abades ◽  
Juan L. Celis-Diez ◽  
Stefan Gelcich

Urbanization has impacted biodiversity and ecosystems at a global scale. At the same time, it has been recognized as a driver of the physical and emotional gap between humans and nature. The lack of direct contact with nature can have a negative impact on several aspects of human well-being and change knowledge and attitudes of people towards the environment. However, this phenomenon is still poorly understood in megacities outside developed countries. Here, we explore the relationship between ecological knowledge and self-reported well-being in an important urban park in Santiago, Chile. We conducted semi-structured surveys of park users to explore their beliefs, preferences, ecological knowledge of plants and birds, and self-reported well-being. Citizens associated urban parks mainly with “nature,” and particularly with the presence of trees and plants. Trees were recognized as the most relevant elements of urban parks; in turn, birds were ranked as the less relevant. Regarding formal ecological knowledge, respondents correctly identified an average of 2.01 plants and 2.44 birds out of a total of 10 for each taxon, and exotic species were more likely to be recognized. Park users also reported high scores for self-reported well-being. Interestingly, variance of self-reported well-being scores tended to increase at low levels of ecological knowledge of trees, but no significant relationship was detected with knowledge of birds, nor native species. Ecological knowledge of trees was positively related to self-reported well-being. Results suggest that parks can positively contribute to bring people closer to nature in middle-income countries. Improving ecological knowledge can be critical to restore the relationship between humans and nature in megacities.


Author(s):  
Jeffrey P. Thompson ◽  
Elias Leight

Abstract This paper uses US state panel data to explore the relationship between the share of income received by affluent households and the level of income and earnings received by low and middle-income families. A rising top share of income can potentially lead to increases in the incomes of low and middle-income families if economic growth is sufficiently responsive to increases in inequality. A substantial literature on the impacts of inequality on economic growth exists, but has failed to achieve consensus, with various studies finding positive impacts, negative impacts, and no impacts on growth from increased levels of income inequality. This paper departs from that literature by exploring the effect of inequality on the standard of living of middle-income and low-income families. In the context of rising inequality, increased overall growth is not necessarily a suitable proxy for overall standard of living, since growth patterns are not uniform for the entire income distribution. The results of this study indicate that increases in the top share of income (particularly the top one percent) are associated with declines in the actual incomes (and earnings) of middle income families, but have no clear impact on families at the bottom of the income distribution.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Pradeilles ◽  
Elizabeth Allen ◽  
Haris Gazdar ◽  
Hussain Bux Mallah ◽  
Azmat Budhani ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Stunted growth in early infancy is a public health problem in low-and-middle income countries. Evidence suggests heavy agricultural work during pregnancy is inversely associated with maternal body mass index (BMI) and infant birth weight in low- and middle-income countries; but pathways linking agricultural work to length-for-age Z-scores (LAZ) in early infancy have not been examined. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between agricultural work during pregnancy, post-natal maternal BMI and LAZ among young infants in rural Pakistan; and explored whether maternal BMI mediated the relationship between agricultural work and infant LAZ. Methods A cross-sectional survey was conducted from December 2015 to January 2016 in rural Sindh, Pakistan. Mother-infant dyads were recruited via systematic random cluster sampling at 2–12 weeks’ post-partum (n = 1161). Anthropometric measurements (maternal and infant height/length and weight) and questionnaire data were collected. Multivariable linear regression and structural-equation based mediation analyses were used to examine associations of agricultural work during pregnancy with maternal BMI and infant LAZ. Results During pregnancy, women reported engaging in livestock-related work (57.0%), crop-related work (42.7%), and cotton harvesting (28.4%). All three forms of agricultural work were negatively associated with maternal BMI (β = − 0.67 [− 1.06; − 0.28], β = − 0.97 [− 1.51; − 0.48]; and β = − 0.87 [− 1.33; − 0.45], respectively). Maternal engagement in cotton harvesting alone was negatively associated with infant LAZ after controlling for confounding factors. The total negative effect of cotton harvesting on infant LAZ was − 0.35 [− 0.53; − 0.16]. The indirect effect of maternal BMI on infant LAZ was − 0.06 [− 0.08; − 0.03], revealing that 16% (− 0.06/− 0.35) of the relationship between cotton harvesting and infant LAZ, after adjustment, was mediated via maternal BMI. Conclusion These results underscore a need to reduce labour-intensive agricultural workload demands during pregnancy, especially in cotton harvesting, to reduce risks of negative maternal energy balance and poor growth outcomes in early infancy.


2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (9) ◽  
pp. 1570-1577 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sumaya Mall ◽  
Jonathan M. Platt ◽  
Henk Temmingh ◽  
Eustasius Musenge ◽  
Megan Campbell ◽  
...  

AbstractBackgroundEvidence from high-income countries suggests that childhood trauma is associated with schizophrenia. Studies of childhood trauma and schizophrenia in low and middle income (LMIC) countries are limited. This study examined the prevalence of childhood traumatic experiences among cases and controls and the relationship between specific and cumulative childhood traumatic experiences and schizophrenia in a sample in South Africa.MethodsData were from the Genomics of Schizophrenia in the South African Xhosa people study. Cases with schizophrenia and matched controls were recruited from provincial hospitals and clinics in the Western and Eastern Cape regions in South Africa. Childhood traumatic experiences were measured using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ). Adjusted logistic regression models estimated associations between individual and cumulative childhood traumatic experiences and schizophrenia.ResultsTraumatic experiences were more prevalent among cases than controls. The odds of schizophrenia were 2.44 times higher among those who experienced any trauma than those who reported no traumatic experiences (95% CI 1.77–3.37). The odds of schizophrenia were elevated among those who experienced physical/emotional abuse (OR 1.59, CI 1.28–1.97), neglect (OR 1.39, CI 1.16–1.68), and sexual abuse (OR 1.22, CI 1.03–1.45) compared to those who did not. Cumulative physical/emotional abuse and neglect experiences increased the odds of schizophrenia as a dose–response relationship.ConclusionChildhood trauma is common in this population. Among many other benefits, interventions to prevent childhood trauma may contribute to a decreasing occurrence of schizophrenia.


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