Accountability,Collaboration, and Social Change: Ethical Tensions in an Action Research Project to Address Untested Sexual Assault Kits (SAKs)

We conducted a collaborative action research project with stakeholders in Detroit, Michigan, to develop long‐term policy strategies to resolve ~11,000 untested rape kits that were discovered in a police storage facility in August 2009. In our research, we uncovered overwhelming evidence of victim‐blaming behaviors and fundamental disrespect of rape survivors by the police, which directly contributed to their decisions not to submit kits for forensic testing. We had an ethical responsibility to report these negative findings accurately and completely, and in doing so, we were concerned that police stakeholders might disengage from the action research project and hamper our other ethical responsibilities to promote general and public welfare. In this article, we examine the ethical challenges of balancing accountability, collaboration, and social change.     

The Stories We Tell: Introduction to the Special Issue on Ethical Challenges in Community Psychology Research and Practice

This Special Issue examines ethical challenges in community psychology research and practice. The literature on ethics in community psychology has remained largely abstract and aspirational, with few concrete examples and case studies, so the goal of this Special Issue was to expand our written discourse about ethical dilemmas in our field. In these articles, researchers and practitioners share stories of specific ethical challenges they faced and how they sought to resolve them. These first‐person narratives examine how ethical challenges come about, how community psychology values inform ethical decision making, and how lessons learned from these experiences can inform an ethical framework for community psychology.     

Reasoning about make-believe and hypothetical suppositions: Towards a theory of belief-contravening reasoning

The present study explores how suppositions which conflict with accepted beliefs are represented and reasoned about. Two studies test the predictions regarding the nature and developmental changes in children's ability to represent and reason about hypothetical or make-believe suppositions which violate their everyday knowledge and beliefs. In Study 1, 46 4th- and 5th-graders were introduced to a hand puppet, Freddy, who made claims inconsistent with generally accepted beliefs (e.g., “all dogs meow”) because he was pretending (Make-Believe Condition) or believed them (Hypothetical Condition). Participants were asked to think like Freddy and judge whether a conclusion (“There's a dog; does it meow?”) follows logically from the claim. In Study 2, 40 kindergarten (6-year-olds), 3rd–4th grade (10-year-olds), and college students were asked to represent belief contravening make-believe (pretend in a make-believe world that dogs meow) and hypothetical (imagine what the real world would be like if dogs meow) premises, evaluate conclusions of the premises (Rover is a dog, does Rover meow?) and make judgments about the attributes (growl, wag tail, purr, and eat mice) of the entity (a meowing dog) they created. The prediction that it would be easier to represent and reason from belief-contravening suppositions in the Make-Believe than Hypothetical conditions was confirmed in each study, although the two forms of reasoning were directly correlated (Study 2). The results were discussed in terms of the similarities (compartmentalization and integration) and differences (reconciliation) of processes involved in fancifully (make-believe) or seriously (hypothetical) representing and reasoning about belief-contravening suppositions.     

The extent of working memory deficits associated with Williams syndrome: exploration of verbal and spatial domains and executively controlled processes

The present study investigated verbal and spatial working memory (WM) functioning in individuals with the neuro-developmental disorder Williams syndrome (WS) using WM component tasks. While there is strong evidence of WM impairments in WS, previous research has focused on short-term memory and has neglected assessment of executive components of WM. There is a particular lack of consensus concerning the profile of verbal WM functioning in WS. Here, WS participants were compared to typically developing participants matched for (1) verbal ability and (2) spatial ability (N = 14 in each of the 3 groups). Individuals with WS were impaired on verbal WM tasks, both those involving short-term maintenance of information and executive manipulation, in comparison to verbal-matched controls. Surprisingly, individuals with WS were not impaired on a spatial task assessing short-term maintenance of information in memory (remembering spatial locations) compared to spatial-matched controls. They were, however, impaired on a spatial executive WM task requiring the manipulation of spatial information in memory. The present study suggests that individuals with WS show WM impairments that extend to both verbal and spatial domains, although spatial deficits are selective to executive aspects of WM function.     

Missing: critical and skeptical perspectives on comprehensive soldier fitness

The author read with interest, and concern, the January 2011 issue of the American Psychologist. The Special Issue on Comprehensive Soldier Fitness addressed a hugely consequential national issue and offered a vision for psychological resilience along with an elaborate set of supporting articles, concluding with some comments on "Objections" to psychologists working with the military. While a bold vision was offered and a game plan presented, no data or evidence are yet available (it is far too early in the process), and that should concern us all. The author hopes the American Psychological Association (APA) and the American Psychologist offer skeptical and critical views in future issues on the issue of the psychological health of our military and as evidence emerges regarding the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program.     

Reconsidering vocational interests for personnel selection: the validity of an interest-based selection test in relation to job knowledge, job performance, and continuance intentions

Although vocational interests have a long history in vocational psychology, they have received extremely limited attention within the recent personnel selection literature. We reconsider some widely held beliefs concerning the (low) validity of interests for predicting criteria important to selection researchers, and we review theory and empirical evidence that challenge such beliefs. We then describe the development and validation of an interests-based selection measure. Results of a large validation study (N = 418) reveal that interests predicted a diverse set of criteria—including measures of job knowledge, job performance, and continuance intentions—with corrected, cross-validated Rs that ranged from .25 to .46 across the criteria (mean R = .31). Interests also provided incremental validity beyond measures of general cognitive aptitude and facets of the Big Five personality dimensions in relation to each criterion. Furthermore, with a couple exceptions, the interest scales were associated with small to medium subgroup differences, which in most cases favored women and racial minorities. Taken as a whole, these results appear to call into question the prevailing thought that vocational interests have limited usefulness for selection.     

Sleep EEG changes during adolescence: An index of a fundamental brain reorganization

Delta (1–4 Hz) EEG power in non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep declines massively during adolescence. This observation stimulated the hypothesis that during adolescence the human brain undergoes an extensive reorganization driven by synaptic elimination. The parallel declines in synaptic density, delta wave amplitude and cortical metabolic rate during adolescence further support this model. These late brain changes probably represent the final ontogenetic manifestation of nature’s strategy for constructing nervous systems: an initial overproduction of neural elements followed by elimination. Errors in adolescent brain reorganization may cause mental illness; this could explain the typical age of onset of schizophrenia. Longitudinal studies of sleep EEG are enhancing our knowledge of adolescent brain maturation. Our longitudinal study of sleep EEG changes in adolescence showed that delta power, which may reflect frontal cortex maturation, begins its decline between ages 11 and 12 years and falls by 65% by age 17 years. In contrast, NREM theta power begins its decline much earlier. Delta and theta EEG frequencies are important to sleep theory because they behave homeostatically. Surprisingly, these brain changes are unrelated to pubertal maturation but are strongly linked to age. In addition to these (and other) maturational EEG changes, sleep schedules in adolescence change in response to a complex interaction of circadian, social and other influences. Our data demonstrate that the daytime sleepiness that emerges in adolescence is related to the decline in NREM delta as well as to altered sleep schedules. These longitudinal sleep data provide guideposts for studying cognitive and behavioral correlates of adolescent brain reorganization.