The Experts below are selected from a list of 45 Experts worldwide ranked by ideXlab platform
Ton G. G. Groothuis - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Developmental perspectives on personality: implications for ecological and evolutionary studies of individual differences
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 2010Co-Authors: Judy A. Stamps, Ton G. G. GroothuisAbstract:Developmental processes can have major impacts on the correlations in behaviour across contexts (contextual generality) and across time (temporal consistency) that are the hallmarks of animal personality. Personality can and does change: at any given age or life stage it is contingent upon a wide range of experiential factors that occurred earlier in life, from prior to conception through adulthood. We show how developmental reaction norms that describe the effects of prior experience on a given behaviour can be used to determine whether the effects of a given experience at a given age will affect contextual generality at a later age, and to illustrate how variation within individuals in developmental plasticity leads to variation in contextual generality across individuals as a function of experience. We also show why Niche-Picking and Niche-construction, behavioural processes which allow individuals to affect their own developmental environment, can affect the contextual generality and the temporal consistency of personality. We conclude by discussing how an appreciation of developmental processes can alert behavioural ecologists studying animal personality to critical, untested assumptions that underlie their own research programmes, and outline situations in which a developmental perspective can improve studies of the functional significance and evolution of animal personality.
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the development of animal personality relevance concepts and perspectives
Biological Reviews, 2010Co-Authors: Judy A. Stamps, Ton G. G. GroothuisAbstract:Recent studies of animal personality have focused on its proximate causation and its ecological and evolutionary significance, but have mostly ignored questions about its development, although an understanding of the latter is highly relevant to these other questions. One possible reason for this neglect is confusion about many of the concepts and terms that are necessary to study the development of animal personality. Here, we provide a framework for studying personality development that focuses on the properties of animal personality, and considers how and why these properties may change over time. We specifically focus on three dimensions of personality: (1) contextual generality at a given age or time, (2) temporal consistency in behavioural traits and in relationships between traits, and (3) the effects of genes and experience on the development of personality at a given age or life stage. We advocate using a new approach, contextual reaction norms, to study the contextual generality of personality traits at the level of groups, individuals and genotypes, show how concepts and terms borrowed from the literature on personality development in humans can be used to study temporal changes in personality at the level of groups and individuals, and demonstrate how classical developmental reaction norms can provide insights into the ways that genes and experiential factors interact across ontogeny to affect the expression of personality traits. In addition, we discuss how correlations between the effects of genes and experience on personality development can arise as a function of individuals' control over their own environment, via Niche-Picking or Niche-construction. Using this framework, we discuss several widely held assumptions about animal personality development that still await validation, identify neglected methodological issues, and describe a number of promising new avenues for future research.
Chandra Muller - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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body mass index academic achievement and school context examining the educational experiences of adolescents at risk of obesity
Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 2004Co-Authors: Robert Crosnoe, Chandra MullerAbstract:Reflected self-appraisal suggests that individual functioning is related to the fit between individual characteristics and the norms of their primary contexts. To apply this social psychological concept to the study of obesity, we hypothesized that adolescents at risk of obesity would have lower academic achievement overall than other students, especially in schools in which their weight status was most likely to elicit negative evaluations. Multi-level modeling of nationally representative data revealed that the negative longitudinal association between risk of obesity and achievement was stronger in schools with higher rates of romantic activity and lower average body size among students, two school contexts in which obesity was likely to be stigmatized, but weaker in schools with higher rates of athletic participation, a school context in which such stigmatization was also likely. Additional analyses suggested that this last, unexpected finding reflected a process of Niche-Picking.
Judy A. Stamps - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Developmental perspectives on personality: implications for ecological and evolutionary studies of individual differences
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 2010Co-Authors: Judy A. Stamps, Ton G. G. GroothuisAbstract:Developmental processes can have major impacts on the correlations in behaviour across contexts (contextual generality) and across time (temporal consistency) that are the hallmarks of animal personality. Personality can and does change: at any given age or life stage it is contingent upon a wide range of experiential factors that occurred earlier in life, from prior to conception through adulthood. We show how developmental reaction norms that describe the effects of prior experience on a given behaviour can be used to determine whether the effects of a given experience at a given age will affect contextual generality at a later age, and to illustrate how variation within individuals in developmental plasticity leads to variation in contextual generality across individuals as a function of experience. We also show why Niche-Picking and Niche-construction, behavioural processes which allow individuals to affect their own developmental environment, can affect the contextual generality and the temporal consistency of personality. We conclude by discussing how an appreciation of developmental processes can alert behavioural ecologists studying animal personality to critical, untested assumptions that underlie their own research programmes, and outline situations in which a developmental perspective can improve studies of the functional significance and evolution of animal personality.
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the development of animal personality relevance concepts and perspectives
Biological Reviews, 2010Co-Authors: Judy A. Stamps, Ton G. G. GroothuisAbstract:Recent studies of animal personality have focused on its proximate causation and its ecological and evolutionary significance, but have mostly ignored questions about its development, although an understanding of the latter is highly relevant to these other questions. One possible reason for this neglect is confusion about many of the concepts and terms that are necessary to study the development of animal personality. Here, we provide a framework for studying personality development that focuses on the properties of animal personality, and considers how and why these properties may change over time. We specifically focus on three dimensions of personality: (1) contextual generality at a given age or time, (2) temporal consistency in behavioural traits and in relationships between traits, and (3) the effects of genes and experience on the development of personality at a given age or life stage. We advocate using a new approach, contextual reaction norms, to study the contextual generality of personality traits at the level of groups, individuals and genotypes, show how concepts and terms borrowed from the literature on personality development in humans can be used to study temporal changes in personality at the level of groups and individuals, and demonstrate how classical developmental reaction norms can provide insights into the ways that genes and experiential factors interact across ontogeny to affect the expression of personality traits. In addition, we discuss how correlations between the effects of genes and experience on personality development can arise as a function of individuals' control over their own environment, via Niche-Picking or Niche-construction. Using this framework, we discuss several widely held assumptions about animal personality development that still await validation, identify neglected methodological issues, and describe a number of promising new avenues for future research.
Robert Crosnoe - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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body mass index academic achievement and school context examining the educational experiences of adolescents at risk of obesity
Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 2004Co-Authors: Robert Crosnoe, Chandra MullerAbstract:Reflected self-appraisal suggests that individual functioning is related to the fit between individual characteristics and the norms of their primary contexts. To apply this social psychological concept to the study of obesity, we hypothesized that adolescents at risk of obesity would have lower academic achievement overall than other students, especially in schools in which their weight status was most likely to elicit negative evaluations. Multi-level modeling of nationally representative data revealed that the negative longitudinal association between risk of obesity and achievement was stronger in schools with higher rates of romantic activity and lower average body size among students, two school contexts in which obesity was likely to be stigmatized, but weaker in schools with higher rates of athletic participation, a school context in which such stigmatization was also likely. Additional analyses suggested that this last, unexpected finding reflected a process of Niche-Picking.
Hugh Mehan - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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race and reform educational Niche Picking in a hostile environment
Journal of Negro Education, 1999Co-Authors: Lea Hubbard, Hugh MehanAbstract:Historically, racist attitudes and policies among officials and citizens in the United States have influenced the effectiveness of educational reform efforts. Given that reality, this article describes an implementation of the Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) program within a broad sociopolitical context that includes a community's beliefs about intelligence, race, and academic achievement. AVID, designed to help low-income and minority high school students attend college; challenged this community's fundamental beliefs about academic success and subsequently met resistance from educators and community members who believed that intelligence is fixed and racially based. A case study approach was taken to explore how racism shapes educational reform in the local context and to identify ways to reverse its negative effects. In recent years, school reform efforts have focused increasingly on the strategies that educators in districts or schools have deployed to renew and improve their schools. Notable among these reform efforts are the Accelerated Schools program (Levin, 1987), the Comer School Development Program (Comer, 1980, 1988, 1997), and the Coalition of Essential Schools (Sizer 1992), which have been adopted and implemented throughout the country. These organizational development models emerged as antidotes to top-down models of school reform that were criticized for being insensitive to the obstacles and constraints facing teachers attempting to implement educational reforms. These models are heuristic because they show how educational innovations are negotiated in the practical, nitty-gritty details of daily life in schools. However, because their focus is on schoollevel strategies for self-renewal and improvement, they downplay the actions that initiated reform and the governmental, community, and district actions that occurred away from and before the school attempted rejuvenation and renewal (Datnow, Hubbard, & Mehan, 1999). Experts have called for locally adapted change that is sensitive to local education practice and context (Elmore, 1996; Elmore & McLaughlin, 1988; Fullan & Hargreaves, 1996; McLaughlin, 1990). As Goodman (1995) stated: What is most important [if we are to be truly transformative in schooling] ... is the recognition that school restructuring efforts be built upon an open discourse regarding the type of culture we wish to build and the relationship between schooling and this future society. (p. 7) Reform agents point out that efforts fail when they do not fully address the context in which the school is located or when they ignore the culture of the school (Sarason, 1996). Schools are political domains; therefore attention must be paid to the power that is embedded in all relationships that unfold therein (Datnow, 1998; Fullan, 1991; Giroux & McLaren, 1986; Hargreaves, 1994). The implementation of reform efforts is a conditional process in which the consequences of actions taken in one context may become the conditions for actions in another (Datnow et al., 1999; Hall & McGinty, 1997). On the one hand, in their exuberance to present the rich details of educational change in local contexts, educational researchers must not lose sight of the importance of actions taken in sociopolitical contexts that exist at a distance to the school. On the other hand, they cannot be content to treat sociopolitical factors as disembodied forces. The enactment of these factors in social interaction must be revealed and explained. In this article, we describe the implementation of a reform model aimed at improving the academic opportunity of African American youth in a community in a southern state. The purpose of this research is threefold: (a) to describe more fully the process by which this school implemented, incorporated, and enacted a reform design that was developed externally; (b) to explore more fully the dynamic relationship among structural constraints, cultural arrangements, and people's actions in the context of this school reform effort; and (c) to illustrate how cultural beliefs about race and intelligence become structural constraints impinging on educational reform. …