PubMed HealthSearch

Biomedical subjects

A Karmiloff-Smith

Publications and source records attributed to A Karmiloff-Smith.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

Situational factors and thought processes associated with unprotected intercourse in heterosexual students.

Heterosexual students were asked to recall two sexual encounters from the preceding six months: one in which they had unprotected intercourse ('unsafe' encounter) and one in which they resisted a strong temptation to have unprotected intercourse ('safe' encounter). The aims were to record justifications for unprotected intercourse that respondents had given themselves during the unsafe encounter and to identify factors that distinguished between the encounters. In respondents recalling an unsafe encounter (n = 284), the most common self-justification reported was that there was no need for concern since measures to avoid pregnancy had been taken. The first factor that emerged from a Factor Analysis of the self-justification data involved using perceptible characteristics to infer that the partner was unlikely to be infected. Among respondents recalling both encounters (n = 173), there was a trend for type of partner to distinguish between the encounters. With this variable controlled (n = 115), desires, knowledge of condom availability, communication about condom use, degree of boredom, and level of intoxication differentiated between the encounters. The results are discussed in relation to those obtained in our earlier study of gay men.

Adolescent

Constraints on representational change: evidence from children's drawing.

This paper uses children's drawing as clues to general constraints on internal representational change and flexibility. Fifty-four children between 4 and 11 years of age each produced six drawings. They were first asked to draw a house, and then to draw a house that does not exist. The same procedure was used for man and animal. The technique forced children into operating on their normal, efficient drawing procedures, and allowed the researcher to ascertain the types of constraint that obtain on representational change and flexibility. Striking developmental differences emerged between the 4- to 6-year-old age group and the 8- to 10-year-old age group. Changes introduced by the younger children involved deletions and changes in size and shape, whereas older children changed position and orientation of elements and added elements from other conceptual categories, resulting in ever-increasing inter-representational flexibility. Development is accounted for in terms of reiterated cycles of change from internal representations specified as a sequentially fixed list, embodying a constraint that was inherent in the earlier procedural representations, to internal representations specified as a structured, yet flexibly ordered set of manipulable features. The constraints are considered to be general and are compared with work on seriation and number in children, and on phonological awareness and musical ability in adults. The results are integrated into a general model of developmental change which is compatible both with initial modularity and with subsequent domain-general constraints.

Art