The Effectiveness of Victim Resistance Strategies against Stranger Child Abduction: An Analysis of Attempted and Completed Cases

Existing research, policy information, and materials intended to teach child safety assumes that certain behaviours will protect children in the event that a stranger tries to abduct them. However, there is little empirical basis for these assumptions. This paper examines the effectiveness of strategies thought to increase the likelihood that a child will be able to resist an attempted stranger child abduction event. Seventy‐eight cases of stranger child abduction that occurred in the UK between 1988 and 2014, including 25 attempted cases and 53 completed cases, were examined in order to ascertain the relative prevalence of various resistance types and to assess their effectiveness of six key resistance strategies based on whether the presence or absence affected the outcome of the abduction. Results show that direct, unequivocal verbal resistance, running away, and a composite approach where the victim runs away, calls for help, and reports the offence were highly effective means of resisting an offender, whereas physical resistance, indirect verbal resistance, and non‐resistance were not effective. Female victims were almost twice as likely to employ any kind of resistance strategy against an offender as male victims were. The implications of these findings for augmenting ways in which children are taught about safety are discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Selected Spiritual Religious,and Family Factors in the Prevention of School Violence

The mass‐casualty school shooting incidents in recent years have heightened concern about the safety of U.S. schools and prompted responses that, in many cases, have centered mainly on bolstering security on school campuses. Some researchers have concluded, however, that the most effective prevention efforts are those that are more comprehensive in scope. This article explores selected spiritual, religious, and family value factors that research has indicated may play an important protective role in strengthening resilience in young people and minimizing at‐risk behavior that may be associated with school violence.     

Moral Cognitivism and Character

It may seem to follow from Peter Winch's claim in ‘The Universalizability of Moral Judgements’ that a certain class of first‐person moral judgments are not universalizable that such judgments cannot be given a cognitivist interpretation. But Winch's argument does not involve the denial of moral cognitivism and in this paper I show how such judgements may be cognitively determined yet not universalizable. Drawing on an example from James Joyce's The Dead, I suggest that in the kind of situation Winch envisages where we properly return a different moral judgement to another agent it may be that we accept their judgement is right for them because we recognise that it is determined by values that, simply because of the particular people we are, we could never know or understand in just the same way.     

Shortcuts to geographic profiling success: a reply to Rossmo (2005)

In ‘Geographic profiling: The fast, frugal, and accurate way’ (Applied Cognitive Psychology, 2004, vol. 18, pp. 105–121), we demonstrated that most people are able to predict the home location of a serial offender by using a simple prediction strategy that exploits patterns found in the offender's spatial behaviour. In this issue of Applied Cognitive Psychology, Rossmo challenges the validity of this research with respect to our data selection and methods of analysis. In response, we argue that: his proposed method for selecting data is unscientific; there is little evidence to support his claim that five crimes are required before profiles can be accurate; search area as a measure of profile accuracy has not yet been shown to be more useful than error distance; the heuristics we have examined are defined correctly and do lead to improvements in profile accuracy; and computerized geographic profiling is not a free service. Our comments aim to generate constraint in those intent on building confidence in computerized geographic profiling systems in the absence of strong empirical evidence to support their use. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

THE ESCHATOLOGICAL THEOGONY OF THE GOD WHO MAY BE: EXPLORING THE CONCEPT OF DIVINE PRESENCE IN KEARNEY, HEGEL, AND HEIDEGGER

Abstract: While heightening the nihilistic tension underlying the discourse of Richard Kearney, I highlight the positive contribution his book The God Who May Be makes to the debate concerning the need for a postmodern revitalization of religious symbolism. I argue for three qualifications of Kearney's argument, suggesting, in response to Kearney's exclusionary approach to the God who "neither is nor is not but may be," a God whose possibility for meaningfulness arises as an "eschatological theogony" from out of the chaos (confusion and openness) of contemporary religious symbolism. Arguing that such a radical reenvisioning of God must be tempered and given meaning through reentering and reaffirming onto-theology in a qualified (hermeneutical) sense, I sketch a possible renewal of meaning for the traditional Christian parousia -concept as a hermeneutical circle between Hegel's systematic closure of Western metaphysics and Heidegger's deconstructive appropriation of the hidden possibilities of presence within the onto-theological tradition.     

Low-level lead exposure, executive functioning, and learning in early childhood.

The current paper presents evidence relating low-level lead exposure to impaired executive functioning in young children. Using the Shape School task, we assessed focused attention, attention switching, working memory, and the ability to inhibit automatic responses in a cohort of 170 children. Participants performed the Shape School task at both 48 and 54 months of age; the mean blood lead level was 6.49 microg/dl at 48 months. After controlling for a wide range of sociodemographic, prenatal, and perinatal variables, blood lead level was negatively associated with children's focused attention while performing the tasks, efficiency at naming colors, and inhibition of automatic responding. In addition, children with higher blood lead levels completed fewer phases of the task and knew fewer color and shape names. There was no association between blood lead and performance on the most difficult tasks, those requiring attention switching or the combination of inhibition and switching. Children's IQ scores were strongly associated with blood lead and Shape School performance, and when entered as a covariate, only color knowledge and the number of tasks completed remained significant. Results provide only weak support for impaired executive functioning, but the deficits in color knowledge may indicate a primary sensory deficit or difficulty with forming conditional associations, both implicating disruptions in dopamine system function.     

Geographic profiling: the fast,frugal, and accurate way

The current article addresses the ongoing debate about whether individuals can perform as well as actuarial techniques when confronted with real world, consequential decisions. A single experiment tested the ability of participants (N = 215) and an actuarial technique to accurately predict the residential locations of serial offenders based on information about where their crimes were committed. Results indicated that participants introduced to a ‘Circle’ or ‘Decay’ heuristic showed a significant improvement in the accuracy of predictions, and that their post‐training performance did not differ significantly from the predictions of one leading actuarial technique. Further analysis of individual performances indicated that approximately 50% of participants used appropriate heuristics that typically led to accurate predictions even before they received training, while nearly 75% improved their predictive accuracy once introduced to either of the two heuristics. Several possible explanations for participants' accurate performances are discussed and the practical implications for police investigations are highlighted. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Asymmetrical sample training produces asymmetrical retention functions in feature-present/feature-absent matching in pigeons

Pigeons were trained in a matching task in which samples involved presentation of a white line on a green background (feature-present) or on an otherwise dark key (feature-absent). After asymmetrical training in which one group was initially trained with the feature-present sample and another was initially trained with the feature-absent sample, marked retention asymmetries were obtained. In both groups, accuracy dropped precipitously on trials involving the initially trained sample and remained high on trials involving the sample introduced second in training. It was concluded that asymmetrical training encouraged a single-code/default strategy in which only the sample trained initially was coded. Consistent with this conclusion, changing attributes of either sample reduced accuracy to a greater extent in pigeons initially trained with that sample than in pigeons for which that sample was introduced second in training.     

Self‐reference and group membership: evidence for a group‐reference effect

Two experiments were designed to explore whether encoding information in reference to a group would facilitate the later recall of that information to the same extent as encoding with reference to the self. In both experiments, participants encoded adjectives with reference to the self, semantic properties, or a group and were subsequently given a surprise‐free recall test. In Experiment 1 (N = 37), the participants' university served as the reference group. In Experiment 2 (N=41), the participants' family served as the reference group. In both experiments, self‐reference resulted in better recall than semantic processing, replicating the typical self‐reference effect (SRE). More importantly, strong evidence for a group‐reference effect (GRE) was found in that group‐reference resulted in better recall than semantic processing and in fact facilitated recall to the same extent as self‐referencing. The existing explanations (schemas, organization, elaboration, mental cueing, and evaluation) for the SRE were compared with regard to their viability in accounting for the GRE patterns. We discuss additional features that may be important in the explanation of the SRE and suggest future directions for research on group‐referencing. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.