Factors associated with erection in adolescent sex offenders

A majority of adult child molesters report that their deviant interest began prior to the age of 18. This illustrates the need to evaluate adolescents who have molested children. Since self-report of deviant interest is rare in adolescent offenders, psychophysiologic assessment is necessary to help to determine the extent for a deviant interest pattern. The current study was designed to determine what factors are associated with erectile responding to age-inappropriate stimuli in an adolescent sex offender population. Factors studied were (a) admit/deny, (b) history of physical abuse, (c) history of sexual abuse, (d) history of nonsex arrests, and (e) incest/nonincest. The dependent variables were two pedophile indices, a relative measure of deviant to nondeviant arousal. Results indicated that history of sexual abuse was associated with more deviant erectile responding in those adolescents who had molested young boys. The possibility of adolescents modeling their own victimization is discussed.     

Fired managers: Experiences from their own unemployment

This paper purports to enhance the understanding of stress and its effects on unemployed executives. The idea that unemployed managers perceive and confront stress differently from their employed colleagues is addressed. A sampling of 32 unemployed executives and managers was taken using The Stress Profile, to survey reasons for stress, coping ability, and response to stress. The profiled samples were then compared to a comparison group of 367 employed managers. The results showed that unemployed managers, when compared to their employed associates, tended to have less desireable family situations, more worries about finances, decreased perception of self and self-coherence, decreased coping ability, and heightened emotional and behavioral reaction to stress. The conclusion was that when dealing with stressors, unemployed managers experienced a decreased sense of psychological well-being and coping abilities as compared to employed managers.     

Initiation and Maintenance of Tobacco Smoking: Changing Personality Correlates in Adolescence and Young Adulthood1

Youthful smokers have been described as extroverted and peer-involved, whereas older smokers are often characterized as depressed and withdrawn. Recognizing this contradiction, we examined cross-sectional and prospective associations between smoking and personality and social constructs assessed every 4 years in a sample (N= 461) originally recruited in junior high school. At Time 1, smoking was positively related to good social relations, extroversion, friends' cigarette use, and cheerfulness. At Times 2–4, smoking was positively related to depression and friends' cigarette use, negatively correlated with good Social Relations, and unrelated to extroversion. Cigarette use was stable over time, but least stable between Times 1 and 2. Findings suggest the instability of early social smoking with peers; those who persist may smoke for tension reduction and self-medication.     

Effects of BIM-22015, an analog of ACTH4-10, on functional recovery after frontal cortex injury.

Male rats, 90-100 days old, with frontal cortex lesions were given either subcutaneous sterile water (SW) as a vehicle control or 1, 10, or 100 micrograms of BIM-22015 every other day for 20 days. Brain-injured subjects tested in the Morris water maze with either 10 micrograms BIM-22015 or SW took significantly more trials than sham-operated rats to locate a submerged platform eight consecutive times within 60 s. The animals given 1 or 100 micrograms BIM-22015 took significantly fewer trials to reach criterion than brain-injured animals in the other drug treatment groups. On a percentage of savings, measured 8 days after reaching criterion, the brain-injured subjects given 1, 10, or 100 micrograms BIM-22015 did not differ from sham-operated rats. In contrast, the brain-injured animals given SW took longer to find the submerged platform than they did during the initial training. To assess long-term effects of the ACTH analog treatment, rats were trained on a delayed spatial alternation task 30 days after receiving the last injection. On this task, brain-injured rats treated with the 10-micrograms dose performed significantly better than those given sterile water. Acetylcholinesterase (AChE)-labeled neurons counted in the nucleus basalis magnocellularis indicated that rats with frontal cortex damage given the 10-micrograms treatment did not differ from the sham controls and had significantly more AChE-positive neurons than injured counterparts treated with SW or 100 micrograms.