The interview for antisocial behavior: Psychometric characteristics and concurrent validity with child psychiatric inpatients

The present study evaluated psychometric features and correlates of the Interview for Antisocial Behavior (IAB), a new measure designed to assess antisocial child behavior. Parents of 264 psychiatric inpatients (ages 6–13 years) completed the measure to evaluate antisocial behavior of their children. The investigation evaluated the relation of IAB scores to clinically derived diagnoses and to aggression and externalizing behaviors, as measured by different raters (parents, teachers), across different settings (home, school, hospital), and with different assessment methods (rating scales, behavioral role-play test). The results indicated that the IAB showed acceptable levels of internal consistency. A priori scores (severity, duration, total antisocial behavior) and factor analytically derived scales (Arguing/Fighting, Covert Antisocial Behaviors, Self-Injury) distinguished children with a DSM III diagnosis of conduct disorder, and scores on the IAB were more consistently related to other measures of aggression and externalizing behavior than to measures of internalizing behavior or overall severity of dysfunction. The implications of the results for use of the measure, particularly in relation to evaluation of the overt-covert dimension of antisocial behavior, are discussed.Completion of this research was facilitated by a Research Scientist Development Award (MH00353) and by grants (MH35408, MH39642) from the National Institute of Mental Health and the Rivendell Foundation.     

Acquisition of discrimination learning of patterns identical in configuration in macaques (Macaca mulatta and M. fuscata)

The acquisition of discrimination of five pairs of pattern cues in a Wisconsin General Testing Apparatus by 223 naive macaque monkeys was compared. The pairs of discriminanda were identical in configuration but varied slightly in either the size of the cue or the size of the background plaque; thus, the degree of separation of the cue from the fringe of the plaque, the response site, was slightly different for each pair of discriminanda. These small differences in cue-response separation had marked effects on the rate of acquisition of the discriminations. Even an increment of separation as small as 0.5 cm resulted in a remarkable retardation of the acquisition. This retardation was due entirely to prolonged performance at the chance level, and not to a slow rate of improvement from the chance to a criterion level. The finding indicates that the difficulty in the acquisition learning on pattern tasks depends largely on the difficulty of attending to the pattern cues at small cue-response separations.     

Mentalism, behavior-behavior relations, and a behavior-analytic view of the purposes of science

In a behavioral view, the purposes of science are primarily prediction and control. To the extent that a scientist embraces both of these as a unified and generally applicable criterion for science, certain philosophical and theoretical practices are counterproductive, including mentalism in both its metaphysical and metatheoretical forms. It is possible and often worthwhile to recast some mentalistic talk into an issue of behavior-behavior relations. When behavior-behavior relations are approached non-mechanistically, however, analysis cannot stop at the level of the relations themselves. Several analytic concepts common in the behavioral community share some of the dangers of mentalism if not employed properly, including such concepts as self-reinforcement, response-produced stimulation, and self-rules.     

Criminal profiling from crime scene analysis

Since the 1970s, investigative profilers at the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit (now part of the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime) have been assisting local, state, and federal agencies in narrowing investigations by providing criminal personality profiles. An attempt is now being made to describe this criminal-profile-generating process. A series of five overlapping stages lead to the sixth stage, or the goal of apprehension of the offender: (1) profiling inputs, (2) decision-process models, (3) crime assessment, (4) the criminal profile, (5) investigation, and (6) apprehension. Two key feedback filters in the process are: (a) achieving congruence with the evidence, with decision models, and with investigation recommendations, and (b) the addition of new evidence.     

MATHEMATICS AND SELF-ESTEEM: IMPLICATIONS FOR WOMEN'S CAREER CHOICE

The relationship of math participation and success to self-esteem and career goals is examined in a sample of 64 women and 52 men college students at the end of their sophomore year. No gender differences were found in math anxiety or perceptions of the usefulness of mathematics, but women were less likely to select a math-related career goal. Among the men students, math participation and self-assessments of math ability were positively related to more general self-estimates of competence; among women, these variables were not related significantly. Women's choices for math-related careers were more closely associated with scholastic ability and math background than were men's career choices. These results are discussed in the context of societal pressures and supports for men and women in regard to math participation.     

The process of scapegoating in a neonatal nurses' group

This paper reviews the literature on scapegoating, elaborating on the underlying mechanisms before describing the process of scapegoating as it occurred in a neonatal nurse support group. Illustrative vignettes are used to discuss how scapegoating was used by group members to avoid painful feelings arising from their care of extremely ill infants. Group process is related to the stages of the group's development as feelings were addressed more directly and the need to use scapegoating as a defense decreased.     

In-Service Courses in Human Relations: One Teacher's Learning

Human relations training includes counselling as an important ingredient. This case-study reports the learning of one primary deputy headteacher during a six-day course, and her continuing efforts to use and extend that learning during the following year. She reported an improvement in classroom discipline, and less stressful and more effective relationships with colleagues and pupils, linking these gains with insights and skills developed on the course. The value to course designers of goal-setting structures is illustrated by the study. Such structures provide an opportunity to take part in, and study, counselling interventions which have real problems as their focus.     

The accommodative response to subthreshold blur and to perceptual fading during the Troxler phenomenon

A study is reported which shows that accommodation can be stimulated by a blur stimulus which is below the threshold for visual perception. It is also shown that perceptual fading of the target, caused by stabilization of the retinal image (Troxler phenomenon), can eliminate the accommodative response causing it to default to its resting level. The first finding suggests a way in which the visual system can filter the percept of blur out of our conscious awareness and still effectively utilize the blur as a steady-state error for the accommodative control system. The second finding is consistent with a locus for the Troxler phenomenon in the early afferent part of the visual pathway, ie the retinal ganglion cells.     

Static depiction of movement

A number of pictorial devices were compared in order to assess their relative effectiveness in depicting events. Effectiveness, as measured by a rating task, did not seem to be a function of the classification of a device as natural or metaphorical. Rather, it depended on whether a given device highlighted a distinctive aspect of a particular event (running, jumping, or moving), or simply modified the event. This observation was buttressed by the existence in a forced-choice task of a category boundary for depictions of running (pictures with a certain device were seen as running, those without it were not) but not for moving or jumping. Even preschool children displayed some understanding of metaphorical devices. They chose figures with those devices as running faster than the experimental standard. Results are discussed in the context of Kennedy's characterization of pictorial metaphors and Gibson's framework for understanding the relationship between pictorial and environmental information.