Correctional Services and Prison Chaplaincy in Australia: An Exploratory Study

This paper summarizes an exploratory study undertaken to consider the work of Australian chaplaincy personnel ministering to prisoners within correctional facilities. This qualitative research was not concerned with specific correctional institutions per se, but predominantly about the perspectives of chaplains concerning their professional contribution and issues they experienced while trying to provide pastoral care to prisoners. Data from a single-focus group indicated that prison chaplains were striving to fulfill religious and spiritual duties according to national and international standards for the treatment of prisoners. Given various frustrations identified by participants, that either impeded or thwarted their professional role as chaplains, a number of improvements were subsequently identified in order to develop the efficiency and effectiveness of chaplaincy and thus maximize the benefits of pastoral care to prisoners. Implications of this exploratory study relate not only to prison chaplaincy but also to ecclesiastical organizations, correctional facilities, governments and the need of support for further research to be conducted.     

Speech Accuracy and Reading in Children with Cochlear Implants

The Psychological Record - Research on relations between hearing through cochlear implants and accurate speech is still scarce. The present study used the stimulus equivalence paradigm to...     

Effects of chronic cocaine administration on spatial learning and hippocampal spine density in two genetically different strains of rats

Lewis and Fischer-344 rats have been proposed as an addiction model because of their differences in addiction behaviour. It has been suggested that drug addiction is related to learning and memory processes and depends on individual genetic background. We have evaluated learning performance using the eight-arm radial maze (RAM) in Lewis and Fischer-344 adult rats undergoing a chronic treatment with cocaine. In order to study whether morphological alterations were involved in the possible changes in learning after chronic cocaine treatment, we counted the spine density in hippocampal CA1 neurons from animals after the RAM protocol. Our results showed that Fischer-344 rats significantly took more time to carry out test acquisition and made a greater number of errors than Lewis animals. Nevertheless, cocaine treatment did not induce changes in learning and memory processes in both strains of rats. These facts indicate that there are genetic differences in spatial learning and memory that are not modified by the chronic treatment with cocaine. Moreover, hippocampal spine density is cocaine-modulated in both strains of rats. In conclusion, cocaine induces similar changes in hippocampal neurons morphology that are not related to genetic differences in spatial learning in the RAM protocol used here.     

Relative and absolute stability in perceived parenting behaviour: a longitudinal study with children and adolescents

Patterns of relative and absolute stability in parental behaviour with children and adolescents are reported. The sample comprised 523 youth (58.7% girls). Data were collected at three time periods: T1 (M age = 11.1 yr.), T2 (M age = 12.2 yr.), and T3 (M age = 13.2 yr.), each separated by one year. According to children's reports, relative consistency was moderate in both mothers and fathers, particularly as regards communication and strict control. In contrast, as children got older, parental rearing practices related to strict control and hostility decreased. There was a similarity between fathers and mothers in terms of relative and absolute stability. Relative stability was affected by the child's sex, the parenting variable, and the time period; however, the patterns of absolute stability reveal no differences by sex.     

Adaptive patterns of stress responsivity: a preliminary investigation

The adaptive calibration model (ACM) is an evolutionary-developmental theory of individual differences in stress responsivity. In this article, we tested some key predictions of the ACM in a middle childhood sample (N = 256). Measures of autonomic nervous system activity across the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches validated the 4-pattern taxonomy of the ACM via finite mixture modeling. Moreover, the 4 patterns of responsivity showed the predicted associations with family stress levels but no association with measures of ecological stress. Our hypotheses concerning sex differences in responsivity were only partly confirmed. This preliminary study provides initial support for the key predictions of the ACM and highlights some of the methodological challenges that will need to be considered in future research on this topic.     

When do adaptive developmental mechanisms yield maladaptive outcomes?

This article discusses 3 ways in which adaptive developmental mechanisms may produce maladaptive outcomes. First, natural selection may favor risky strategies that enhance fitness on average but which have detrimental consequences for a subset of individuals. Second, mismatch may result when organisms experience environmental change during ontogeny, for instance, because they move from one environment to another. Third, organisms may learn about their environment in order to develop an appropriate phenotype; when cues indicate the environmental state probabilistically, as opposed to deterministically, sampling processes may produce mismatch. For each source of maladaptation, we present a selection of the relevant empirical research and illustrate how models from evolutionary biology can be used to make predictions about maladaptation. We also discuss what data can be collected to test these models in humans. Our goal is to show that evolutionary approaches not only yield insights into adaptive outcomes but can also illuminate the conditions leading to maladaptation. This perspective provides additional nuance to the dialectic between the developmental psychopathology model and evolutionary developmental psychology.