Risk,Protection, and Adjustment among Youth with Incarcerated and Non-Resident Parents: A Mixed-Methods Study

Parental incarceration has been increasingly recognized as a significant threat to the development and well-being of millions of American children and youth. After decades of documenting problems among youth with incarcerated parents, researchers have now started to emphasize the critical need for research on heterogeneity and competence in this population. Towards this end, we used a mixed-methods approach to identify different subgroups of youth with incarcerated and non-resident parents (n?=?26) and to explore potential patterns of individual and family factors across groups. Cluster analysis suggested four different subgroups of youth that varied in the extent to which they exhibited behavior problems and competence. The majority of youth were classified as “adjusted” or “striving”, with comparatively few categorized as either “thriving” or “vulnerable”. Thematic analysis of qualitative data suggested that groups varied in terms of the extent to which they experienced economic and residential instability and challenges related to their social location, as well as caregiver positive expressiveness, agency, and social support. Results further indicated that although parental incarceration may be a part of an overall profile of risk, it does not appear to consistently distinguish youth separated from parents for different reasons in terms of patterns of adjustment and competence.     

The Limits of Adverbialism about Intentionality

Kriegel has recently developed (but not fully endorsed) an adverbial account of intentionality, in part to solve the problem of how we can think of non-existents. The view has real virtues: it endorses a non-relational (internalist) conception of intentionality and is ontologically conservative. Alas, the view ultimately cannot replace the act-object model of intentionality that it seeks to, because it depends on the act-object model for its intelligibility at key points. It thus fails as a revisionistic theory. I argue that the virtues of adverbialism can be had from within the act-object framework, provided we understand intentional objects correctly. I use Crane as a guide here, and build on his work on intentional objects. In the end, we can provide a suitable solution to the problem of thinking of non-existents within the act-object framework without adopting implausible ontological or metaphysical views. So, adverbialism is neither a possible stand-alone revisionary option nor a needed modification of the common-sense act-object framework of intentionality.     

Straw Men,Iron Men,and Argumentative Virtue

The straw man fallacy consists in inappropriately constructing or selecting weak (or comparatively weaker) versions of the opposition’s arguments. We will survey the three forms of straw men recognized in the literature, the straw, weak, and hollow man. We will then make the case that there are examples of inappropriately reconstructing stronger versions of the opposition’s arguments. Such cases we will call iron man fallacies. The difference between appropriate and inappropriate iron manning clarifies the limits of the virtue of open-mindedness.     

DEVELOPMENT AND PSYCHOMETRIC EVALUATION OF THE INTERPERSONAL SEXUAL OBJECTIFICATION SCALE

This study reports on the development and psychometric evaluation of the Interpersonal Sexual Objectification Scale (ISOS). Data from 576 college women were collected in three studies. Exploratory factor analysis uncovered two factors: Body Evaluation and Unwanted Explicit Sexual Advances; confirmatory factor analysis supported this factor structure. ISOS scores were internally consistent and stable over a 3-week period. Supporting its construct validity, ISOS scores were (a) strongly related to sexist degradation; (b) slightly to moderately related to other sexist events, self-objectification (i.e., body surveillance and internalization of the thin-ideal), and body shame; and (c) unrelated to socially desirable responding. The relationship between ISOS scores and body shame was fully mediated by self-objectification, providing additional evidence for its construct validity. Furthermore, the ISOS garnered incremental validity, as it predicted self-objectification above and beyond the variance accounted for by sexist events.     

Posttraumatic stress disorder and physical health symptoms among women seeking help for relationship aggression.

This study examined associations between intimate partner aggression and physical health symptoms among a sample of help-seeking women experiencing relationship aggression (N = 388). Using a structural equation modeling framework, the authors found posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms to fully mediate the associations of both physical and psychological aggression with physical health symptoms. The influence of PTSD symptoms on physical health symptoms was partially mediated by anger/irritability. Results were consistent with studies from other trauma groups suggesting that PTSD is pivotal with respect to explaining the effects of trauma on health.     

Values in forensic and correctional psychology

Although the practice of forensic and correctional psychology has been understood in relation to certain sets of values that have been articulated in codes of ethical practice or organisational mission statements, there has been little consideration of how the values of offenders can inform the rehabilitative process. In this paper the criminogenic nature of values is discussed and how these might be addressed in an intervention. It is concluded that an exploration of values is not only a necessary condition for successful rehabilitation, but also essential if ethical problems in working with offenders are to be avoided.     

Multisensory evidence

It is tempting to think that one's perceptual evidence comprises just what issues from perceiving with each of the respective sensory modalities. However, empirical, rational, and phenomenological considerations show that one's perceptual evidence can outstrip what one possesses due to perceiving with each separate sense. Some novel perceptual evidence stems from the coordinated use of multiple senses. This paper argues that some perceptual evidence in this respect is distinctively multisensory.     

Family handedness as a predictor of mental rotation ability among minority girls in a math-science training program.

Right-handed girls from nonright-handed families outperformed the other groups of minority adolescent girls enrolled in a science and technology program on a test of mental rotation ability. This target group excelled over right-handed girls with all right-handed relatives and nonright-handers. The pattern of group differences in mental rotation ability found here is consistent with those found for women with math-science training at the college level. The minority boys in the program outperformed the girls as a whole, but did not differ significantly from the right-handed girls with nonright-handed relatives. The present findings provide further support for the generality of Annett's genetic theory of handedness and brain organization, and for the interaction of genetic and environmental factors in accounting for individual differences in mental rotation ability.     

All words are not created equal: expectations about word length guide infant statistical learning

Infants have been described as ‘statistical learners’ capable of extracting structure (such as words) from patterned input (such as language). Here, we investigated whether prior knowledge influences how infants track transitional probabilities in word segmentation tasks. Are infants biased by prior experience when engaging in sequential statistical learning? In a laboratory simulation of learning across time, we exposed 9- and 10-month-old infants to a list of either disyllabic or trisyllabic nonsense words, followed by a pause-free speech stream composed of a different set of disyllabic or trisyllabic nonsense words. Listening times revealed successful segmentation of words from fluent speech only when words were uniformly disyllabic or trisyllabic throughout both phases of the experiment. Hearing trisyllabic words during the pre-exposure phase derailed infants’ abilities to segment speech into disyllabic words, and vice versa. We conclude that prior knowledge about word length equips infants with perceptual expectations that facilitate efficient processing of subsequent language input.