Maltreated and Comparison Adolescents’ Recollections of Lifetime Residences: Relationship to Delinquency and Marijuana Use

This study of child welfare-affiliated maltreated youth (n?=?216) and comparison youth (n?=?128) from the same community (age M?=?18.21, SD?=?1.42) examined: 1. whether child/caregiver characteristics and maltreatment status were associated with lifetime number of residences; and 2. whether child/caregiver characteristics, residences, and maltreatment status were associated with delinquency and marijuana use. Maltreatment status, ever living with a nonparent caregiver, and being older were associated with more residences during childhood. More residences and male sex were associated with person offense delinquency and marijuana use. It is important to help caregivers who live in disadvantaged neighborhoods, especially families with child welfare involvement, understand the behavioral consequences of a high number of residences during childhood and adolescence and provide support for stable long-term housing.     

A Conceptual Structure of Justice - Providing a Tool to Analyse Conceptions of Justice

Justice is a contested concept. There are many different and competing conceptions, i.e. interpretations of the concept. Different domains of justice deal with different fields of application of justice claims, such as structural justice, distributive justice, participatory justice or recognition. We present a formal conceptual structure of justice applicable to all these domains. We show that conceptions of justice can be described by specifying the following conceptual elements: the judicandum (that which is to be judged as just or unjust), the community of justice including claim holders and claim addressees, their claims (and obligations), the informational base for the assessment, the principles of justice, and on a more practical level, the instruments of justice. By specifying these conceptual elements of justice, it is possible to analyse and compare different conceptions of justice, to assess their internal consistency, to explore new definitions of justice in an analytical way, and to explicate an idea of justice in a manner that provides concrete links to the relevant context.     

Would You Be Happier If You Looked Better? A Focusing Illusion

Some people might believe that individuals who are more satisfied with their body are also happier. However, people tend to overrate the influence of some factors (e.g. money or health) on their happiness; a phenomenon termed the focusing illusion. Our aim was to examine the focusing illusion in relation to body satisfaction. We experimentally manipulated body satisfaction and life satisfaction focus by varying the order of relevant measurement scales. Volunteers (N = 97) completed two questionnaires placed in separate envelopes to control the order of scales administration. Participants either completed the Body Satisfaction Scale followed by the Satisfaction with Life Scale or vice versa. In line with the focusing illusion the association between body satisfaction and life satisfaction was significantly stronger when participants were asked about their body satisfaction first. Body satisfaction as a focusing illusion may need to be considered by scientist as well as lay people who try to look better and be happier.     

Color and intensity discrimination in <Emphasis Type="Italic">Xenopus laevis</Emphasis> tadpoles

Investigations into the physiology of Xenopus laevis have the potential to greatly accelerate biomedical research, especially concerning neural plasticity and sensory systems, but are limited by the lack of available information on behavioral learning in this species. Here, we attempt to lay the foundations for a behavioral assay in Xenopus that can be used in conjunction with biological manipulations. We tested cohorts of Xenopus tadpoles across four light-mediated active-avoidance experiments, using either wavelength or intensity as the salient discriminative cue. In the wavelength task, we determine a baseline learning rate and characterize retention of learning, identifying active extinction effects as far more potent than the passage of time in the loss of behavior. In the intensity task, we examine the effects of varying differences between the discriminative stimuli on acquisition and extinction and identify a critical range of intensity differences where learning changes. The results of our experiments demonstrate that Xenopus is a tractable model organism for cognitive research and can learn a variety of associative tasks in the laboratory settings. These data reveal new aspects of the Xenopus larval visual processing system and facilitate future research between cognitive methods and biological/chemical manipulations to study mechanisms of brain structure and function.