Unstable Foundations: Assets Markets, Inflation Targets, and Canada's 2011 Policy Choices

As a 2011 deadline approaches for reform or renewal of the Bank of Canada's inflation-targeting program, questions arise about how the Bank's responsibilities for ensuring the financial system's stability are exercised under such a regime. The current financial crisis underlines the urgency of these issues.monetary policy, Bank of Canada, inflation targeting

Faster, Younger, Richer? The Fond Hope and Sobering Reality of Immigration's Impact on Canada's Demographic and Economic Future

More and younger immigrants cannot, on their own, offset the impact of low past fertility on Canadian workforce growth, old-age dependency, and incomes per person. Later retirement, higher fertility, and faster productivity growth are more powerful tools to ease the stress of demographic change on Canadian living standards.economic growth and innovation, immigration, demographics, aging

Deals on Wheels: An Analysis of the New Federal Auto Feebate

Ottawa's new feebate program to promote fuel efficiency in new cars requires some major retooling.feebates

International Policy Responses to the Financial Crisis: A Canadian Perspective

The relative soundness of the Canadian domestic financial system throughout the crisis suggests that Canada’s regulatory framework does not require a major overhaul. But Canada could benefit if other countries introduced reforms to improve their macroeconomic stability. Other reforms are needed.international policy, monetary policy, Bank of Canada

Give Canadian Workers the Tools to do the Job! Why Canada Needs More Robust Capital Investment

Canadian investment policy

Control of voice gender in pre-pubertal children

Adult listeners are capable of identifying the gender of speakers as young as 4 years old from their voice. In the absence of a clear anatomical dimorphism in the dimensions of pre-pubertal boys' and girls' vocal apparatus, the observed gender differences may reflect children's regulation of their vocal behaviour. A detailed acoustic analysis was conducted of the utterances of 34 6- to 9-year-old children, in their normal voices and also when asked explicitly to speak like a boy or a girl. Results showed statistically significant shifts in fundamental and formant frequency values towards those expected from the sex dimorphism in adult voices. Directions for future research on the role of vocal behaviours in pre-pubertal children's expression of gender are considered

Conversations about mental states and theory of mind development in middle childhood: a training study

Despite 30 years of productive research on theory of mind (ToM), we still know relatively little about variables that influence ToM development during middle childhood. Recent experimental studies have shown that conversations about the mind affect ToM abilities, but they have not explored the mechanisms underlying this developmental effect. In the current study, we examined two potential mechanisms through which conversations about mental states are likely to influence ToM: an increased frequency of references to mental states when explaining behavior and an increased accuracy of mental-state attributions. To this aim, we conducted a training study in which 101 children were assigned to either an intervention condition or a control condition. The conversation-based intervention was made up of four sessions scheduled over 2 weeks. Children completed a battery of assessments before and after the intervention as well as 2 months later. The groups were equivalent at Time 1 (T1) for age, family affluence, vocabulary, and executive functions. The ToM group showed an improvement in ToM skills (as evaluated on both the practiced tasks and a transfer task). Mediation analyses demonstrated that the accuracy of mental-state attributions, but not the mere frequency of mental-state references, mediated the positive effect of conversations about the mind on ToM development. Our results indicate that conversational experience can enhance mental-state reasoning not by simply drawing children’s attention to mental states but rather by scaffolding a mature understanding of social situations