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Boys Are Getting Scarce From as far back as the 1600s, more boys have been born than girls (about 105 boys for every 100 girls). But at least in industrial countries, boys may be losing their edge. A research team led by Devra Lee Davis reports that from 1970 to 1999, fewer males than females were born in Japan. The same is true for white males in the U.S. between 1970 and 2002. These findings are consistent with reports of declining sex ratios from other industrial countries. Among U.S. whites, 21 fewer males have been born for every 10,000 births since 1970. (Among U.S. blacks, there has been a slight increase in the ratio of male to female births. But the male/female ratio of black U.S. males has consistently been lower than that of whites with a fetal mortality rate more than double that of whites.) Why might the sex ratio be changing? We all begin as females. If all goes according to plan, between the 6th and 9th week of life, a gene on the Y chromosome causes development to proceed along the male path. If something intervenes, the fetus will be female by default. The authors note that environmental pollutants may cause deviations from this path. For example, dads with high exposure to solvents, lead, and pesticides have fewer sons than those with less exposure. Similarly, moms with high exposure to chemicals such as PCB are less likely to give birth to sons. When such exposures occur before conception they may set the fetus on the path toward femaleness. And male fetuses who survive that round may be miscarried at some later point. The authors note that in industrial countries there seems to be a tendency toward feminization of the fetus. Reduced sperm count, undescended testes, and displacement of the male urinary opening have all been on the rise. All of these stem from prenatal exposure to agents that disrupt the endocrine system. A full account of the falling birth rates for boys awaits further research. However, exposures to environmental chemicals are likely to be involved. It's especially worrisome that these avoidable exposures may take place even before birth. [Source: Davis, D. L., Webster, P., Stainthorpe, H. Chilton, J., Jones, L., & Doi, R. (2007). Environmental Health Perspectives, 115, 941-946.] [RETURN TO INDEX] |
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What's in a Name? How quickly immigrant children are assimilated into a new society can't help but affect their socialization. The ethnicity of our names plays a part in this. Names influence both how we perceive ourselves and how we are perceived by others. The ethnicity of names may also tell us something about a parent's aspirations for their children. For example, an ethnic name may express a parent's desire that a child maintain a strong ethnic identity. A non-ethnic name may reflect a concern for the child's acceptance in the adopted society. To explore some of the influences that may drive name choices, Christina Sue and Edward Telles analyzed the 500 most common names of children born in Los Angeles County in 1995. For many years, this area has absorbed the greatest number of immigrants (mostly Hispanics) to the U.S. Not surprisingly, the more removed the parents were from their Hispanic culture, the less likely they were to choose Spanish names. Thus, Hispanics born in the U.S. chose fewer Spanish names than immigrant Hispanics. But many parents chose a middle course by selecting a name with an English equivalent (e.g., "Miguel"/"Michael"), or one common to both cultures (e.g., "Andrea"). Such choices encourage assimilation while they maintain ethnic ties. The child's gender clearly affected the name choices. While over half the sons of immigrant Hispanics had Spanish names, only a quarter of the daughters did. Similarly, U.S.-born Hispanics gave 20% of their sons but only 8% of their daughters Spanish names. Perhaps parents expect (or hope) that daughters will be assimilated more quickly than sons. But the authors point out that girls are usually named by moms and boys by dads. They note, too, that Hispanic men are more likely than Hispanic women to expect to return to their homeland. This may be an incentive to give boys Spanish names. Moreover, when only one parent was Hispanic, Spanish names were more likely to be chosen when that parent was the dad. This was especially pronounced when the child was a boy. Of course, parents choose children's names for many reasons. Knowing those reasons may tell us something about a parent's aspirations for their children. But these reasons also deserve serious consideration because of their lifelong implications for children. [Source: Sue, C. A., & Telles, E. E. (2007). American Journal of Sociology, 112, 1383-1415.] [RETURN TO INDEX] |
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More than Meets the Eye Studies have shown that from about the age of 6, we tend to remember more of a visual scene than was actually there. Young babies may do this, too. Paul Quinn and Helene Intraub familiarized 3- to 4-month-olds and 6- to 7-month-olds with a colored photo of a teddy bear on a countertop. They then tested the babies with two other photos of the same scene. One included 10% more of the background (wall, counter, etc.) so the bear was a little smaller. The other showed 10% less background, so the bear was a little bigger. At both ages, most babies looked more at the photo with the bigger bear and less background. Since babies tend to look less at things that they perceive as "been there, done that," they seem to have considered the photo with its extended background as the one most like the picture they remembered. Might babies just prefer bigger objects to smaller ones? To rule that out, two other groups were tested. One group was shown just outline drawings of the large and small bear with no background at all. Of the two, they preferred the bigger bear. But when a second group was shown just the original photos of the large versus small bear (backgrounds included), they didn't favor one over the other. Thus, without a background, bigger was better. With a background, it was not. For adults, this "false recognition" only occurs for pictures that show parts of continuing scenes. It's as if the way that we perceive the picture is influenced by our knowledge that the field or room continues beyond what the picture shows. This helps us to imagine the entire view despite the fact that we can only see limited portions of it at a time. Based on their findings, the authors suggest that this same ability may exist in babies. Like adults, even 3-month-olds seem to take into account information that lies outside the visual field. [Source: Quinn, P. C. & Intraub, H. (2007). Child Development, 78, 324-334.] [RETURN TO INDEX] |
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Praising Children According to Stanford University researchers, the way that we praise children may affect how they feel about their later failures. In a pretend game, 4-year-olds were given a puppet "student" to interact with an experimenter's puppet "teacher." As part of the game, the teacher asked the student to draw four objects. After each pretend drawing was completed, the teacher praised either the child's behavior ("You did a good job drawing") or the child's nature ("You are a good drawer"). Children were then asked how much they liked their drawings and how they felt about themselves. The children then completed two more pretend drawings after which the teacher announced that the child had forgotten to include something (e.g., ears). Following these "mistakes" the children were questioned again. Both types of praise were equally rewarding before the mistakes. But after the mistakes, the children who "did a good job drawing" felt differently from the "good drawers." They were more likely to feel happy, to feel that they could draw well, to imagine how to fix the flawed drawing, and to want to draw again. The authors suggest that praising children's traits or aptitudes leads them to believe that some stable part of their core identity is being evaluated. A subsequent mistake would imply that the original evaluation missed the mark. This would leave a child with lowered expectations when facing future challenges. The two statements of praise used in this study are so similar that they are apt to be used interchangeably with children. Yet even 4-year-olds can pick up subtle cues in language that may affect the way they think of their abilities. [Source: Cimpian, A., Arce, H-M. C., Markman, E. M., & Dweck, C. S. (2007). Psychological Science, 18, 314-316.] [RETURN TO INDEX] |
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Of Alcohol and Rodents If human brains respond the way that rat brains do, teenagers and adults may react differently to alcohol. For young teens, the effect may not last as long. Elena Varlinskaya and Linda Spear gave alcohol to rats ranging in age from early adolescence to young adulthood. The researchers were interested in the social behavior of alcohol-injected (AI) rats when they were caged with an unfamiliar rat of the same sex and age. Normally, a rat would sniff the other rat and "play fight" (pounce, chase, etc.). If the alcohol inhibited behavior, these behaviors would be reduced. Five minutes after the injection, the AI rats, regardless of age, engaged in fewer social activities than saline-injected (SI) rats. Thus the alcohol seemed to affect all ages similarly at first. But after 30 minutes, only the older AI rats continued to show restraint. The younger adolescents seemed to lose their inhibition; they became just as interactive as the SI rats. It was not that the alcohol had a smaller physiological influence on the younger rats. Among another group of AI rats, both the brain concentration and the blood concentration of alcohol after both intervals were the same for younger and older rats. It was just that the rats in early adolescence rebounded more easily. In spite of the high concentration of alcohol in their brains, their behavior rapidly returned to normal. The amount of alcohol used was chosen to represent a level similar to binge drinking in humans. To the extent that these findings can be applied to human teens, the results are worrisome. Many teens begin drinking during early adolescence. If their social inhibitions are short-lived, they have one less warning sign that they have reached their limit. [Source: Varlinskaya, E. I., & Spear, L. P. (2006). Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 30, 1833-1844.] [RETURN TO INDEX] |
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A Little Tease Teasing can send mixed messages. Close friends or romantic partners may tease as a playful way to express intimacy or to share an inside joke. But teasing can also be hostile. Researchers led by Belinda Campos reasoned that culture may play a role in how teasing is viewed. They compared Asian Americans (AA), whose culture emphasizes harmonious group relations over self-interest and European Americans (EA), whose culture emphasizes the importance of the individual. When college students recorded their reactions to being teased, AA students were more likely than EA students to view the teasing as good-natured. EA males were especially sensitive to teasing. They were most likely to take offense when targeted and least likely to join the laughter that followed. And when couples of the same ethnicity were asked to create a nickname for their partners, AA couples were more likely than EA couples to view the nickname as a form of shared intimacy. Again, it was the EA men who were least likely to believe that a nickname was meant to express intimacy. When a nickname was softened by qualifiers (e.g., flattery or comments such as "just kidding"), EA students felt better about the teasing. But AA students had the opposite response; they seemed to feel that the qualifiers reduced the intimacy component. In yet another study, students recalled the childhood nicknames given to them by their families. The nicknames of the AA and EA students were equally affectionate but those of the AA students were more critical. The authors believe that their findings make sense in the light of cultural differences. In cultures that stress self-interest and independence, individuals are more likely to perceive teasing as threatening their self-image. In those that stress community relations, individuals are apt to be more accepting of criticism and more tuned in to the enhanced closeness that teasing may bring. [Source: Campos, B., Keltner, D., Beck, J. M., Gonzaga, G. C., & John, O. P. (2007). Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33, 3-16.] [RETURN TO INDEX] |
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