Nonexpert Evaluations on Architectural Design Creativity Across Cultures

This article examines the relationship between cultural differences and the nonexpert evaluations of architectural design creativity. In study I, Caucasian Americans (N = 126) and East Asians (N = 137), who did not major in architecture and urban design, evaluated the novelty and appropriateness of 5 unusual architectural shapes, selected by 5 experts in the field of architecture. In study II, the 2 cultural groups selected preferred alternatives from 3 pairs of silhouettes of architectural shapes that were distinctive and indistinctive from the adjacent environments. The data were collected by an online survey tool. Multiple analysis of variance (MANOVA) and subsequent t-tests revealed that East Asians awarded lower scores as regards the novelty and appropriateness of unusual, novel architectural forms, and that they accepted unusual and distinctive architectural shapes less than the Caucasian Americans did. These results indicated that cultural differences between these 2 groups affected the nonexpert creativity evaluations, as introduced in previous cross-cultural studies. The East Asians’ creativity evaluations and preference tests were possibly influenced by their perceptions of contextual information and emphasis on the holistic and interdependent relationships amongst environmental elements, whereas the Caucasian Americans’ evaluations were related to their analytic tendency to be aware of focal objects and independent identity.     

Externalizing behaviors and attachment disorganization in children of different‐sex separated parents: The protective role of joint physical custody

The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between externalizing behaviors and the quality of attachment representations in preschool children, and to determine if family type and custody arrangement had a moderating effect on this relationship. The participants were 33 girls and 31 boys (n = 64) aged between three and six years (M = 4.75; SD = 0.87 years) and their mothers. Among them, 36 came from “intact” families, 13 were living mainly with their mothers and 15 were in joint physical custody. Children’s attachment representations were assessed with the Attachment Story Completion Task (Bretherton, Ridgeway & Cassidy, 1990). Mothers reported on their child’s behavior problems using the Child Behavior Checklist (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2001) and on their alliance with the father using the Parenting Alliance Inventory (Abidin & Brunner, 1995). Although children’s externalizing behaviors were found to be associated with the disorganization of their attachment representations, this relationship was significantly weaker and was non‐significant for children in joint physical custody. Thus, the results of this pilot study suggest that joint custody may protect children of separated parents from the effects of attachment disorganization on externalizing behaviors.     

Mental Disorders in Children and Parents in Family Law Proceedings: Cases on Child Protection Matters Versus Child Custody and Visitation Issues

Psychologists can contribute considerably to decision making in family law proceedings. The mental health of the parents and the children forms an important factor in psychological evaluation. It is the overall aim of this study to specifically examine the occurrence of mental disorders in evaluated family members in cases of termination of parental rights as opposed to cases of child custody and visitation rights. This data are based on 297 psychological evaluations completed between 2008 and 2012 at an evaluator association in Bremen, Germany. In this retrospective content analysis, evaluation reports were examined for indications of mental disorders in children, mothers and fathers. The data were assessed in bivariate analyses and logistic regression models. A total rate above 39 % indicates a comparatively high exposure to mental disorders of children and adolescents in this sample. A mental disorder of the mother and a mental disorder of the father occur significantly more often in cases of termination of parental rights than in cases of child custody/visitation rights. Children and adolescents who showed aggressive-dissocial behavior and aggressive-oppositional behavior were significantly more likely to be evaluated in legal issues of termination of parental rights as opposed to child custody/visitation rights. Restrictions in parental mental health and parenting capacity should be carefully weighed against restrictions in the mental health of the children and their developmental needs when conducting psychological evaluation.     

Psychological tests used in child custody evaluations

Controversy has long surrounded the use of psychological testing in child custody evaluations. The present study explored the current status of psychological testing in these evaluations using a national survey of 198 psychologists. Findings revealed that participants viewed testing as one source among many for data collection, neither under- nor over-valuing its importance. Results also indicated that participants were more discriminating in their test selection, with a greater focus on objective assessment, particularly in the use of parent inventories and rating scales. These findings tend to negate much of the past criticism and reflect closer adherence to APA guidelines.     

Tell Me What I Wanted to Hear: Confirmation Effect in Lay Evaluations of Financial Expert Authority

In real life, people engage in interactive decision processes by consulting with experts. However, before taking advice, they must recognise the authority of an expert to assess the quality of the advice. The main goal of this research was to investigate how the confirmation effect affects lay evaluations of the epistemic authority of financial experts. Experiment 1 showed that lay people tend to ascribe greater epistemic authority to those experts whose advice confirms people's opinions, both measured and manipulated. Experiment 2 revealed that when participants' own opinions are not salient, people tend to evaluate experts' authority as higher when their advice confirms social norms. In Experiment 3 we jointly investigated the effects of participants' own opinions and social norms on the evaluations of authority. When both sources of expertise were made salient, decision‐makers favoured advice confirming their own beliefs and used it to evaluate experts' authority. Three interpretations of the role confirmation plays in the experts' authority evaluations are proposed: (1) self‐defensive strategies; (2) processing fluency; and (3) psychological consequences of naïve realism. The paper discusses practical implications of the results. We propose that increasing consumers' knowledge about biases might protect their evaluations of financial advice from being susceptible to the confirmation effect.     

MMPI-2 and MCMI-III characteristics of parental competency examinees

The MMPI-2 (Butcher et al., 2001) and the MCMI-III (Millon, Davis, & Millon, 1997) may contribute to understanding psychological functioning in parental competency examinees. In this study, we sought to identify MMPI-2 and MCMI-III characteristics of this population. We collected data regarding 127 individuals who underwent court-ordered parental competency evaluations. Although test results were generally consistent with findings from the child custody literature, MMPI-2 results indicated the highest Validity scale elevation on the L scale in contrast to the K scale elevations that have often been reported in the custody literature.     

Association between quality of life of adolescents with type 1 diabetes and parents’ illness perception as evaluated by adolescents

Children and adolescents account for half of all cases of type 1 diabetes, which is one of the most common pediatric chronic diseases. The disease’s effects and the treatment/disease-management protocols patients must follow can lead to a marked deterioration in quality of life, especially for adolescents. Patients’ illness perceptions have been shown to impact their quality of life, but do other people’s illness perceptions also have an effect? The present study addressed this question by investigating possible links between the quality of life of adolescent patients with type 1 diabetes and illness perceptions, measured in terms of the adolescents’ self-perceptions, parents’ self-perceptions, and the adolescents’ evaluations of their parents’ perceptions. We asked 41 adolescents (M = 13.9 years; SD = 1.9) who had been undergoing treatment for type 1 diabetes for at least a year (M = 6.6 years; SD = 3.7) to complete the Diabetes Quality of Life for Youth Questionnaire-Short Form (DQOLY-SF) and the Illness Perception Questionnaire-Revised (IPQ-R). They completed the IPQ-R twice, once to state their own opinions (self-report) and once to give their evaluations of their parents’ perceptions. At the same time, but in a different room, their parents (N = 47) completed the IPQ-R (self-report). Quality of life was predicted by gender (p < .05) and by the parents’ emotional representations (p < .01) and perceptions of consequences (p < .01) as evaluated by the adolescents. This new approach provides new insights into the impact of parents’ perceptions on the quality of life of adolescents with type 1 diabetes.     

The child custody evaluation: Issues and trends

Custody disputes are often the crisis point in the divorcing process and the numbers of contested custody cases are increasing. Mental health professionals are being called upon to provide evaluations of these families more frequently than ever. This article focuses on how to perform child custody evaluations. It touches on the highly troublesome cases where accusations of abuse and alcoholism have been made, and how to convey to attorneys the findings of an evaluation. It begins by reviewing developments in child custody law and concludes by addressing the problems between behavioral sciences and the law in these stressful cases. The presentation of clinical examples provides a view of the decision making process, while addressing the contextual setting for these cases as well.     

Images behind bars: The evaluation of a phototherapeutic intervention in prison

This article follows a previous study that has been published in Narrare i Gruppi and that described an intervention using photographic techniques within treatment programs addressed to inmates. The aim of the treatment was promoting inmates' re-socialization and re-education. Photography and other creative media have been reported to promote emotional intelligence (EI) and reduce recidivism among inmates. We hypothesized that the use of photography may increase the inmates' EI and promote their well-being. This study reports on the efficacy of a 10-session phototherapeutic intervention (called Talking Pictures Group Intervention) with two different categories of inmates (minimum custody and protective custody inmates) in terms of enhancing EI skills, reducing depression, and increasing the ability to cope with trauma. Results show an increase in EI in the minimum custody group while depression symptoms are found to increase in the protective custody group, possibly as a result of a greater awareness of their condition. The ability to cope with trauma remains unvaried before and after the intervention.     

Hedonic Evaluation over Short and Long Retention Intervals: The Mechanism of the Peak–End Rule

The peak–end rule is used to explain how people make retrospective hedonic evaluations. This study advances our understanding of its mechanism by identifying the different effects of the rule on such evaluations over short and long retention intervals. The results of two experiments show that (i) respondents constructed their retrospective hedonic evaluations on the basis of the peak and end affects only over a short retention interval, not over a long one; and (ii) respondents relied on episodic information to construct their evaluations over a short retention interval, whereas they relied on both semantic and episodic information to construct their evaluations over a long retention interval. Our study also suggests that the “watershed” between short and long retention intervals is likely to lie between 3 and 7 weeks. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Hostile/Helpless maternal representations in pregnancy and later child removal: A pilot study

This article presents the results of a small pilot study examining links between Hostile/Helpless (HH) representations of caregiving in pregnancy and later child removal by child protective services. The sample was drawn from a replication study of the Minding the Baby^® attachment‐based home‐visiting intervention conducted in the United Kingdom, serving young first‐time mothers in under resourced communities. The HH classification system (Lyons‐Ruth et al.) was adapted for use with the Pregnancy Interview (PI) (Slade); 26 PIs were assessed (coders blinded) in a sample that included 13 mothers whose infants were removed from custody due to anticipated or documented maltreatment within 2 years of childbirth, and 13 mothers who did not have their infants removed. Mothers whose infants were removed from their custody had significantly higher HH scores than mothers of infants who were not removed from their care (F(1, 24) = 14.500, p < .001), and the relation between overall HH classification and infant removal status was also significant (χ²(1, N = 26) = 12.462, p < .001). Results suggest that prenatal maternal caregiving representations may predict postnatal relationship disruptions, and indicate the need for larger studies further testing this prenatal approach to maltreatment risk assessment in at‐risk populations.     

The Influence of Feedback and Expert Status in Knowledge Sharing Dilemmas

Groups and organisations set cooperative goals for their members, yet in reality some team members contribute more than others to these goals. Experts, in particular, face a social dilemma: from the group's perspective they should share their knowledge, whereas individually they are better off not sharing, because acquiring knowledge is costly and they would give up a competitive advantage. Two experiments (N₁ = 96, N₂ = 192) tested the hypothesis, derived from indirect reciprocity theory, that experts contribute more if their status is being recognised. Expert status was manipulated under different performance feedback conditions and the impact on people's contributions in two different knowledge sharing tasks was analysed. In both studies, experts contributed more when feedback was individualised and public, ensuring both individual status rewards and public recognition. In contrast, novices contributed more when performance feedback was collective, regardless of whether it was public or private feedback. Novices did not have to fear negative performance evaluations under group feedback and could gain in social status as members of a successful group. Social value orientation moderated expert contributions in Study 2, with proself‐oriented experts being particularly susceptible to reputation gains. The studies contribute to the neglected aspect of motivation in knowledge sharing dilemmas where collective and individual interests are not necessarily aligned.     

Mediation in custody disputes

This article summarizes the results of an evaluation of mediation services in three court-based programs. Among the issues considered are client evaluations of the mediation experience and their assessments of immediate and long-term effects. Two comparison groups are utilized: parents who contested custody without the offer of court-based mediation and parents who divorced but did not contest custody. Results of the research indicate that mediation provides a valuable compliment to the existing domestic relations court processes. Mediation enjoys high user satisfaction and helps promote compliance with the agreement, a sense of equity, and continued cooperation. Thus, while the expectations of the process should not be overstated, it appears that even a brief mediation with a troubled population can produce modest but positive benefits.     

Evaluations Versus Expectations: Children's Divergent Beliefs About Resource Distribution

Past research reveals a tension between children's preferences for egalitarianism and ingroup favoritism when distributing resources to others. Here we investigate how children's evaluations and expectations of others' behaviors compare. Four‐ to 10‐year‐old children viewed events where individuals from two different groups distributed resources to their own group, to the other group, or equally across groups. Groups were described within a context of intergroup competition over scarce resources. In the Evaluation condition, children were asked to evaluate which resource distribution actions were nicer. In the Expectation condition, children were asked to predict which events were more likely to occur. With age, children's evaluations and expectations of others' actions diverged: Children evaluated egalitarian actions as nicer yet expected others to behave in ways that benefit their own group. Thus, children's evaluations about the way human social actors should behave do not mirror their expectations concerning those individuals' actions.     

Children’s Evaluation and Categorization of Transgender Children

Despite extant evidence of negative peer treatment of transgender adolescents and adults, little is known about how young children perceive transgender peers, particularly those who have socially transitioned or are living in line with their gender rather than sex at birth. Whereas children have been shown to be averse to gender nonconformity in peers, because many transgender children appear and behave in ways consistent with their expressed gender (but not their sex at birth), it is unclear how children evaluate these identities. In 2 studies, we investigated 5- to 10-year-old children’s (N_total = 113) preferences for transgender versus gender-“typical” peers who either shared their gender identity or did not. We also examined whether children categorized transgender peers by their sex or expressed gender, as it might inform their evaluations. Children preferred cisgender peers over transgender peers; however, they also liked peers of their own gender rather than the other gender (e.g., female participants preferred girls over boys), demonstrating that the oft-documented own-gender bias plays an important role even when children are reasoning about transgender peers. Children did not reliably categorize transgender peers by sex or gender; yet those who categorized transgender peers by their sex showed greater dislike of transgender peers. The current studies are the first to investigate cisgender children’s attitudes toward transgender children and suggest that perceptions of gender categorization and conformity play a role in children’s evaluations of transgender peers.     

Review of Instruments Assessing Parenting Competencies used in Child Custody Evaluations

The following instruments of parenting capacity that are currently used in child custody evaluations are reviewed: The Ackerman–Schoendorf Scales for Parent Evaluation of Custody (ASPECT), the Bricklin Perceptual Scales and Perception of Relationships Test, the Child Abuse Potential Inventory, the Parent–Child Relationship Inventory, and the Parenting Stress Index. Each instrument is described, as well as research on the measure's norms, reliability, validity, and generalizability. The measures are discussed with regard to their approach in assessing parental effectiveness and principles of test construction.     

MMPI-2 Findings of Primitive Defenses in Alienating Parents

To test the involvement of primitive defenses in Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), we collected 158 MMPI-2s from court ordered custody evaluations from 7 forensic psychology practices; 76 were PAS cases and 82 were custody cases without PAS (controls). We used two MMPI-2 indexes to measure primitive defenses: L + K ? F and (L + Pa + Sc) ? (Hy + Pt). We found that mothers and fathers who were alienators had higher (clinical range) scores indicating primitive defenses such as splitting and projective identification, than control mothers and fathers (normal range scores) in both our indexes. Target parents were mostly similar to the control parents. The results showed strong support for Gardner's definition of PAS.     

Residential mental health assessment within Dutch criminal cases: a discussion

In Dutch criminal cases in which doubts arise about the defendant's mental health, a forensic assessment will be requested. This is provided either by the multidisciplinary staff of residential clinics who conduct forensic evaluations for the court, or by mental health professionals contracted on a part-time basis by district courts. This article discusses the procedures applied in such cases as well as the relevant legal provisions. It focuses particularly on the clinical observation, evaluation, and reporting that is carried out over a number of weeks in the residential setting of the Pieter Baan Centrum. Specific attention is paid to procedures applied in this clinic. It is suggested that Dutch procedures for the use of mental health expertise can best be characterized by three aspects: multidisciplinary observation and reporting, the use of a sliding scale for indicating degree of responsibility, and, finally, the involvement and payment of experts by the state as such, rather than by the prosecution and/or the defense. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.