Changing the Criminal Justice System Response to Sexual Assault: An Empirical Study of a Participatory Action Research Project

In jurisdictions throughout the United States, thousands of sexual assault kits (SAKs; also known as a “rape kits”) have not been submitted by the police for forensic DNA testing. DNA evidence may be helpful to sexual assault investigations and prosecutions by identifying perpetrators, revealing serial offenders through DNA matches across cases, and exonerating those who have been wrongly accused. This paper describes a longitudinal action research project conducted in Detroit, Michigan after that city discovered approximately 11,000 untested sexual assault kits in a police department storage facility. We conducted a root cause analysis to examine individual, organizational, community, and societal factors that contributed to the development of the rape kit backlog in Detroit. Based on those findings, we implemented and evaluated structural changes to increase staffing, promote kit testing, and retrain police and prosecutors so that cases could be reopened for investigation and prosecution. As we conducted this work, we also studied how this action research project impacted the Detroit criminal justice system. Participating in this project changed stakeholders’ attitudes about the utility of research to address community problems, the usefulness of DNA evidence in sexual assault cases, and the impact of trauma on survivors. The results led to new protocols for SAK testing and police investigations, and new state legislation mandating SAK forensic DNA testing.     

Human social defeat and approach–avoidance: Escalating social-evaluative threat and threat of aggression increases social avoidance

Basic research on avoidance by Murray Sidman laid the foundation for advances in the classification, conceptualization and treatment of avoidance in psychological disorders. Contemporary avoidance research is explicitly translational and increasingly focused on how competing appetitive and aversive contingencies influence avoidance. In this laboratory investigation, we examined the effects of escalating social-evaluative threat and threat of social aggression on avoidance of social interactions. During social-defeat learning, 38 adults learned to associate 9 virtual peers with an increasing probability of receiving negative evaluations. Additionally, 1 virtual peer was associated with positive evaluations. Next, in an approach–avoidance task with social-evaluative threat, 1 peer associated with negative evaluations was presented alongside the peer associated with positive evaluations. Approaching peers produced a positive or a probabilistic negative evaluation, while avoiding peers prevented a negative evaluation (and forfeited a positive evaluation). In an approach–avoidance task with social aggression, virtual peers gave and took money away from participants. Escalating social-evaluative threat and aggression increased avoidance, ratings of feeling threatened and threat expectancy and decreased ratings of peer favorableness. These findings underscore the potential of coupling social defeat and approach–avoidance paradigms for translational research on the neurobehavioral mechanisms of social approach–avoidance decision-making and anxiety.     

Gender Differences in Anti-Gay Prejudice: Evidence for Stability and Change

Sex Roles - In recent years, there has been remarkable change in societal acceptance of lesbians and gay men. This meta-analysis explored whether this positive shift has reduced the gender...     

Interpersonal Psychotherapy—Adolescent Skills Training With Youth From Asian American and Immigrant Families: Cultural Considerations and Intervention Process

Although research has identified effective evidence-based depression prevention interventions for diverse youth, little is known about how the intervention process unfolds with immigrant family youth. This study utilized a qualitative approach to explore cultural and clinical differences in the implementation of Interpersonal Psychotherapy–Adolescent Skills Training (IPT-AST) in two schools, one serving youth from primarily immigrant, Asian American families and the second, youth from mostly nonimmigrant, non-Hispanic White families. A total of 131 IPT–AST sessions were audio recorded, transcribed, and coded for presence and patterns of cultural and clinical constructs. Results revealed that sessions with immigrant family youth were more likely to contain discussions of interpersonal problems characterized by estrangement, goals of spending time together with important others, mentions of emotion suppression and academic achievement expectations, conversations about acculturation, differences in value orientation, and discomfort with implementing new intervention skills. Dialogue from interventionist and youth exchanges is presented to illustrate how these themes emerged and were addressed by interventionists in a culturally responsive manner. The study highlights how IPT–AST with immigrant family and Asian American youth may unfold differently compared to youth from nonimmigrant families. Implications of findings for providers are discussed.     

A comparison of accumulated and distributed reinforcement periods with children exhibiting escape-maintained problem behavior

Differential reinforcement is a common treatment for escape-maintained problem behavior in which compliance is reinforced on a fixed-ratio (FR) 1 schedule with brief access to positive and/or negative reinforcement. Recent research suggests some individuals prefer to complete longer work requirements culminating in prolonged (i.e. accumulated) reinforcement periods relative to brief (i.e. distributed) periods, but prolonged work exposure may evoke problem behavior and prevent compliance from contacting reinforcement when treating escape-maintained problem behavior. We exposed 3 children with escape-maintained problem behavior to both distributed (FR 1 resulting in 30 s of reinforcement) and accumulated (FR 15 resulting in 7.5 min of reinforcement) arrangements to compare their efficacy in maintaining low levels of problem behavior. We then assessed participants' preferences for these conditions in a concurrent-chains arrangement. Accumulated-reinforcement arrangements did not occasion additional problem behavior, but rather resulted in consistently lower levels of problem behavior for 2 of 3 participants. Participants demonstrated idiosyncratic preferences.     

Providing noncontingent,alternative, functional reinforcers during delays following functional communication training

Functional Communication Training (FCT) involves arranging extinction for problem behavior and reinforcement for a more desirable, functionally equivalent, communicative response (FCR). Although effective under ideal arrangements, the introduction of delays to reinforcement following the FCR can result in increased problem behavior. Austin and Tiger (2015) showed that for individuals whose problem behavior was sensitive to multiple sources of reinforcement, providing access to alternative, functional reinforcers during delays mitigated this increase in problem behavior during delay fading. The current study replicated the procedures of Austin and Tiger with 2 individuals displaying multiply controlled problem behavior. Providing alternative functional reinforcers reduced problem behavior during 10-min delays for both participants without requiring delay fading.     

Desperately seeking sourcehood

Philosophical Studies - In a recent essay, Deery and Nahmias (Philos Stud 174(5):1255–1276, 2017) utilize interventionism about causation to develop an account of causal sourcehood in order...     

Geographic patterns of implicit age bias and associations with state-level health outcomes across the United States

Negative attitudes toward aging are pervasive in society and may be detrimental to people's health as they become older. Older people tend to report feeling significantly younger than their chronological age, often as a way of psychologically distancing themselves from the stigma of old age. However, attitudes and behaviors toward aging may differ across regional contexts. We examined associations among state-level patterns of bias against older adults and state-level health outcomes across the United States. Data from 803,009 respondents (ages: 15–94) across 50 U.S. states (and the District of Columbia) revealed geographic variation in implicit age bias. Higher state-level implicit age bias was associated with poorer state-level health outcomes among adults ages 65+. Older adults living in states high in implicit age bias showed greater age-group dissociation compared to older adults living in states low in implicit age bias. Findings highlight potential consequences of implicit age bias and invite further research on the long-term health implications of individual age-group dissociation in response to regional age bias.     

Searching for Prosociality in Qualitative Data: Comparing Manual,Closed-Vocabulary,and Open-Vocabulary Methods

Although most people present themselves as possessing prosocial traits, people differ in the extent to which they actually act prosocially in everyday life. Qualitative data that were not ostensibly collected to measure prosociality might contain information about prosocial dispositions that is not distorted by self-presentation concerns. This paper seeks to characterise charitable donors from qualitative data. We compared a manual approach of extracting predictors from participants' self-described personal strivings to two automated approaches: A summation of words predefined as prosocial and a support vector machine classifier. Although variables extracted by the support vector machine predicted donation behaviour well in the training sample (N = 984), virtually, no variables from any method significantly predicted donations in a holdout sample (N = 496). Raters' attempts to predict donations to charity based on reading participants' personal strivings were also unsuccessful. However, raters' predictions were associated with past charitable involvement. In sum, predictors derived from personal strivings did not robustly explain variation in charitable behaviour, but personal strivings may nevertheless contain some information about trait prosociality. The sparseness of personal strivings data, rather than the irrelevance of open-ended text or individual differences in goal pursuit, likely explains their limited value in predicting prosocial behaviour. © 2020 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Idiographic network analysis of discrete mood states prior to treatment

Idiographic network models based on time‐series data have received recent attention for their ability to model relationships among symptoms and behaviours as they unfold in time within a single individual (cf. Epskamp, Borsboom, & Fried, 2018; Fisher, Medaglia, & Jeronimus, 2018). Rather than examine the correlational relationships between variables in a sample of individuals, an idiographic network examines correlations within a single person, averaged over many time points. Because the approach averages over time, the data must be stationary (i.e. relatively consistent over time). If individuals experience varying states over time—different mixtures of symptoms and behaviours in one moment or another—then averaging over categorically different moments may undermine model accuracy. Fisher and Bosley (2019) address these concerns via the application of Gaussian finite mixture modelling to identify latent classes of time points in intraindividual time‐series data from a sample of adults with major depressive disorder and/or generalised anxiety disorder (n = 45). The present paper outlines an extension of this work, wherein network analysis is used to model within‐class covariation of symptoms. To illustrate this approach, network models were constructed for each intraindividual class identified by Fisher and Bosley (137 networks across the 45 participants, mean classes/person = ~3, range = 2–4 classes/person). We examine the relative consistency in symptom organisation between each individual's multiple mood state networks and assess emergent group‐level patterns. We highlight opportunities for enhanced treatment personalisation and review nomothetic patterns relevant to transdiagnostic conceptualisations of psychopathology. We address opportunities for integrating this approach into clinical practice and outline potential shortcomings.