Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The paper tests hypotheses of how costs to collective action affect how networks of actors press for institutional change over long periods of time.

Publication Type: Individual Poster
Abstract: Recent research has established that imitation is an effective mechanism for preverbal infants to learn cause-effect behaviors (e.g. Meltzoff, 1995), and our prior work has shown that 14- to 16-month-old infants can even transfer object-related skills learned by imitation to new objects (Bushnell & Sidman, 2002; Yang & Bushnell, 2005). However, in the elicited imitation and transfer paradigms, it is not clear whether infants understand the actions as causes which produce the effects, or whether they merely learn the actions as affordances of the stimulus objects. Our aim in the current study is to examine this issue within the contexts of both imitation and transfer.

Thirty-two 15-month infants participated, 16 in an imitation paradigm and 16 in a transfer paradigm. In the imitation procedure, the experimenter demonstrated two toys one after the other. The toys were identical except that one had a handle the experimenter pressed down and the other had a different handle that she pulled out. For each infant, one of these actions yielded an exciting effect, while the other action had no consequence. After each demonstration, infants were given a turn to produce the corresponding action with the toy. Following these learning trials, a test toy was offered to the baby without any demonstration. This toy was identical to the demonstration toys except that it had both the pressing and the pulling handles, and thus offered the baby a choice of actions. The procedure for infants in the transfer paradigm was identical except that the two-handled test toy was different in appearance from the demonstration toys.

In the imitation paradigm, 12 of the 15 infants who manipulated the test toy produced the action which had been effective during the learning trials first, while just 3 produced the ineffective action first (binomial p=.035). However in the transfer paradigm, infants did not selectively produce the “working” action first; 8 did it first while 5 did the “broken” action first. Similarly, infants produced the “working” action faster than the “broken” action in the imitation paradigm but not in the transfer paradigm (group x action interaction p = .09), and infants also persisted with the “working” handle longer than with the “broken” handle in imitation, but not in transfer (group x action interaction p < .05).

The results suggest that infants understand a demonstrated action as causal within the context of a particular object. However, they evidently do not expect this action to also be effective with a novel object. Thus, infants may construe causes as highly specific to individual objects, and the transfer we have observed in earlier studies may be mediated by learned affordances of the handles or by the development of motor attractors rather than by causal expectations.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Prior research intimates that religion may prompt some political behaviors. The current study examined political action in two different datasets of older adults between the ages of 54 and 94. Measures of religiousness and religious denomination were used to predict a multiple item measure of current political activity in a sample of 15,149 participants of different religious denominations from twenty­two European countries and the United States. Parallel analyses were conducted in a smaller dataset of 189 (mostly Protestant) participants from California assessing lifetime political activity. Regression analyses suggest that across both datasets, religious denomination moderates the influence of religiousness on political action. In reporting current political action, religious Protestants reported the greatest amount of political action, while religious Jews and Other Christians reported the least. Moreover, only Protestants reported more political activity as religiousness increased. In reporting lifetime political action, religious individuals with No Affiliation reported the greatest amount of political activity, followed by Other Christians and Protestants, while religious Roman Catholics reported the least. Implications are discussed for future research highlighting the intersection of politics and religion.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Does arguing matter in the practice of International Politics? This paper examines the application of Habermas' communicative action (CA) to international politics in three different ways. First, it examines the normative foundations that underlie the norm transformation CA is suppose to illicit. Second, it examines the plausability of what Thomas Risse calls the "metatheoretical assumptions" that CA theorists must make in order to apply CA to international politics. Third, it problematizes the mechanism of CA itself by arguing that most political decisions in international politics are value incommensurable, making rationality incapable of changing agent's "minds" when making political decisions.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper seeks to analyze the changing repertoires and strategies employed by transnational environmental social movement organizations (TESMOs) to engage and communicate with actors and segments within what Thomas Olesen has termed 'transnational publ