Understanding Dignity in the Lives of Homeless Persons

The current investigation is a planned, systematic study of dignity as critical to understanding the experience of homelessness and improving services and programs for the homeless. Specifically, we conducted a thematic content analysis of interviews with 24 homeless men and women to identify their perception of specific environmental events that validate and invalidate dignity. In addition, we explored the impact that these events have on homeless persons. Eight types of events were identified that sustain dignity such as being cared for by staff and having resources available to meet basic needs. Eight types of events were found that undermine dignity, such as being yelled at or insulted by staff persons and having staff use rules in an excessive and arbitrary way. Two outcomes followed the sustenance of dignity including increased self-worth and motivation to exit homelessness. Three outcomes followed the undermining of dignity including anger, depression, and feelings of worthlessness. The results suggest that dignity is an important variable to consider in understanding the experience of homelessness. Policies and programs that support validating the dignity of homeless persons are encouraged.     

Duck or rabbit? Reversing ambiguous figures and understanding ambiguous representations

In two studies we investigated 3‐ to 5‐year‐old children’s ability to reverse ambiguous figures and the relation between this ability and the ability to understand multiple representations. Children never reversed before they were informed of the two alternative interpretations of the figures. Even when they were informed of the alternatives and understood that both were possible, 3‐year‐olds and most 4‐year‐olds did not reverse. In contrast, a majority of 5‐year‐olds did reverse. In general, children only reversed if they also passed a standard false belief task. However, there was a closer correlation between reversals and a ‘droodle’ task that involved an understanding of the ambiguity of perceptual representations. These results suggest that the immediate experience of reversal may depend on a more abstract understanding of ambiguous representations.     

More than expected? Psychological outcomes from first-stage training in counselling

This study considers psychological outcomes of first-stage counselling training for nine annual student cohorts. A self-report questionnaire, with both open-ended and closed questions, was employed to investigate initial course expectations, what had been learned about self, and any perceived changes in attributes and skills and in relationships with family, friends and others. Eighty-six out of a total of 148 students returned questionnaires, a response rate of 58%. Students reported having learned more about counselling theories and skills, as they had expected initially, but results show that other important outcomes had been largely unanticipated. Many, for example, felt that, as a consequence of course participation, they had a deeper understanding, and greater acceptance, of self and that a range of attributes and skills, such as sensitivity to others and communication skills, had been enhanced. For many, these outcomes had led to improved relationships with family and friends, and also, for some, with work colleagues. It is concluded that, in this example of introductory counselling training, the course experience had led students to discover more about self and had also impacted on different facets of their lives.     

Preschool children learn about causal structure from conditional interventions

The conditional intervention principle is a formal principle that relates patterns of interventions and outcomes to causal structure. It is a central assumption of experimental design and the causal Bayes net formalism. Two studies suggest that preschoolers can use the conditional intervention principle to distinguish causal chains, common cause and interactive causal structures even in the absence of differential spatiotemporal cues and specific mechanism knowledge. Children were also able to use knowledge of causal structure to predict the patterns of evidence that would result from interventions. A third study suggests that children's spontaneous play can generate evidence that would support such accurate causal learning.     

An evaluation and comparison of claims made in behavioural investigative advice reports compiled by the National Policing Improvements Agency in the United Kingdom

This study examined the content of a contemporary sample of behavioural investigative advice reports produced by the National Policing Improvements Agency (NPIA), formally known as the National Centre for Policing Excellence, and compared this sample with previous offender‐profiling samples reported by Alison, Smith, Eastman, and Rainbow in 2003. Forty‐seven reports written in 2005 were content analysed. The reports contained 805 claims, although 96% of the claims contained grounds for their claim, only 34% had any formal support or backing. In terms of confirmability, 70% of the claims were verifiable. However, only 43% were falsifiable, in that they could be objectively measured post‐conviction. Analysis also showed that there were differences when comparing the different types of claims made (i.e. behavioural, temporal) and the different types of reports compiled by the NPIA (i.e. behavioural assessment report, linking report, etc.) Comparisons show that there is a very large positive difference between the contemporary behavioural investigative advice sample and previous non‐NPIA expert advice in terms of the substantiveness of their arguments. Contemporary NPIA behavioural investigative advice has clearer boundaries around the claims made and presents material in a more coherent and evidence‐based format than previous expert advice. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Conditional probability versus spatial contiguity in causal learning: Preschoolers use new contingency evidence to overcome prior spatial assumptions

This study examines preschoolers' causal assumptions about spatial contiguity and how these assumptions interact with new evidence in the form of conditional probabilities. Preschoolers saw a toy that activated in the presence of certain objects. Children were shown evidence for the toy's activation rule in the form of patterns of probability: The toy was more likely to activate either when objects made contact with its surface (on condition) or when objects were several inches above its surface (over condition). In Experiment 1, 61 three-year-olds saw a deterministic activation rule. In Experiments 2 and 3, 48 four-year-olds saw an activation rule that was probabilistic. In Experiment 4, 30 four-year-olds saw a screening-off pattern of activation. In all 4 experiments, children used new evidence in the form of patterns of probability to make accurate causal inferences, even in the face of conflicting prior beliefs about spatial contiguity. However, children were more likely to make correct inferences when causes were spatially contiguous, particularly when faced with ambiguous evidence.     

Gender-Role Attitudes and Earnings: A Multinational Study of Married Women and Men

This paper examines the impact of gender-role attitudes on earnings for married individuals. Using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) and nationally representative data, we tested our hypotheses on 4,785 males and 4,368 females from 28 countries located in North and South America, Eastern and Western Europe, the Mediterranean, Asia and the South Pacific. We found that compared to individuals in their own countries, women with egalitarian attitudes had significantly higher earnings then women with traditional attitudes. In addition, for both women and men, we found an interaction between gender-role attitudes and hours worked. Egalitarianism had a stronger positive effect on earnings among individuals who worked more hours.     

Enhancing the Benefits of Written Emotional Disclosure Through Response Training

Writing about a personal stressful event has been found to have psychological and physical health benefits, especially when physiological response increases during writing. Response training was developed to amplify appropriate physiological reactivity in imagery exposure. The present study examined whether response training enhances the benefits of written emotional disclosure. Participants were assigned to either a written emotional disclosure condition (n = 113) or a neutral writing condition (n = 133). Participants in each condition wrote for 20 minutes on 3 occasions and received response training (n = 79), stimulus training (n = 84) or no training (n = 83). Heart rate and skin conductance were recorded throughout a 10-minute baseline, 20-minute writing, and a 10-minute recovery period. Self-reported emotion was assessed in each session. One month after completing the sessions, participants completed follow-up assessments of psychological and physical health outcomes. Emotional disclosure elicited greater physiological reactivity and self-reported emotion than neutral writing. Response training amplified physiological reactivity to emotional disclosure. Greater heart rate during emotional disclosure was associated with the greatest reductions in event-related distress, depression, and physical illness symptoms at follow-up, especially among response trained participants. Results support an exposure explanation of emotional disclosure effects and are the first to demonstrate that response training facilitates emotional processing and may be a beneficial adjunct to written emotional disclosure.     

Explaining prompts children to privilege inductively rich properties

Four experiments with preschool-aged children test the hypothesis that engaging in explanation promotes inductive reasoning on the basis of shared causal properties as opposed to salient (but superficial) perceptual properties. In Experiments 1a and 1b, 3- to 5-year-old children prompted to explain during a causal learning task were more likely to override a tendency to generalize according to perceptual similarity and instead extend an internal feature to an object that shared a causal property. Experiment 2 replicated this effect of explanation in a case of label extension (i.e., categorization). Experiment 3 demonstrated that explanation improves memory for clusters of causally relevant (non-perceptual) features, but impairs memory for superficial (perceptual) features, providing evidence that effects of explanation are selective in scope and apply to memory as well as inference. In sum, our data support the proposal that engaging in explanation influences children’s reasoning by privileging inductively rich, causal properties.