Effects of the Inclusion and Refutation of Peripheral Details on Eyewitness Credibility

The present study examines the effects of including trivial details in eyewitness testimony on witness credibility, as well as the effects of discrediting presented details. Participants ( N = 155) read 2 brief, contradictory depositions from fictional witnesses about a fictional car accident. One of the depositions included a short set of details unrelated to the accident itself. After participants rated the credibility of the witnesses, the trivial details were refuted and the participants rated the credibility of the witnesses again. Contrary to previous research (Bell & Loftus, 1989), the inclusion of trivial details had no effect on witness credibility. However, significant effects on witness credibility were obtained when the details were refuted. As expected, the credibility of the witness presenting the trivial details significantly decreased after detail refutation. More interestingly, refutation appeared to increase the credibility of the other witness.     

Using secondary students’ views about influences on their spiritual well‐being to inform pastoral care

Spiritual well‐being is reflected in the quality of relationships that each person has in up to four different domains, namely with self, with others, with the environment and/or with God. This study investigated how secondary students perceived relationships with family, friends, school and church community (including God) impacted on their spiritual well‐being. This paper reports the views of 1002 secondary school students aged from 12‐ to 18‐years‐old in Catholic, Christian community and other independent schools in Victoria, Australia. ANOVA and multiple regression analyses of students’ responses on the Quality Of Life Influences Survey developed in this study, and the Spiritual Health And Life‐Orientation Measure, a spiritual well‐being questionnaire for secondary students, revealed significant differences in perceptions students held about influences on their spiritual well‐being. A case study illustrates how these instruments can be used to inform pastoral care of young people.     

Philosophy of Education: Aim,Theory, Common Sense,and Research – Richard Pring

Books reviewed: Philosophy of Education: Aim, Theory, Common Sense, and Research. By Richard Pring. London: Continuum, 2004. viii + 280 pages. ISBN 08264‐7239‐7.     

Unification And Explanation

In this article we criticize two recent articles that examinethe relation between explanation and unification. Halonen and Hintikka (1999), on the one hand,claim that no unification is explanation. Schurz (1999), on the other hand, claims that all explanationis unification. We give counterexamples to both claims. We propose a pluralistic approach to the problem:explanation sometimes consists in unification, but in other cases different kinds of explanation(e.g., causal explanation) are required; and none of these kinds is more fundamental.     

Career Aspirations of Adolescent Girls: Effects of Achievement Level,Grade, and Single-Sex School Environment

The career aspirations of high-achieving adolescent girls were explored by comparing them to the aspirations of adolescent boys as well as by looking at the influence of grade in school, achievement level, and an all-girls school environment. The participants' ideal and real career aspirations, scored in terms of prestige, were investigated via 2 sets of analyses , with coed (n = 704) and single-sex female (n = 494) adolescent samples. Results showed that high-achieving girls exceeded the aspirations of average-achieving girls and boys, and were the same as those of high-achieving boys. Gender and grade differences in ideal and real career choices over all achievement levels are also reported and discussed. Girls at single-sex schools had higher real career aspirations than did girls and boys at coed schools.     

Young adults' achievement and attributional strategies in the transition from school to work: antecedents and consequences

This study focused on investigating the extent to which the achievement and attributional strategies individuals deploy influence their success in dealing with the transition from school to work, and whether their success or failure in this particular would have consequences for the kinds of strategy they deployed later in life. Two hundred and fifty young adults filled in the Cartoon‐Attribution‐Strategy Inventory, a revised version of Beck's Depression Inventory, and a work status questionnaire at the beginning of the last spring term of their curriculum, four months after their graduation, and a year and a half after it. The results showed that the deployment of maladaptive strategies, such as passive avoidance, led to problems in dealing with the transition from school to work. In turn, young adults' problems in dealing with this transition decreased their use of self‐serving causal attributions, which was also found to lead to increased depressive symptomatology. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.