Child abuse: is there a mandate for researchers to report?

During the past 20 years, states have increasingly expanded the lists of individuals who are obligated to report their suspicions of child abuse and neglect. These legal requirements are juxtaposed with ethical considerations in research and professional practice. The ethical issues include the obligation to maintain both confidentiality of information provided by human participants and the safety and protection of these participants. This article reviews the types of state child abuse reporting statutes and outlines the categories of mandated reporters. I develop a model of how individual researchers should approach deciding whether they are mandated reporters of child abuse and neglect.     

Cognitive function after open-heart surgery: Are postoperative neuropsychological deficits caused by cardiopulmonary bypass?

Despite the many technological developments in arterial perfusion and cardiac surgical procedures, open-heart surgery is still believed to pose a significant risk for cerebral injury. There are several potential causes of brain damage during open-heart surgery, including prolonged or severe arterial hypotension, as well as emboli emanating from the cardiopulmonary bypass circuit or the operative field. This article reviews the available neuropsychological studies of outcome following cardiac valve replacement and coronary artery bypass grafting. Because both procedures are life-saving operations, the research in this area has been quasi-experimental and fraught with methodological problems. Nonetheless, the findings converge to suggest that cognitive dysfunction occurs after open-heart surgery, and that the deficits are attributable, at least in part, to factors specific to the operation or to the patient being maintained on cardiopulmonary bypass. Preliminary findings suggest that embolization is the primary cause of perioperative deficits in uncomplicated operations. Studies have also consistently found preoperative deficits in this population, suggesting that neuropsychological dysfunction is caused by severe chronic cardiac disease as well as open-heart surgery.     

A comparison of instruction formats for administering a computerized behavioral test

Shaping and fading techniques were employed to replace written instructions used in computerized behavioral tests. Apple Macintosh computers and HyperCard with Pascal extensions were chosen as the development environment to implement the new techniques. Initial Findings demonstrate the effectiveness and relative efficiency of shaping techniques to teach correct performance on the Symbol-Digit Test.     

On the scaling of visual space from motion—in response to Pizlo and Salacfa-Golyska

Pizlo and Salack-Golyska (1994) have raised an important question about the validity of the interpretation of experiments reported by Lappin and Love (1992)—based on the fact that alternative cues in the image plane might have supported the shape discriminations in those experiments. The meaning of the hypothesis that visual space may be scaled by congruence under motion is clarified, pertinent evidence is reviewed, and new experimental evidence is reported We conclude that visual space can be metrically scaled by congruence of moving shapes.     

Visual slow brain potentials in children with attention deficit disorder

Using a two-stimulus reaction time paradigm, with two separate reward conditions (contingent and noncontingent), we compared slow wave brain potentials (ERPs) in 144 children with attention deficit disorder (ADD) and 30 normal control children. This article reviews the findings during the 900 msec visual warning stimulus. As we had expected, based on ERP work of Forth and Hare (1989) and Raine, Venables and Williams (1990), and on previous work from our own laboratory, the group differences were found in the negative slow wave portions of the ERP complex during the contingent reward condition but not during the noncontingent condition. Aggressive hyperactive subjects with attention deficit disorder (ADDHA) were discriminated from nonaggressive subjects (including control subjects) during the contingent reward condition in the following ways: (1) greater fronto-central negativity (640–900 msec slow wave) and (2) greater right parietal than left parietal negativity (430–750 msec slow wave). All ADD subgroups, when compared to control (CONTR) subjects, showed greater slow wave negativity (700–900 msec) at the midline occipital electrode site during the contingent reward condition. This could be explained in part as an IQ effect on ERPs reflecting the IQ difference between the ADD subgroups and the controls. These slow wave findings seem to relate to attentional problems of these children. They are discussed in terms of a psychobiological model of inhibition/disinhibition and appetitive activation.     

An investigation of the sampling distributions of item discrimination indices

The sampling properties of four item discrimination indices (biserialr, Cook's indexB, theU–L 27 per cent index, and DeltaP) were investigated in order to ascertain their sampling properties when small samples drawn from actual test data rather than constructed data were employed. The empirical results indicated that the mean index values approximated the population values and that values of the standard deviations computed from large sample formulas were good approximations to the standard deviations of the observed distributions based on samples of size 120 or less. Goodness of fit tests comparing the observed distributions with the corresponding distribution of the product-moment correlation coefficient based upon a bivariate normal population indicated that this correlational model was inappropriate for the data. The lack of adequate mathematical models for the sampling distributions of item discrimination indices suggests that one should avoid indices whose only real reason for existence was the simplification of computational procedures.This research reported herein was performed pursuant to a contract (OE-2-10-071) with the United States Office of Education, Department of Health, Education and Welfare.