Informed Consent: An Ethical Issue in Conducting Research with Male Partner Violent Offenders

Ethical codes help guide the methods of research that involves samples gathered from “at-risk” populations. The current article reviews general as well as specific ethical principles related to gathering informed consent from partner violent offenders mandated to outpatient treatment, a group that may be at increased risk of unintentional coercion in behavioral sciences research due to court mandates that require outpatient treatment without the ethical protections imbued upon prison populations. Recommendations are advanced to improve the process of informed consent within this special population and data supporting the utility of the recommendations in a sample 70 partner violent offenders are provided. Data demonstrate that participants were capable of comprehending all essential elements of consent.     

The Joint Multivariate Modeling of Multiple Mixed Response Sources: Relating Student Performances with Feedback Behavior

The present study concerns a Dutch computer-based assessment, which includes an assessment process about information literacy and a feedback process for students. The assessment is concerned with the measurement of skills in information literacy and the feedback process with item-based support to improve student learning. To analyze students’ feedback behavior (i.e. feedback use and attention time), test performance, and speed of working, a multivariate hierarchical latent variable model is proposed. The model can handle multivariate mixed responses from multiple sources related to different processes and comprehends multiple measurement components for responses and response times. A flexible within-subject latent variable structure is defined to explore multiple individual latent characteristics related to students’ test performance and feedback behavior. Main results of the computer-based assessment showed that feedback-information pages were less visited by well-performing students when they relate to easy items. Students’ attention paid to feedback was positively related to working speed but not to the propensity to use feedback.     

Sequence and Structure in the Concept Development of Children with Emotional and Behavioral Difficulties

We investigated the order of acquisition of concepts and cognitive processes in children with emotional and behavioral difficulties and the extent to which these children show similarity to ordinary children in sequence and structure of development. Similarity in developmental sequence was strongly supported by scalogram analyses and has clear implications for organizing teaching, but similarity in structure was less clear. Cognitive processes, however, and the nature of the children's reasoning were clarified by the method of exploration used. This was particularly fruitful for providing insight into the difficulties children may have. The findings thus contribute to understanding with a view toward furthering concept development in children with emotional and behavioral difficulties.     

Animation and the location of beauty

This paper discusses the development of animation and imaginative activity in a case in which there has been previous severe deprivation. Clinical material from work with an 8-year-old boy will illustrate how omnipotent behaviour, which has the function of keeping fear and feeling from consciousness, can give way to imaginative interaction with the environment. I suggest that, when internal objects have been frozen, it may be safer for the child to see animation outside the room. This may be a necessary stage before a child can begin to play with the therapist inside the room. I am using the term 'animation' in the sense of new imaginative play that has been stimulated by an apprehension of beauty in nature. This is contrasted with driven manic defending against awareness of self and others.     

The spatial correspondence hypothesis and orienting in response to central and peripheral spatial cues

Two experiments examined visual orienting in response to spatial precues. In Experiment 1A participants were informed that targets usually (p =.8) appeared on the same side as cues in a particular colour (e.g., red). Rapid orienting was observed, with both central and peripherally presented cues. In Experiment IB cue displays were spatially symmetric. Participants were informed that target location (left or right) was usually predicted (p =.8) by cue colour (red or green). Orienting effects were observed, but these were slower to develop and much weaker than in Experiment 1 A. In Experiment 2A and 2B the cue was a single, centrally presented letter. We compared effects of spatially symmetric (T, X, v, o) and asymmetric (d, b) letter cues. Validity effects were present for asymmetric cues, but entirely absent for symmetric cues. These finding are discussed in terms of Lambert and Duddy's (2002) proposal that spatial correspondence learning plays a critical role in spatial precueing. Implications of the results for the distinction between endogenous and exogenous orienting are also considered.     

Transsaccadic integration of bystander locations

The present study investigated whether and how the location of bystander objects is encoded, maintained, and integrated across an eye movement. Bystander objects are objects that remain unfixated directly before and after the saccade for which transsaccadic integration is being examined. Three experiments are reported that examine location coding of bystander objects relative to the future saccade target object, relative to the saccade source object, and relative to other bystander objects. Participants were presented with a random‐dot pattern and made a saccade from a central source to a designated saccade target. During this saccade the position of a single bystander was changed on half of the trials and participants had to detect the displacement. Postsaccadically the presence of the target, source, and other bystanders was manipulated. Results indicated that the location of bystander objects could be integrated across a saccade, and that this relied on configurational coding. Furthermore the present data provide evidence for the view that transsaccadic perception of spatial layout is not inevitably tied to the saccade target or the saccade source, that it makes use of objects and object configurations in a flexible manner that is partly governed by the task relevance of the various display items, and that it exploits the incidental configurational structure in the display's layout in order to increase its capacity limits.     

Holistic face encoding is modulated by perceived face race: Evidence from perceptual adaptation

Human expertise at processing faces relies on how facial features are encoded: as a whole template rather than as a sum of independent features. This holistic encoding is less prominent for other-race faces, possibly accounting for the difficulty one encounters in recognizing these faces (the ‘other-race effect’). Here, we tested the hypothesis that the magnitude of holistic face encoding can be modulated by racial categorization of the face. Caucasian participants performed a face-composite task with ‘racially-ambiguous’ face-stimuli (cross-race morphed faces, equally categorized as Asian or Caucasian faces in an independent task). The perceived race of the ambiguous faces was manipulated using adaptation. Experiment 1 showed that identical morphed face-stimuli were processed more holistically when perceived as ‘same-race’ than as ‘other-race’, i.e., following adaptation to ‘other-race’ versus ‘same-race’, respectively. Experiment 2 ascertained that the determining factor in the observed holistic processing modulation was the race of the racially-ambiguous face as perceived, rather than expected, by the participants, which supports the idea that the holistic processing of the face-stimuli was modulated by their race-categorization at the perceptual level.     

Work-life Balance Policies: The Use of Flexitime

This study investigated the use of flexitime as a Work-life balance (WLB) policy and understanding employee perceptions regarding the use of flexitime among South African employees. A qualitative design with an exploratory approach was used. A non-probability purposive sample (n = 15) was taken in the financial sector. Data collection was done by was means of semi-structured interviews. Content analysis was used to analyse the data. Four main themes were extracted. The first two themes related to the various ways in which participants use flexitime and the influencing factors. Participants use flexitime according to their own preference (e.g., Spillover of working hours, dividing one's working day into smaller work hours, working from different locations) and were influenced by factors such as client's needs and expectations, own workload/pressure and personal commitments/responsibilities. The third theme related to various perceptions regarding the level of position of management, visibility and also personal life and situation. The last theme indicated that the use of flexitime have consequences, which include amongst others delay in work/deadlines, reduced productivity or performance, increased workload and health consequences.     

Rule learning by zebra finches in an artificial grammar learning task: which rule?

A hallmark of the human language faculty is the use of syntactic rules. The natural vocalizations of animals are syntactically simple, but several studies indicate that animals can detect and discriminate more complex structures in acoustic stimuli. However, how they discriminate such structures is often not clear. Using an artificial grammar learning paradigm, zebra finches were tested in a Go/No-go experiment for their ability to distinguish structurally different three-element sound sequences. In Experiment 1, zebra finches learned to discriminate ABA and BAB from ABB, AAB, BBA, and ABB sequences. Tests with probe sounds consisting of four elements suggested that the discrimination was based on attending to the presence or absence of repeated A- and B-elements. One bird generalized the discrimination to a new element type. In Experiment 2, we continued the training by adding four-element songs following a ‘first and last identical versus different’ rule that could not be solved by attending to repetitions. Only two out of five birds learned the overall discrimination. Testing with novel probes demonstrated that discrimination was not based on using the ‘first and last identical’ rule, but on attending to the presence or absence of the individual training stimuli. The two birds differed in the strategies used. Our results thus demonstrate only a limited degree of abstract rule learning but highlight the need for extensive and critical probe testing to examine the rules that animals (and humans) use to solve artificial grammar learning tasks. They also underline that rule learning strategies may differ between individuals.     

The effect of working memory load on semantic illusions: What the phonological loop and central executive have to contribute

When asked how many animals of each kind Moses took on the Ark, most people respond with “two” despite the substituted name (Moses for Noah) in the question. Possible explanations for semantic illusions appear to be related to processing limitations such as those of working memory. Indeed, individual working memory capacity has an impact upon how sentences containing substitutions are processed. This experiment examined further the role of working memory in the occurrence of semantic illusions using a dual-task working memory load approach. Participants verified statements while engaging in either articulatory suppression or random number generation. Secondary task type had a significant effect on semantic illusion rate, but only when comparing the control condition to the two dual-task conditions. Furthermore, secondary task performance in the random number generation condition declined, suggesting a tradeoff between tasks. Response time analyses also showed a different pattern of processing across the conditions. The findings suggest that the phonological loop plays a role in representing semantic illusion sentences coherently and in monitoring for details, while the role of the central executive is to assist gist-processing of sentences. This usually efficient strategy leads to error in the case of semantic illusions.