Psychological and sexual functioning among outpatient sexual offenders against children: A Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) cluster analytic study

Multivariate clustering procedures were used to identify homogeneous subgroups of outpatient sex offenders against children (n=110)on the basis of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). Results indicated a five-subgroup solution. Two within-normal-limits and two clinically elevated profile subgroups replicated subtypes found in previous cluster analytic studies of child sex offenders. The fifth subgroup appeared similar in MMPI profile pattern and elevation to a previously identified subtype of rapists. Discriminant analyses showed that subgroups differed along dimensions of cognitive disturbance and sexual functioning. Furthermore, levels of psychopathology corresponded with levels of sexual pathology. Results are discussed with reference to previous MMPI cluster analytic studies of sex offenders and theories of sexual aggression.Portions of this paper were presented at the meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, 1992, Chicago, Illinois.     

Accuracy of memories from childhood and adolescence related to growth and size

The ability of middle-aged adults to recall their body size and events occurring up to 40 years earlier was assessed. Ninety-one subjects recalled their relative height, weight, and fatness during childhood, early adolescence and late adolescence. Accuracy of these memories was compared with the accuracy of current reports. The ability to accurately date benchmarks of their maturation such as menarche and year of maximal growth in height was also examined. Accuracy of reports did not decline uniformly over time. In general, reports of childhood physical characteristics were at least as accurate as reports of current characteristics; that is, they did not differ significantly from current reports. Males were less accurate in their reports of relative height and fatness during early adolescence and childhood. This project has been funded at least in part with federal funds from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service under contract number 53-3K06-5-10. The contents of this article do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, nor does mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.     

Mediating mechanisms in a school-based drug prevention program: first-year effects of the Midwestern Prevention Project

Describes (a) the effects of a social-influences-based drug prevention program (the Midwestern Prevention Project) on the mediating variables it was designed to change and (b) the process by which the effects on mediating variables changed use of drugs (tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana). Students in 42 middle schools and junior high schools in Kansas City, Missouri, and Kansas City, Kansas, were measured in the fall of 1984 (N = 5,065) and again 1 year later (N = 5,008) after 24 of the schools had been through the program. Compared to students in control schools, students in program schools became less likely to express belief in the positive consequences of drug use, less likely to indicate that they would use such drugs in the future, more likely to report that their friends were less tolerant of drug use, and more likely to believe that they were better able to communicate with their friends about drug or school problems. Change in perceptions of friends' tolerance of drug use was the most substantial mediator of program effects on drug use. There was evidence that intentions to use and beliefs about the positive consequences of use may also mediate program effects on drug use.     

Explaining employees' health care costs: a prospective examination of stressful job demands, personal control, and physiological reactivity

The authors tested the ability of stressful demands and personal control in the workplace to predict employees' subsequent health care costs in a sample of 105 full-time nurses. Both subjective and objective measures of workload demands interacted with personal control perceptions in predicting the cumulative health care costs over the ensuing 5-year period. Tonic elevations in salivary cortisol, moreover, mediated the effects of demands and control on health care costs. Neither the job demands variables nor physiological reactivity measures, however, explained subsequent mental health. The results support findings from the epidemiological literature that demonstrate an important role for employees' control in explaining occupational inequalities in coronary heart disease and mortality. The authors argue that the results also encourage control-enhancing job design interventions by suggesting that their outcomes can benefit both organizations and their members.     

An Empirical Investigation of Critical Success Factors in the Personal Selling Process for Homogenous Goods

This study uses a Critical Success Factor approach to evaluate a representative set of 51 selling techniques with the intent of determining what techniques are more critical to sales success for salespeople who sell homogenous products than others and what techniques are associated with failure. A set of twelve techniques were identified that distinguished salespeople in the top decile from those in the bottom decile.     

EPS Prize Lecture. Licking and liking: the assessment of hedonic responses in rodents

Affective processes are a key determinant of behaviour: At its simplest, liked stimuli are approached while disliked stimuli are avoided. Although assessing hedonic responses in nonverbal animals can be difficult, one relatively tractable approach relies on detailed analyses of rodents' consummatory behaviour. Rodents typically produce rhythmic sets of licks that can be grouped into clusters on the basis of the intervals between licks. The mean number of licks in a cluster (cluster size) is directly related to the concentration of palatable and unpalatable solutions. These relationships suggest that lick cluster size might be a useful index of an animal's hedonic reaction to the solution being consumed. I begin by reviewing studies of conditioned flavour preference and aversion that support the idea that lick cluster size can provide useful information about rats' hedonic reactions. I then describe how this methodology has been used to address previously intractable issues in the investigation of contrast effects as well as revealing an analogue of effort justification effects that, in humans, are commonly explained in terms of cognitive dissonance reduction. Finally, I consider how lick analysis might provide information about hedonic responses in animal models of human psychiatric disorders. In all these cases, how an animal did something was particularly informative about why it was doing it.     

Ecological Design-Based Research for Computer Science Education: Affordances and Effectivities for Elementary School Students

Abstract

This article integrates an ecological approach and design-based research in computer science education research by following the simultaneous development of a computer programming environment and curriculum for elementary school age children over 2-1/2 years. We studied the alignment of the affordances provided by the programming environment and curriculum with the effectivities of students in 4th through 6th grade (9-12 years old). We used the computer science concept of initializing as a tracer idea and both qualitative and quantitative data to identify mismatches between the affordances provided by our programming environment and the learners’ effectivities. These included requisite mathematical skills, confusion between resetting and setting up, and incorrectly assuming that features of the programming environment conveyed information. We then describe how we addressed the mismatches by removing or adding functionality to the programming environment, adding signifiers, adapting the curriculum to include scaffolding related to the effectivities, or removing activities.     

The role of stimulus comparison in human perceptual learning: effects of distractor placement

Within-subjects procedures were used to assess the influence of stimulus comparison on perceptual learning in humans. In Experiment 1, participants received intermixed (A, A', A, A',…) or blocked (B, B,…, B', B',…) exposure to pairs of similar female faces. In a subsequent same/different discrimination task, participants were more accurate when the test involved A and A' than when it involved B and B' (or novel faces: C and C'). This perceptual learning effect was reduced by placing a visual distractor (*: either another face or a checkerboard) between successive presentations of the faces during the exposure stage (e.g., A - * - A'). The attenuation of the intermixed versus blocked difference was particularly marked when faces were used as the distractor. In Experiment 2, this reduction in perceptual learning was more marked when * was positioned between the pairs of intermixed faces (i.e., A - * - A') than when it preceded and succeeded those faces (i.e., * - A - A' - *). These results provide the first direct evidence that the opportunity to compare stimuli plays a causal role in supporting perceptual learning. They also support the specific view that perceptual learning reflects an interaction between a short-term habituation process, that ordinarily biases processing away from the frequently presented common elements and toward their less frequently presented unique elements, and a long-term representational process that reflects this bias.     

Effectiveness of a Media Campaign to Reduce

This article describes the evaluation of a 4-1/2-month multimedia traffic-safety campaign that targeted young drivers in northeastern Tennessee. Discussion groups with teenagers provided the basis for public-service announcements (TV, radio, and billboard), which were developed specifically for this intervention. To determine the impact on crash frequencies among drivers 16–19 years old, baseline, intervention, and follow-up crash data were obtained from statistics maintained by the state. A time-series analysis of these data indicated that during the intervention period, there was a 21.6% decrease in crashes for which 16–19-year-old drivers were at fault, whereas a control location in southeastern Tennessee exhibited no significant change.