The relationship of offending style to psychological and social risk factors in a sample of adolescent males

Research has indicated that life‐course persistent offenders typically vary their offending style, following a criminal career progression from co‐ to solo‐offending. Few studies have investigated the offenders who contemporaneously mix their style of offending. A sample of 1,047 male adolescent offenders from the Pathways to Desistance study was investigated over a 7‐year period. Participants were identified as solo, co or contemporaneous mixed style (CMS) offenders for each wave of data and one‐way between groups analysis of variance was conducted to examine variations between the different offending styles in terms of offending frequencies, exposure to violence, peer antisocial behaviour and influence, resistance to peer influence, impulse control and psychopathy. CMS offenders were found to consistently report significantly higher rates of offending and present significantly higher negative risk factors and lower protective risk factors than solo‐ and co‐offenders for the duration of the study. A multinomial logistic regression was used to investigate predictors of offending style with CMS as the reference category. Higher levels of exposure to violence and peer antisocial behaviour and lower levels of impulse control predicted membership of the CMS group for the first part of the study when compared with co‐offenders; and higher levels of exposure to violence and peer antisocial behaviour continued to predict CMS offending when compared to solo‐offenders until the end of the study.     

A review and analysis of research on the test–retest reliability of professional judgment

This paper analyzes existing research on the test–retest reliability of human judgment, i.e. the extent to which a judge makes identical judgments when presented with identical stimuli on two occasions. Only research involving professional judges who make experimental judgments in a reasonable analog of their everyday experience is included. Studies of both internal consistency reliability and temporal stability reliability are analyzed (where the former refers to the inclusion of repeat stimuli in the same experimental session, and the latter refers to the repeating of the experimental task from a few days to several months later). It is found that (1) the test–retest reliability literature is concentrated in four substantive judgment areas (medicine/psychology, meteorology, human resources management, and business), (2) the literature is extremely variable in terms of research approach/design, the determinants or correlates of test–retest reliability that have been studied, and the quality of the execution and analysis, and (3) mean test–retest reliability differs across both substantive judgment areas and the internal consistency versus temporal stability distinction. An inescapable conclusion from the analysis is that our knowledge of this fundamental property of human judgment is quite meager. Therefore, the paper concludes with suggestions about future research that would address test–retest reliability more systematically. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Exploring the Development and Dismantling of Equivalence Classes Involving Terrorist Stimuli

The Psychological Record - The present paper describes 2 studies that present a conceptual interpretation and experimental findings involving the developing and dismantling of equivalence...     

Fallout from the Women’s Health Study: A Short-lived Vindication for Feminists and the Resurrection of Hormone Therapies

The Women’s Health Initiative studies were begun in 1997, in large part the result of women’s health activists who for 40 years questioned the safety of hormone use at menopause and criticized the menopause as disease ideology. The studies were prematurely discontinued when investigators found that heretofore acclaimed benefits of hormone use were not supported. Risks to health such as stroke, breast cancer, and thrombophlebitis were found. A feeling of vindication was experienced by feminists but was quickly replaced by cautious optimism as strategies to continue hormone use were published and quality of life issues tied to symptom management emerged. The focus of this article is a review of the hormone story, a discussion of the implications of the Women’s Health Initiative results, and strategies for resolution of the continuing hormone dilemma.     

Association, inhibition, and object permanence in dogs' (Canis familiaris) spatial search

The relative role of associative processes and the use of explicit cues about object location in search behavior in dogs (Canis familiaris) was assessed by using a spatial binary discrimination reversal paradigm in which reversal conditions featured: (1) a previously rewarded location and a novel location, (2) a previously nonrewarded location and a novel location, or (3) a previously rewarded location and a previously nonrewarded location. Rule mediated learning predicts a similar performance in these different reversal conditions whereas associative learning predicts the worst performance in Condition 3. Evidence for an associative control of search emerged when no explicit cues about food location were provided (Experiment 1) but also when dogs witnessed the hiding of food in the reversal trials (Experiment 2) and when they did so in both the prereversal and the reversal trials (Experiment 3). Nevertheless, dogs performed better in the prereversal phase of Experiment 3 indicating that their search could be informed by the knowledge of the food location. Experiment 4 confirmed the results of Experiments 1 and 2, under a different arrangement of search locations. We conclude that knowledge about object location guides search behavior in dogs but it cannot override associative processes.