Violence risk assessment and women: predictive accuracy of the HCR-20 in a civil psychiatric sample

Research to date has not adequately demonstrated whether the HCR-20 Violence Risk Assessment Scheme (HCR-20; Webster, Douglas, Eaves, & Hart, 1997), a structured violence risk assessment measure with a robust literature supporting its validity in male samples, is a valid indicator of violence risk in women. This study utilized data from the MacArthur Study of Mental Disorder and Violence to retrospectively score an abbreviated version of HCR-20 in 827 civil psychiatric patients. HCR-20 scores and predictive accuracy of community violence were compared for men and women. Results suggested that the HCR-20 is slightly, but not significantly, better for evaluating future risk for violence in men than in women, although the magnitude of the gender differences was small and was largely limited to historical factors. The results do not indicate that the HCR-20 needs to be tailored for use in women or that it should not be used in women, but they do highlight that the HCR-20 should be used cautiously and with full awareness of its potential limitations in women.     

NO QUICK FIXES: ADDING CONTENT ABOUT WOMEN TO ECOLOGY COURSE MATERIALS

This study reports on a three-semester model project designed to assess the impact of enriched content related to Women's and Gender Studies on students enrolled in an undergraduate ecology course. The two constructs of interest were (a) students' attitudes toward women in science and society and (b) students' assessment of the classroom climate for women. The data included 398 matched pretest and posttest survey responses from a control group, a minimal enrichment group, and an increased enrichment group. Findings indicated that, although small course revisions did not influence students' attitudes toward women in science and society, such revisions had a positive influence on students' assessments of the classroom climate.     

Pyramid algorithms for perceptual organization

Multiresolution (orpyramid) approaches to computer vision provide the capability of rapidly detecting and extracting global structures (features, regions, patterns, etc.) from an image. The human visual system also is able to spontaneously (orpreattentively) perceive various types of global structure in visual input; this process is sometimes calledperceptual organization. This paper describes a set of pyramid-based algorithms that can detect and extract these types of structure; included are algorithms for inferring three-dimensional information from images and for processing time sequences of images. If implemented in parallel on cellular pyramid hardware, these algorithms require processing times on the order of the logarithm of the image diameter.     

Infant psychopathology during the first year of life and its return during adolescence and adulthood

This is a presentation of different clinical cases having in common severe infantile traumatic events during the first year of life. From the disappearance of mother and father during Latin-American dictatorships, to another patient who hallucinates that bats fly out of his cheeks, this paper tries to bring light into the difficult times of these patients and how the analysts worked with infantile parts of the self which were inside the adult patients.     

Perceptions of sexual violations: Denying a kiss,stealing a kiss

The purpose of this investigation was to compare female and male perceptions of interactants in scenes involving a minor sexual violation—one in which a male denies consent for a kiss and a woman kisses him regardless, and another in which a woman denies consent and a man kisses her regardless. Undergraduate students (n = 387—approximately 82.5% White, 11% Black, 4.7% Hispanic, 1% Native American, and .8% other) completed scenarios adapted from L. Margolin [(1990) Gender and the Stolen Kiss: The Social Support of Males and Females to Violate a Partner's Sexual Consenting Noncoercive Situation, Archives of Sexual Behavior, Vol. 19, pp. 281–291], and evaluated scenario interactants using two sets of semantic differential items and two open-ended questions. Results of several analyses indicated that, first and most importantly, violators' behaviors are considered less acceptable, more negatively aggressive, more complimenting, and less appropriate than deniers' behaviors. Second, violations of sex-role expectations (i.e., female aggressing and male denying consent) are seen as less predictable and more complimenting than interactions where sex role expectations are not violated. Finally, minor distinctions between female and male respondents also were found. In general, findings support Margolin's conclusion that women have more social support than men for determining their sexual behavior and extend his findings to private interactions where motivations are not explicit. Also, trust was found to be an important factor defining perceptions of minor sexual violations, which raises the possibility that an initiation of a kiss and a violation of consent are viewed as different actions.This article is based on Mr. Semonsky's honor's thesis, completed under the direction of Mr. Rosenfeld.