Philip J. Dunham

Computer-mediated social support: single young mothers as a model system.

Forty-two single mothers with young infants were given access to a computer-mediated social support (CMSS) network concerned with parenting issues. The network operated 24 hours per day over a period of 6 months. It permitted public message exchanges, private e-mail, and text-based teleconferencing for as many as 8 participants at any one time. During the 6 month intervention, the 42 women accessed the network over 16,670 times. Individual differences in participation were significantly associated with indices of social isolation from peers. A descriptive analyses of the messages exchanged on the network disclosed that 98% of the replies to concerns posted in the public forum provided positive social support. The majority of the supportive replies fell into the category of emotional support, followed in order by informational and tangible support. Both the self-report data following the intervention, and qualitative data extracted from online discussions indicated that close personal relationships and a sense of community developed in this novel social environment. Finally, an analysis of pretest–posttest changes in the level of parenting stress revealed that mothers who participated regularly in this CMSS community were more likely to report a decrease in parenting stress following the intervention.

Joint-attentional states and lexical acquisition at 18 months

Two groups of 18-month-old infants were observed during a relatively natural play session with an adult experimenter and several toys. A novel object associated with one of the toys was labeled a dodo by the experimenter using either an attention-following strategy (i.e., introducing the label when the infant was focused on the dodo object) or an attention-switching strategy (i.e., introducing the label when the infant was focused on an alternative object). With factors such as frequency of exposure to the object label and infant compliance equivalent across the groups, infants in the attention-following procedure were more likely to correctly identify the dodo object in a subsequent comprehension task

Language Use in Computer-Mediated Communication: The Role of Coordination Devices

In text-based computer-mediated communication (CMC), peoples language use and task performance can be affected by whether explicit coordination devices (e.g., a turn marker) are available. Analyses of 37 dialogues that emerged in text-based, CMC environments support Clarks (1996, 1997) proposal that a communication setting that disrupts the regulation of turn-taking will both undermine higher level language processes (i.e., the construal of meaning) and increase the frequency of metacommunicative signals required to coordinate the speakers action with the listeners attention. The results indicate that the availability of a simple, explicit turn marker in a task-oriented, text-based exchange facilitates the construal of meaning and reduces the number of verbal coordination devices required to ground communication. Measures examining alternative interpretations indicate that these effects are not easily explained by differences in volubility or speed-accuracy trade-off across the 2 conditions.

Children's Comprehension of Critical and Complimentary Forms of Verbal Irony

The existing research on childrens comprehension of verbal irony has focused exclusively on childrens understanding of ironic criticisms. Two experiments examined 5- and 6-year-old childrens ability to detect the nonliteral nature and intended meaning of both ironic criticism and ironic praise as depicted in short, videotaped stories. Considered together, the results from these experiments permit several conclusions: First, the data confirm earlier research suggesting that childrens detection of nonliteral utterances and their interpretation of the speakers pragmatic intent are separable components of early irony comprehension. Second, childrens ability to detect ironic statements is asymmetrical across critical and complimentary forms of irony. Finally, although children more readily detect ironic criticisms, explicit echoic cues play an important role in facilitating uniquely their detection of ironic compliments. We discuss these results in the context of social pragmatic theories of early communicative development (e.g., Bruner, 1983; Tomasello, 1992, 1995) and with reference to a recent allusional-pretense model of irony comprehension proposed for mature speakers (Kumon-Nakamura, Glucksberg, & Brown, 1995).

Social Contingency Effects on Subsequent Perceptual-Cognitive Tasks in Young Infants.

3 experiments with 3-month-old infants compared the effects of contingent and noncontingent adult-infant social interactions on subsequent infant-controlled habituation and choice tasks. Infants who experienced a prior noncontingent social interaction tended to adopt response strategies that reduced the density of stimulation during these subsequent nonsocial tasks. The results are discussed in terms of their generality and the types of mechanisms that might mediate these transfer effects from social to nonsocial procedures.

Precopulatory mate guarding in an amphipod, Gammarus lawrencianus Bousfield

Abstract Traditional theoretical accounts of crustacean mate guarding have assumed that changes associated with the females reproductive state elicit the mate guarding behaviour of the male. The present study systematically examined the effects of both the male and female reproductive states on the precopulatory mate guarding decision of the amphipod Gammarus lawrencianus . Independent manipulation of the male and female variables indicated that both contributed additively to the probability of precopulatory mate guarding. When considered together, the results demonstrate that females that are closer to the post-moult copulation state are more likely to be guarded; and that males are more likely to enter the mate guarding relationship as the time since their last copulation increases. An adequate theoretical account of crustancean precopulatory mate guarding must, therefore, consider the contribution of both the male and the female reproductive states to the mate guarding decision.

Interpersonal Sensitivity in Computer-Mediated and Face-to-Face Conversations

Two studies were designed to assess the impact of computer-mediated communication (CMC) on the development of dominant/subordinate status roles and on the accuracy of interpersonal perceptions during dyadic, text-based conversations. Results comparing face-to-face (FtF) and synchronous CMC interactions indicated: (a) that dyads established dominant/subordinate roles in both communicative environments, although these roles were more clearly differentiated in the CMC interactions; and (b) that the accuracy of interpersonal perceptions did not differ substantially during CMC and FtF interactions. Considered together, these data pose problems for theoretical accounts of CMC suggesting that the impoverished social cues in this form of text-based communication tend to equalize hierarchical differences in the status of participants and undermine the accuracy of interpersonal perceptions.

Two-year-olds' sensitivity to a parent's knowledge state: Mind reading or contextual cues?

Two experiments were designed to determine if children at 27 and 33 months of age tailor their communicative behaviours to the knowledge states of their social partners. In each study, an experimenter placed a desirable object into one of two opaque containers. The child was then required to ask for a parents assistance in retrieving the object. In one condition, the parent covered her eyes during sticker placement (parent ignorant condition); in a second condition, the parents eyes were open during sticker placement (parent knowledgeable condition); and in a third condition, the parent first covered her eyes but then opened them during placement of the sticker (sham ignorant condition). The results indicated that children at both ages were appropriately employing a pointing gesture more often in the parent ignorant condition than in the parent knowledgeable condition. However, children responded to the sham hiding condition differently at the two ages. In the sham condition, older children appropriately gestured less than in the parent ignorant condition. However, the younger children were equally likely to use gestures in the sham condition and the parent ignorant condition. Considered together, the data suggest that different factors are controlling the selective use of gestures in these two age groups.

Intermolt mating in the Lobster (Homarus americanus)

Observation of male‐female pairs of lobsters after 18 days of isolation in the laboratory revealed successful mating in seven of 12 pairs and intense courtship interactions in ten of 12 pairs. These data question previously reported results which suggested that mating in this species is restricted to a 24‐hour post‐molt interval.

The Communicative Development Inventory-WORDS Short Form as an index of language production

This longitudinal study was designed to examine the CDI-WORDS Short Form vocabulary checklist (Reznick & Goldsmith, 1989) as an index of language production. In particular, we were curious about: (1) the concurrent associations between the CDI-WORDS Short Form checklist measure and directly observed measures of lexical production; (2) the associations between Short Form checklists administered at different ages; and (3) the predictive associations between Short Form scores and subsequent measures of more general intellectual abilities (i.e. the Wechlser Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence; WPPSI-R; Wechsler, 1989). In a sample of 32 children, significant correlations were found between CDI-WORDS Short Form scores and directly observed measures of lexical production at both 1;6 and 2;0. Further, both the Short Form checklist and the observed measure of lexical production were found to predict WPPSI-R Verbal IQ scores but not the Performance IQ scores at 4;0. Additional analyses demonstrated the predictive and convergent validity of the CDI-WORDS Short Form, and underscored the additional value of direct observational measures of lexical production during early lexical development.