A case-control analysis of felony convictions among recreational drug users

This study applied an epidemiologic case-control design to the identification of variables predicting which subjects in a population of recreational drug users were likely to have a felony conviction. A sample of 158 self-identified drug users responded to the web-based DRUGNET survey from February, 1997 through June, 1998. In this sample of 704 U.S. citizens who reported using illicit drugs, 79 (11.2%) reported having a drug-related felony conviction. A further 52 (7.4%) subjects reported felony convictions not related to drugs. Control subjects were drawn from the same sample and matched to cases on sex, age, and ethnicity. Subjects with drug-related convictions differed significantly from controls on 13 variables and those with nondrug-related convictions differed on 11 variables out of the 82 used in this study. Although there are major limitations given the self-selection of the sample, the differences between the groups indicates that we should be wary in generalizing from the minority of drug users who are arrested or incarcerated to the population of drug users in general.     

Relation of Age of Onset to the Type and Severity of Child and Adolescent Conduct Problems

In a cross-sectional household sample of 9-through 17-year-old youths from 4 U.S. communities, youths with earlier ages of onset of conduct problems engaged in more conduct problems than youths with later ages of onset when current age and gender were controlled. Specifically, youths with earlier ages of onset were more likely to engage in several types of physical aggression, frequent lying, theft, and vandalism and were less likely to engage in only truancy. There also was an inverse relation between age of onset and level of functional impairment, mental health service use, and meeting diagnostic criteria for conduct disorder, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and oppositional defiant disorder. Within the limits of cross-sectional data, these results support the hypothesis that key aspects of the heterogeneity of conduct problems among youths are related to the age of onset of conduct problems.     

Systematic analysis of deficits in visual attention

A variety of impairments in visual attention can follow damage to the brain. The authors develop systematic methods for analyzing such impairments in terms of C. Bundesen's (1990) Theory of Visual Attention and apply these in a group of 9 patients with parietal lobe lesions and variable spatial neglect. In whole report, patients report letters from brief, vertical arrays in left or right visual field. The results show substantial, largely bilateral impairments in processing capacity, implying a major nonlateralized aspect to neglect. In partial report, arrays contain 1 or 2 letters in red and/or green. The task is to report only those letters in a specified target color. In addition to the expected bias against left-sided letters, patients show striking, bilateral preservation of top-down control, or attentional priority for targets. The results show how differentiation of attentional impairments can be informed by a theory of normal function.     

Generative Concern, Political Commitment, and Charitable Actions

The implications of psychosocial generativity (Erikson, 1950) for understanding contemporary politics were explored. Study 1 replicated, in two samples, previous findings that generativity concerns are related to a variety of political activities, including the expenditure of time and money in support of political organizations. Using path analyses, Study 2 extended these findings and demonstrated how midlife generativity concerns interacted with political orientation and interest in politics to produce stronger relationships with giving. These findings suggest that people view the political arena as one important way to improve society and thereby manifest cultural generativity. Although focusing on the domain of politics, these studies highlight the complexity of generativity as a construct; broad concerns with generativity operate within the context of ideological commitments to produce greater levels of generative activity.     

TEACHING JANITORIAL SKILLS TO THE MENTALLY RETARDED: ACQUISITION,GENERALIZATION, AND MAINTENANCE

A task analysis of janitorial skills required for cleaning a restroom was performed. Six subtasks with a total of 181 component responses were identified. Subjects were required to progress through a series of four prompt levels ordered generally from more to less direct assistance for 20 of the most difficult component steps. Another series of four prompts, ordered from less to more direct assistance, was used to teach the other 161 responses. Subjects progressed to the next more intense prompt level contingent on a failure to respond appropriately with less assistance. A multiple baseline across subjects as well as the six subtasks was employed to evaluate the efficacy of the procedures. Six moderately retarded adolescents were trained in their public school. The results show rapid response acquisition, skill generalization to a second restroom, and maintenance of the newly learned behavior. The present research provides evidence of a model for analyzing and training vocational skills to the mentally retarded.     

Binary action based estimation of propensities

An observer is to make inference statements about a quantityp, called apropensity and bounded between 0 and 1, based on the observation thatp does or does not exceed a constantc. The propensityp may have an interpretation as a proportion, as a long-run relative frequency, or as a personal probability held by some subject. Applications in medicine, engineering, political science, and, most especially, human decision making are indicated. Bayes solutions for the observer are obtained based on prior distributions in the mixture of beta distribution family; these are then specialized to power-function prior distributions. Inference about logp and log odds is considered. Multiple-action problems are considered in which the focus of inference shifts to theprocess generating the propensitiesp, both in the case of a process parameter known to the subject and unknown. Empirical Bayes techniques are developed for observer inference aboutc when is known to the subject. A Bayes rule, a minimax rule and a beta-minimax rule are constructed for the subject when he is uncertain about.This research was partially supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense and was monitored by ONR under Contract No. N00014-77-C-0095. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Office of Naval Research, or Carnegie-Mellon University.     

Effects of practice and distribution of auditory signals on absolute identification

In absolute identification of intensity, signals near the edges of the range being used are usually identified more accurately than those in the midrange. In one account, the extreme signals serve as anchors, and judgments are postulated to deteriorate as the distance from the signal to the nearest anchor increases. Our data suggest that, provided one corrects for the inherent asymmetry of errors for end and interior signals, the edge effect is rather smaller than it might first appear and is largely confined to the more intense edge. Moreover, anchors are not necessarily located at the edges of the range, but rather at the edges of the largest subset among which difficult discriminations are required. Further, this subset is not defined wholly by the signals used in a particular run, but by these together with those previously encountered in that day’s session. Neither practice nor payoffs appear to influence the location of the anchor so long as the discrimination requirements are maintained. Finally, the role of anchors is interpreted in terms of the differential location of an attention band which controls the sample size upon which the representation of the signal is based.     

Evaluation of instructional software: Design considerations and recommendations

The elements of desirable research design for the evaluation of educational technology are discussed with reference to the context of existing research. Sources of internal invalidity, type of compared educational activity, and outcome measures are considered. Finally, recommendations regarding the direction of evaluation research are made. Research designs that take into account the characteristics of the learner, the software, and the teacher preferably within the framework of a model of the learning process should be adopted.     

Adapting chronometric tests for field studies of cognitive ability

This study was designed to examine the relationship of hand preference to performance on a thumb-positioning task. Two hypotheses were proposed on the basis of hemispheric lateralization. The first stated that all subjects would perform the task more accurately using the left thumb, regardless of hand preference. The second hypothesis tested was that left-handed subjects would perform more accurately than right-handed subjects. Each of 20 neurologically intact adults grouped by hand preference reproduced a criterion thumb position with both thumbs simultaneously. Absolute error, recorded for each movement and analyzed by mixed analysis of variance, did support the first hypothesis. However, the left-handed group did not perform statistically differently from right-handed subjects. Factors influencing the data are discussed and recommendations for further studies are made.     

Gender Differences in Parental Coping Following their Child's Death

The impact of the deaths of 19 children from malignancy on subsequent patterns of maternal and paternal coping styles was evaluated in a retrospective study of Dutch parents. The parents had been bereaved on average for 19 months. Parental coping was measured by the Utrecht Coping List which has comparable male and female norm groups. Coping styles differed significantly between the bereaved parents and their respective norm groups, particularly for parents bereaved for 18 months or less. The impact of the loss of a child, in terms of their parents' capacity to cope with everyday problems and events, would appear to affect mothers and fathers rather differently. But fathers and mothers who had been bereaved for more than 18 months were both closer to their comparable coping style norm groups than those bereaved for less than that time.