NEW YORK, Oct 22:Teenagers who have parents suffering from alcohol use disorders may be at increased risk for exhibiting abusive dating behaviour, a study warns.
Researchers from University of Buffalo in the US evaluated 144 teenagers who had fathers with an alcohol use disorder and who had been initially recruited for study at 12 months of age.
By analysing data that was collected regularly over the course of their lifespan, researchers identified factors that led to some of the teenagers to be involved in abusive dating relationships.
“It appears that family dynamics occurring in the preschool years and in middle childhood are critical in the development of aggression and dating violence in the teenage years,” said Jennifer A Livingston, at University of Buffalo.
Researchers noted that mothers living with partners who have alcohol use disorder tended to be more depressed and, as a result, were less warm and sensitive in their interactions with their children, beginning in infancy.
“This is significant because children with warm and sensitive mothers are better able to regulate their emotions and behaviour. In addition, there is more marital conflict when there is alcohol addiction,” Livingston said.
These conditions can interfere with children’s abilities to control their own behaviour, resulting in higher levels of aggression in early and middle childhood, researchers said.
They also found that children who are more aggressive in childhood, particularly with their siblings, are more likely to be aggressive with their romantic partners during their teen years.
“Our research suggests the risk for violence can be lessened when parents are able to be more warm and sensitive in their interactions with their children during the toddler years,” Livingston said.
“This in turn can reduce marital conflict and increase the children’s self-control, and ultimately reduce involvement in aggressive behaviour,” she added. (AGENCIES)
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SCIENCE-CARS-DRIVERLESS
Driverless cars may let you choose who survives a crash
LONDON, Oct 22:
Scientists have developed a system that lets users of driverless cars take the moral decision of who should survive a potential car crash.
Previous studies found that most people think a driverless car should be utilitarian, taking actions to minimise the amount of overall harm, which might mean sacrificing its own passengers in certain situations to save lives of pedestrians.
However, while people agreed to this in principle, they also said they would never get in a car that was prepared to kill them.
“We wanted to explore what would happen if the control and the responsibility for a car’s actions were given back to the driver,” said Guiseppe Contissa at the University of Bologna in Italy.
Researchers designed a dial that switches a car’s setting along a spectrum ranging from “full altruist” to “full egoist”, with the middle setting being impartial.
The ethical knob would work not only for self-driving cars, but for all areas of industry that are becoming increasingly autonomous, the ‘New Scientist’ reported.
“The dial will switch a driverless car’s setting from full altruist to full egotist,” Contissa said.
“The knob tells an autonomous car the value that the driver gives to his or her life relative to the lives of others,” Contissa said.
The car would use this information to calculate the actions it will execute, taking into account the probability that the passengers or other parties suffer harm as a consequence of the car’s decision, researchers said. (AGENCIES)
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