A cross-national comparison of aggressors, victims and defenders in preschools in England, Spain and Italy

There is a small, but growing, body of research investigating peer-victimisation between preschoolers, an age which has been identified as being important both theoretically and practically for the development of interventions. This study compares aggressive and defending behaviour and victim status of preschoolers in three European countries; England, Spain and Italy. The results provide further confirmation that some children behave aggressively towards their peers during preschool in each of the countries studied. There are similarities between preschool children involved in peer-victimisation in the three countries in terms of the roles taken, sex differences and the types of aggressive behaviours used and experienced by the children. There were differences in the profiles of children identified as taking the roles by teachers and peers. Overall, it was found that those children identified by peers or teachers as being aggressive were more likely to be male, rated as physically strong and more likely to be rejected by classmates. Also, in general, the targets of peer-victimisation differed depending on the reporter. Peer-nominated victims were not identifiable in terms of gender, popularity or physical strength. Teacher-nominated victims were more likely to be socially rejected and physically weak. There are several subtle differences between the countries which deserve further investigation. The findings are discussed in relation to furthering our understanding of the development of peer-victimisation in preschools and the need for interventions which address this phenomenon.     

Impact of Remembering Childhood Sexual Abuse on Addiction Recovery for Young Adult Lesbians

This article examines the impact of childhood sexual abuse on young adult lesbians' sexual identity and their recovery from chemical dependency. The authors recommend that counselors assess for sexual orientation (past and present), sexual abuse, and possible dual diagnosis. Implications for counselors are discussed.     

The forgiveness process in primary and secondary victims of violent and sexual offences

It is possible that the physical and mental health of crime victims might be improved by forgiving those who have offended against them. To date, no research has been undertaken to examine the processes that influence victims' forgiveness. The goal of this project was to examine the forgiveness process in primary and secondary victims of violent and sexual crimes. In Study 1, qualitative data were collected by interviewing 21 people who had been affected by sexual or other violent crime. Data analysis identified five themes that were common to both primary and secondary victims, namely benefit of forgiveness, self‐forgiveness, perspective taking, offender behaviour, and time. An empowerment theme was unique to primary victims, and a principal victim theme was unique to secondary victims. To further explore these qualitative findings, a quantitative survey of 60 primary and secondary victims was conducted. Results confirmed that primary victims are pragmatic forgivers who are internally focused and forgive because that will benefit their healing. Conversely, secondary victims did not think forgiveness benefited, or would impact on, their own or the primary victim's recovery process. Neither group saw forgiveness as a moral issue, nor thought that forgiveness should influence whether an offender should face court.     

The role of behavior analysis in the rehabilitation of persons with dementia

With the rapidly aging population, it is expected that increases in cases of dementia will double over the next 20 years. Currently, there is no cure for diseases such as Alzheimer's disease or frontotemporal dementia (FTD) that cause progressive dementia, and only a few pharmacological interventions that slow the progression of the decline exist. Given that there is no cure available, a rehabilitation approach that emphasizes maintaining existing abilities and removing excess disability (as opposed to emphasizing cure or recovery) for as long as possible is warranted. The current paper proposes that nonpharmacological rehabilitation efforts need to target 5 broad areas/targets: memory enhancement, altering social contingencies and communication styles, improving self-care skills, the arrangement of physical environments to maintain and improve functioning, and increasing physical fitness/physical activity. The purpose of this paper is to review specific behaviorally oriented interventions that target these 5 areas and show promise for inclusion in comprehensive rehabilitation efforts for individuals with dementia.     

Promising to tell the truth makes 8‐ to 16‐year‐olds more honest

Techniques commonly used to increase truth‐telling in most North American jurisdiction courts include requiring witnesses to discuss the morality of truth‐ and lie‐telling and to promise to tell the truth prior to testifying. While promising to tell the truth successfully decreases younger children's lie‐telling, the influence of discussing the morality of honesty and promising to tell the truth on adolescents' statements has remained unexamined. In Experiment 1, 108 youngsters, aged 8–16 years, were left alone in the room and asked not to peek at the answers to a test. The majority of participants peeked at the test answers and then lied about their transgression. More importantly, participants were eight times more likely to change their response from a lie to the truth after promising to tell the truth. Experiment 2 confirmed that the results of Experiment 1 were not solely due to repeated questioning or the moral discussion of truth‐ and lie‐telling. These results suggest that, while promising to tell the truth influences the truth‐telling behaviors of adolescents, a moral discussion of truth and lies does not. Legal implications are discussed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Neural enhancement and pre-emptive perception: the genesis of attention and the attentional maintenance of the cortical salience map

One of the stable hypotheses in systems neuroscience is the relationship between attention and the enhancement of visual responses when an animal attends to the stimulus in its receptive field (Goldberg and Wurtz, 1972 Journal of Neurophysiology 35 560-574). This was first discovered in the superior colliculus of the monkey: neurons in the superficial layers of the superior colliculus responded more intensely to the onset of a stimulus during blocks of trials in which the monkey had to make a saccade to it than they did during blocks of trials in which the monkey had to continue fixating a central point and not respond to the stimulus. This enhancement has been found in many brain regions, including prefrontal cortex (Boch and Goldberg, 1987 Investigative Ophthalmology 28 Supplement, 124), V4 (Moran and Desimone, 1985 Science 229 782-784), and lateral intraparietal area (Colby et al, 1996 Journal of Neurophysiology 76 2841-2852; Colby and Goldberg, 1999 Annual Review of Neuroscience 22 319-349), and even V1 (Lamme et al, 2000 Vision Research 40 1507-1521). In these studies the assumption has been that the monkey attended to the stimulus because the stimulus evoked an enhanced response. In the experiments described here we show that for abruptly appearing stimuli, attention is not related to the initial response evoked by the stimulus, but by the activity present on the salience map in the parietal cortex when the stimulus appears. Attention to the stimulus may subsequently, by a top down signal, sustain the map, but stimuli can as easily be suppressed by top down features as they can be enhanced.     

Relational Aggression in Mothers and Children: Links with Psychological Control and Child Adjustment

This study assesses associations between mothers’ use of relational aggression with their peers and psychological control with their children, and child adjustment in a sample of fifty U.S. mothers of elementary and middle school children. Mothers completed surveys assessing their relational aggression and psychological control. Teachers completed surveys assessing children’s externalizing behavior, internalizing symptoms, and relational aggression. Results suggest that mothers who are relationally aggressive with their peers are more likely to be psychologically controlling with their children. Results also showed that relational aggression predicted adjustment problems in youth. Relational aggression was associated with externalizing problems among boys and girls, and with internalizing problems among boys. Few gender differences in mean levels of maternal or child behaviors emerged.     

Multicultural experience enhances creativity: the when and how

Many practices aimed at cultivating multicultural competence in educational and organizational settings (e.g., exchange programs, diversity education in college, diversity management at work) assume that multicultural experience fosters creativity. In line with this assumption, the research reported in this article is the first to empirically demonstrate that exposure to multiple cultures in and of itself can enhance creativity. Overall, the authors found that extensiveness of multicultural experiences was positively related to both creative performance (insight learning, remote association, and idea generation) and creativity-supporting cognitive processes (retrieval of unconventional knowledge, recruitment of ideas from unfamiliar cultures for creative idea expansion). Furthermore, their studies showed that the serendipitous creative benefits resulting from multicultural experiences may depend on the extent to which individuals open themselves to foreign cultures, and that creativity is facilitated in contexts that deemphasize the need for firm answers or existential concerns. The authors discuss the implications of their findings for promoting creativity in increasingly global learning and work environments.     

Ethical and legal issues associated with using response-to-intervention to assess learning disabilities

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 allows schools to use a child's response to research-based intervention (RTI) as a part of procedures to identify students with learning disabilities. This paper considers whether RTI-based assessment models meet ethical and legal standards for acceptable assessment practices. Based on a review of available research, it was concluded that RTI-based assessment practices, when carefully crafted and implemented, have the potential to be multifaceted, fair, valid, and useful. Threats to acceptable RTI-based assessment practices include: the lack of research-based interventions appropriate for diverse academic domains, ethnic groups, grades K-12, and students with limited English proficiency; uncertainty regarding how to determine when nonresponse to intervention warrants formal referral for evaluation of special education eligibility; difficulty translating scientifically sound RTI practices to the local school level; and inadequate staff training and poor treatment fidelity. Suggested directions for future research are included.