Divining testimony? The impact of interviewing props on children’s reports of touching

There is a long-held assumption that objects help bridge the gap between what children know and what they can (or are willing to) explain. In this review, we present research on the extent to which two types of objects used as props in investigative interviews of children, anatomical dolls and body (human figure) diagrams, actually help children report accurate information about autobiographical events. We explain why available research does not instill confidence that props are the best solution to interviewing challenges, and we consider practitioners’ and policy-makers responses to this evidence. Finally, we discuss the types of developmental research that are necessary to advance the field of evidence-based interviewing of children.     

The social function of imitation in severe dementia

We report the case of Jessie, an individual with severe Alzheimer's disease. Over two sessions, we examine Jessie's spontaneous conversation behaviour and urge to communicate using the ‘still face’ paradigm. Spontaneous and deliberate imitation are also examined to identify their importance in social interactions in severe dementia. Although Jessie has difficulty producing meaningful conversation, she retains the urge to communicate and participate in social interactions. These results confirm the importance of imitation in facilitating and maintaining people with communication problems in the social world. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Book reviews

Buckley, Key W. (1989). Mechanical man: John Broadeus Watson and the beginnings of Behaviorism. New York: Guilford Press. Pp. 293. ISBN 0-89862-744-3. $32.45/£18.00.

Colgan, P. (1989), Animal Motivation. New York and London: Chapman and Hall. Pp. 168. ISBN 0412-31850. £25.00 (hardback). ISBN 0412-31860, £10.95 (paperback).

Antinucci, F (Ed.) (1989). Cognitive structure and development in nonhuman prinates. Hillsdale, Nj: Laweence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Pp. 266. ISBN 0-8058-0544. £16.50 (Hardback).

Parker, S.T. & Gibson, K.R. (Eds.) (1990). “Language” and intelligence in monkeys and apes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 590. ISBN 0-521-38028-6. £40.00 (hardback).

Ley, Ronald (1990). A whisper of espionnage: Wolfgang Koehler and the apes of Tenerife. Garden City Park, NY: Avery Publoshing Corporation. Pp.264. ISBN 0-89529-432-x. $19.95.     

Word recognition in developmental dyslexia: A connectionist interpretation

We present a study of the accuracy, consistency, and speed of word naming in a dyslexic boy, JM, who has severe impairments in the ability to use sub-lexical, phonological reading strategies. For words that he can recognise, JM's naming latencies do not differ from those of control subjects matched for reading age, and he is generally consistent from one occasion to the next. He can also match printed homophones with their definitions--a skill that requires access to well-specified orthographic representations. The data are interpreted as evidence for the creation of efficient recognition devices for words within JM's sight vocabulary. However, he shows a continuing inability to use phonological decoding strategies to deal with words that he cannot recognize by sight. Overall we argue our results pose problems for stage models of reading development, and that they may best be interpreted within a connectionist framework of the development of word recognition skills.     

Do IRBs Pass the Minimal Harm Test?

ABSTRACT— We describe examples of institutional review board (IRB) actions that have delayed or thwarted research that could not conceivably be considered to pose more than minimal risk to participants. We propose three changes to improve the IRB process and reduce both human and financial costs.     

Applied Research and Zoo Education: The Evolution and Evaluation of a Public Talks Program using Unobtrusive Video Recording of Visitor Behavior

ABSTRACT

The provision of high-quality conservation education has become a priority for modern zoos. This can be delivered in a number of differing ways to account for differences in learning styles and prior knowledge of zoo visitors. At Chester Zoo (United Kingdom), a team of full-time and highly trained interpreters (known as presenters) deliver a diverse public talks program every day of the year. Although these talks attract a large audience, little was understood about their impact on the visitor. As a result, an extensive, unobtrusive study using video recording equipment was undertaken to assess visitor behavior. Results suggest that visitor attentiveness was much higher among those individuals who found themselves in a better viewing position (where they could see the animal and presenter). Visitors who were in poor-visibility positions showed less attention than visitors who were observed under control conditions, without an accompanying talk, indicating a high environmental component to learning potential. When interactive elements were included in a talk (such as an animal feed or enrichment activity) attentiveness was dramatically increased. More crucially, however, was that during talks where there was no interactivity or animals were inactive, attentiveness fell to below control levels, suggesting that heightened visitor expectations created by the anticipation for the talk were not being met—a serious barrier to learning. These findings offer a series of measures that can be taken to improve the educational impact of a zoo talks program whilst, at the same time, providing a better quality experience for zoo visitors.     

Review of the contemporary literature on how children report sexual abuse to others: findings, methodological issues, and implications for forensic interviewers

Methods used during forensic interviews with children are driven by beliefs about how children recall and report child sexual abuse (CSA) to others. Summit (1983) proposed a theory (Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation Syndrome) contending that, due to the specific traumatic characteristics of CSA, children will often delay disclosing abuse or altogether fail to disclose during childhood, deny abuse when asked, and often recant abuse allegations. His theory has had a tremendous impact on the field of CSA forensic evaluations, despite its dearth of empirical support. In this paper, we review and critique the contemporary literature from two main sources: retrospective accounts from adults reporting CSA experiences and studies of children undergoing forensic evaluation for CSA. We conclude that data support the notion that children often delay abuse disclosure, but that among valid abuse cases undergoing forensic evaluation, denial and recantation are not common. Methodological issues and implications for forensic interviewers are discussed.     

“They Go Too Far”: Reply to Review Essays by Lewes and O'Connor

Kenneth Lewes and Noreen O'Connor share little common ground in their discussions of Lesbian Lives. They agree that it represents, in Lewes's words, “important trends in psychoanalysis and more general intellectual discourse” (“the developing discourse on homosexuality, the ascendancy of feminist ideas within psychoanalysis, … the shift … from classical drive theory to … more … relational approaches, and the influence of postmodern social and literary thought”). But whereas O'Connor welcomes a text she sees as offering “critiques of traditional psychoanalysis's binary theorising of gender and sexuality,” Lewes finds that Lesbian Lives presents “certain questions and difficulties, especially to those who, like myself, espouse theoretical and political allegiances quite different from them.” This article responds to several of Lewes's distortions and misreadings, including his allegations that the authors believe they can “conduct therapy without theory or value” and that they “insist on the essential sameness of people who are heterosexual and homosexual.” Lewes also wrongly attributes to the authors a simplistic belief in “sexual fluidity” and the “multiplicity of selves.” Instead, the text of Lesbian Lives in various ways encourages psychoanalysis to incorporate into its developmental models what it has learned clinically about the multiple dimensions of subjective experience.     

Visual representation of malleable and rigid objects that deform as they rotate

Most studies and theories of object recognition have addressed the perception of rigid objects. Yet, physical objects may also move in a nonrigid manner. A series of priming studies examined the conditions under which observers can recognize novel views of objects moving nonrigidly. Observers were primed with 2 views of a rotating object that were linked by apparent motion or presented statically. The apparent malleability of the rotating prime object varied such that the object appeared to be either malleable or rigid. Novel deformed views of malleable objects were primed when falling within the object's motion path. Priming patterns were significantly more restricted for deformed views of rigid objects. These results suggest that moving malleable objects may be represented as continuous events, whereas rigid objects may not. That is, object representations may be "dynamically remapped" during the analysis of the object's motion.