Adolescent autonomy and minors' legal rights: contraception and abortion

During adolescence, dependent children grow into independent and autonomous adults, and it is necessary to make difficult policy judgements about children's rights. Questions that arise include: shoudl minors have the right to work, to marry, to make legal contracts, and to obtain medical care without parental consent; or should parental consent be required by the state in order to protect minors and to preserve parental authority. This discussion focuses upon the area of family planning, a topic of special interest to policymakers because they now face many questions about minor's contraceptive and abortion rights in Congress, in state legislatures, and in the courts. comprehensive response to policy questions about family planning rights for minors would require information about adolescent development, maturity, and autonomy; about teenagers' sexual and contraceptive attitudes and behavior; about the nature of parent-child communication regarding sexual and contraceptive questions; and about politics and values. Many from the legal system want help in answering questions about minors' rights. As little research has been conducted, policymakers can obtain only limited guidance from social scientists. As the policy issue is fundamentally tied to developmental issues, the better the knowledge about the development of cognitive competence, social competence, and autonomy, the easier it will be to make the difficult legal and policy judgements about minor's rights. Regarding minors' access to contraceptives, the situation is somewhat cloudy. There is only 1 state statute that requires parental consent for access to contraceptive medical services, passed in Utah in 1981, and pertaining to services provided with public funds. Yet, common law requires parental consent for any medical treatment (with exceptions for emancipated or mature minors) and "physicians often hesitate to serve young people without first obtaining parental consent because they fear civil liability." The situation is even more cloudy in the case of abortion. The Supreme Court's present position seems to grant emancipated and mature minors access to abortion without a requirement for parental consent or notification, but states may place some requirements for parental involvement upon other minors, as long as these minors have an alternative route to abortion. A thorough search of the literature on adolescent development reveals that the policy questions loom larger than the alternatives. 2 policy alternatives are: to single out a reasonable age below which minors require either parental consent or some form of adult involvement; or treat family planning and fertility control as basic rights which cannot be abridged because of age.     

Assent and Dissent: Ethical Considerations in Research With Toddlers

In accordance with ethical principles and standards, researchers conducting studies with children are expected to seek assent and respect their dissent from participation. Little attention has been given to assent and dissent in research with toddlers, who have limited cognitive and emotional capabilities. We discuss research with toddlers in the context of assent and dissent and propose guidelines to ensure that research with toddlers still adheres to ethical principles. These guidelines include designing engaging studies, monitoring refusal and distress, and partnering with parents. Research with toddlers requires flexibility and creativity to respect toddlers in the context of their developmental capabilities.     

Meta-analysis of the association between rumination and reduced autobiographical memory specificity

The CaRFAX model, proposed by Williams J. M. G. (2006. Capture and rumination, functional avoidance, and executive control (CaRFAX): Three processes that underlie overgeneral memory. Cognition and Emotion, 20, 548–568. doi:10.1080/02699930500450465; Williams, J. M. G., Barnhofer, T., Crane, C., Herman, D., Raes, F., Watkins, E., &; Dalgleish, T. (2007). Autobiographical memory specificity and emotional disorder. Psychological Bulletin, 133(1), 122–148. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.133.1.122) posits that reduced autobiographical memory specificity, a key factor associated with the emergence and maintenance of emotional disorders, may result from heightened rumination. We provide the first meta-analysis of the relation between autobiographical memory specificity and trait rumination. PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES and MEDLINE databases were searched and the following were extracted: the correlation between the number of specific memories recalled in the Autobiographical Memory Test and self-reported trait rumination scores, and its sub-factors – brooding and reflection. The pooled effect size for the correlation between memory specificity and trait rumination was small (d?=??.05) and did not differ significantly from zero (p?=?.09). The effect sizes for the correlation with brooding and reflection were not significantly different from zero. There is limited support for the association between trait rumination and memory specificity suggested in CaRFAX.     

A critical evaluation of coercive persuasion as used in the assessment of cults

An intense controversy regarding new and unpopular religious movements, or cults, continues to involve professionals at the juncture of psychiatry, religion, and the law. As the cults come under increasingly critical scrutiny, the concept most often used for assessing them is that of coercive persuasion. Briefly, such persuasion is seen as a means of psychological manipulation that leaves individuals without the normal control of their own minds. Considering recent pertinent cases and literature, the authors find major weaknesses in this theory. When applied it proves elastic, and it is regularly identified in cults for conduct that, on close examination, is similar to that of established religious groups. The concept of coercive persuasion as a means of thought control fails to pass scientific muster, and it serves poorly as a means of evaluating the connection between alleged harm and the cults. Instead, the authors suggest that a search for an alternative theory might well begin with one based on the individual as competent or not to make a choice regarding religion.     

A Balancing Act—Telehealth Cancer Genetics and Practitioners’ Experiences of a Triadic Consultation

Telehealth is increasingly used for outreach service in cancer genetic counseling; however what occurs during the consultation and the roles practitioners adopt is largely unknown. Fifteen practitioners participated in semi-structured interviews that explored their roles within telehealth, compared to face-to-face consultations, and the relationship between practitioners during telehealth. As they were not physically present with the patient, most participants felt that telehealth altered the genetic clinician’s role to one of a ‘visiting specialist’. Genetic counselors described undertaking multiple roles during the telehealth process. Two models of interaction were observed. The medical model reduced the interaction to a dyadic consultation by having the genetic counselor off-screen and included minimal clinician meetings and supervision. The triadic co-facilitation model incorporated a high level of information exchange, counselor autonomy and included the counselor onscreen. The co-facilitation model offers a useful framework for telehealth genetic counselling, offering complementary roles between practitioners and efficient service delivery.     

When stereotype knowledge prevents retrieval-induced forgetting

In the present study, we examined the effects of stereotypes and the typicality of traits in retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF). The participants in the experiment practiced half of the high-typicality, low-typicality or control traits associated with the name of a stereotype (athlete, scientist) or with the name of a person (Mikel, Jon). With the person name the high-typicality, low-typicality or control traits produced no evidence of stereotype activation. The traits were processed as independent features and generated RIF both immediately and at a one-week interval. Stereotype activation during encoding facilitated the integration of high-typicality traits, avoiding RIF in immediate and one-week recall. Moreover, both high-typicality and low-typicality traits benefited from stereotypes in one-week recognition. These findings show that previous knowledge contributes to integrate stereotypic traits that would otherwise compete for retrieval, thus producing RIF.     

Monitoring and Performance: A Comparison of Computer and Supervisor Monitoring1

This research addresses how computer monitoring affects the way individual workers perform on their jobs. The study tests the effects of a supervisor's physical versus electronic presence on individual worker performance. Forty-two women were hired to perform a simple data entry task. The women worked in one of three conditions: (a) alone, (b) in the physical presence of the supervisor who monitored their work, or (c) computer-monitored (electronic presence) by the data entry system without the physical presence of the supervisor. It was hypothesized that social facilitation effects would result from either the physical or electronic presence conditions. Electronic presence does seem to result in social facilitation, though the mean differences are not statistically significant. The results for physical presence are mixed. Profile analysis indicates that there are significant differences in the patterns of performance. When subjects work alone or with electronic presence, performance follows a steady pattern. When subjects work with physical presence, performance is somewhat lower than in the alone condition, except when the supervisor is actively monitoring, then individual performance is significantly increased. There are no satisfaction differences between the three conditions. The results of this research suggest that “Big Brother” is not lurking inside every computer-monitoring system.     

Contrasting contributions of phonological short‐term memory and long‐term knowledge to vocabulary learning in a foreign language

The contributions of phonological short‐term memory and existing foreign vocabulary knowledge to the learning of new words in a second language were compared in a sample of 40 Greek children studying English at school. The children's speed of learning new English words in a paired‐associate learning task was strongly influenced by their current English vocabulary, but was independent of phonological memory skill, indexed by nonword repetition ability. However, phonological memory performance was closely linked to English vocabulary scores. The findings suggest that in learners with considerable familiarity with a second language, foreign vocabulary acquisition is mediated largely by use of existing knowledge representations.