Incest,Inbreeding, and Intrafamilial Conflict: Analyzing the Boundaries of Sexual Permissiveness in Modern North America

Our ability to critically analyze the effect of incestuous activity on society is complicated by the fact that such activity may take place in several different types of relationships, each of which play somewhat different roles within the family and community. Thus, if we are to analyze this effect in any meaningful manner, we must first take care to differentiate the various forms of incest from one another, and to study their consequences separately so that any effects due to relationship status, rather than to incest per se, can be taken into account. We must also ensure that we separate our definition of incest from that of non-consensual sex—that is, incest that occurs in couples in which one partner is too young to legally consent should be distinguished from incest that occurs between two consenting adults (i.e. incest per se), and the effects of these two variants of incest should as well be assessed separately. Using these careful definitions, it can be logically argued that incest on its own should not be prohibited in modern North American society, as the damage to our freedom that such a prohibition would entail cannot be justified by what little unambiguous evidence there is to support its case.

Historical change, cultural learning, and cognitive representation in Zinacantec Maya children

Against the background of an unchanging sequence of representational development, we demonstrate that implicit processes of learning and cognition can change from one historical period to another. One generation of Zinacantec Maya children was studied in 1969 and 1970, the next generation in 1991 and 1993. In the intervening two decades, the community, located in Chiapas, Mexico, was involved in a transition from an economy based primarily on subsistence and agriculture to an economy based primarily on money and commerce. A naturalistic study of weaving apprenticeship and an experimental study of visual representation showed that the ecological transition was linked to greater emphasis on independent cultural learning, abstract representation, and innovation, and, correlatively, a movement away from scaffolded guidance, detail-oriented representation, and imitative representational strategies. These changes constituted automatic adaptations with an implicit nature. In addition, historical variability in implicit modes of cultural apprenticeship predicted shifts in implicit processes of child and adolescent cognition. In sum, socialization and development are not fixed but adapt, in a coordinated way, to changing ecological conditions.     

Law enforcement preferences for PTSD treatment and crisis management alternatives

Evidence-based treatments (EBT) for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) remain underutilized. Analog research, however, indicates that patients may be more amenable to receiving EBT for PTSD than utilization rates suggest. This study sought to extend previous studies by investigating PTSD treatment preferences among law enforcement individuals (i.e., active duty officers, cadets, criminal justice students). We asked 379 participants, with varying trauma histories, to read a police traumatic event and imagine they had developed PTSD. Participants rated the credibility of six treatment options which they might encounter in a treatment setting, and chose their most and least preferred treatments. Next, they evaluated a widely used debriefing intervention aimed at preventing PTSD. Almost 90% of participants chose exposure or Cognitive Processing Therapy as their first or second most preferred treatment, and they rated these interventions as significantly more credible than the other four treatment options. The sample showed ambivalence regarding the perceived efficacy of debriefing but found the rationale credible. This study supports previous analog research indicating that patients may be more interested in EBT than indicated by utilization rates, and suggests that law enforcement departments should consider offering EBT to officers who develop PTSD.     

EVALUATION OF THE MULTIPLE-STIMULUS WITHOUT REPLACEMENT PREFERENCE ASSESSMENT METHOD USING ACTIVITIES AS STIMULI

The current study examined the accuracy of the multiple-stimulus without replacement (MSWO) preference assessment for identifying preferred common classroom activities as reinforcers with children with behavioral disorders. The accuracy of predictions from the MSWO regarding high, medium, and low stimulus preference was tested by providing contingent access to activities for completing math problems within an independent seatwork format. Overall, there was an interaction effect between preference ranking (high, medium, or low) and number of problems completed. The results confirm and extend previous findings regarding the accuracy of predictions with the MSWO. The findings also reveal, however, some individual differences that may account for instances in which student behavior did not conform to predictions of stimulus preference assessments.     

Person perception by active versus passive perceivers

Person perception research is dominated by studies of passive perceivers who exert no control over the information they receive. In contrast, perceivers in everyday life can often actively choose the type and quantity of information they receive. In this study, active and yoked passive perceivers formed impressions of individuals based on information from Facebook. Compared to active perceivers, passive perceivers reported greater confidence and ease in their judgments. Passive perceivers exhibited greater confidence (though not greater accuracy) with increased information, but active perceivers did not show this effect, placing a boundary condition on past research. Passive perceivers also liked targets more than active perceivers, a finding that is not explained by valence-dependant sampling by active participants, or by misattribution of fluency or greater sensitivity among passive participants. These provocative findings highlight the need to account for active and interactive processes in person perception rather than continuing to focus on passive perceivers.     

The Unity and Diversity of Inattention and Hyperactivity/Impulsivity in ADHD: Evidence for a General Factor with Separable Dimensions

To examine the unity and diversity of inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity symptom domains of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in a clinical sample of adolescents with ADHD. Parents and adolescents were administered a semi-structured diagnostic interview, the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Age Children — Present and Lifetime Version (K-SADS-PL), to assess adolescent ADHD. Data from 201 parent interviews and 189 adolescent interviews were examined. Four potential factor structures for the 18 ADHD symptoms were tested using confirmatory factor analysis: two models with correlated factors and two bifactor models. A bifactor model with two specific factors best accounted for adolescent symptoms, according to both parent and adolescents’ reports. Replication of these findings from behavioral rating scales completed for this sample by parents and teachers indicates that the findings are not method– or informant-specific. The results suggest that there is an important unitary component to ADHD symptoms and separable dimensional traits of Inattention and Hyperactivity/Impulsivity.     

Nonstandard Work Arrangements among Women and Men Scientists and Engineers

This paper draws on a sample of 48,444 scientists and engineers in the United States to analyze nonstandard work arrangements among women and men, 8,773 of whom worked in such arrangements. With few exceptions, women were overrepresented in these arrangements and particularly in those characterized by lower wages and benefits, but their overrepresentation in the worst arrangements failed to explain the gender pay gap. Unlike in the general labor force where “equality at the bottom” tends to prevail, the gender pay gap in science and engineering is greater in the worst nonstandard work arrangements than in the best, and gender equality is greater in the best arrangements than in the worst, possibly because of a selection effect.     

Exploitation of pointing as a referential gesture in young children, but not adolescent chimpanzees

The ability of adolescent chimpanzees and 2- and 3-year-old children to use pointing gestures to locate hidden surprises was examined in two experiments. The results revealed that although young 2-year-old children appeared to have no difficulty extracting referential information from a pointing gesture (independent of gaze or distance cues) and spontaneously using it to search in specific locations, adolescent chimpanzees appeared to rely on cueconfiguration and distance-based rules. Thus, although these chimpanzees were trained to respond appropriately to the pointing gestures of a human by searching in a particular location, this ability did not easily generalize to situations in which the distance between the pointing hand and the location were more distal. Furthermore, even those chimpanzees that were able to generalize in this fashion appeared to use distance-based cues, not ones based on an appreciation of the internal attentional focus or mental referent of the experimenter as indicated by his pointing gesture.