Critical Issues in the Assessment of Child Sexual Abuse

This article explores the feasibility of using standardized psychometric methods in the initial stages of an investigation of child sexual abuse; methods that are less intrusive and therefore less damaging to children and their families. We review the complex conceptual and research issues that arise from attempts to assess the many-sided aspects of child sexual maltreatment. Among those considered in both the clinical and research spheres are problems of definition and diagnosis; limitations of clinical interviews, and a variety of direct and indirect psychological instruments used for investigating sexual maltreatment and risk assessment; the inadequacies of experimental designs; and also the political, practical, and ethical restraints that hinder research in this area. It is argued that there is insufficient evidence based on controlled studies or standardized normative tests to advocate any simple, unidimensional methodology for the screening task. However, recommendations are put forward for the cautious, conjoint use of several procedures in a multidimensional approach to assessing child sexual abuse. Suggestions are also made for future research and development.     

Dualism-Materialism

I argue that in rejecting Cartesian 'mind' and retaining Cartesian 'body', materialism/physicalism falls to the allure of three charming but deadly 'eliminative' identities: perceivable properties become particles in motion; perception, by being 'sensationized', turns into neuronal activity; and a perceiver becomes a brain in a body. In rebuttal I argue that 'particles in motion' does not nullify but instead preserves the perceivable properties it seeks to explain; 'neuronal activity' is not a reduction of, but is doubtlessly necessary to, perception; and a perceiver is not a brain in a body, since 'body' in the Cartesian/materialist context is a conceptual confusion that reifies a human being's physical side.     

Effect of response task on taste adaptation

Two experiments studied whether subjects reported complete adaptation of a taste sensation. Three tasks were chosen based on their use in other laboratories: hand lowering to connote stimulus absence, magnitude estimation, and cross-adaptation of a brief stimulus following a prolonged stimulus. In the first experiment, different groups of 9 subjects received the three different tasks; in the second experiment, all 20 subjects received all three tasks. In both experiments, subjects failed to demonstrate complete taste adaptation in at least 50% of adaptation trials. Response task did affect the likelihood of observing complete taste adaptation.     

Prevalence and structure of behavior symptoms among children in special education and regular classroom settings

Studied the factor structure of the Behavior Problem Checklist using children from a middle to upper-middle-class suburban school system, determined the extent to which factors generated from children in regular classrooms approximated those generated from children in special education, and examined the effects of class placement, sex, and the interactions of these variables on the average rating children receive on the generated factors. One hundred children from 12 classes for the emotionally disturbed or learning disabled and 527 children from regular forst-through seventh-grade classes were rated by their teachers on the Behaviors Problem Checklist. Following a varimax factor rotation, coefficients of factor congruence and analysis of variance were conducted to test the hypotheses. Results indicated that although teacher ratings of special education and normal children are structurally similar, special education children scored higher on all three factors than did their regular class counterparts. Furthermore, almost all percentages of occurance for individual items were higher for special education children. Further research is suggested to deal with a possible expectancy effect in teacher ratings of problem behaviors.     

Related factors of the Survey of Study Habits and Attitudes and the Vocational Preference Inventory

The Survey of Study Habits and Attitudes (SSHA) and the Vocational Preference Inventory (VPI) were administered to 100 undergraduates. The scales of the two instruments were compared using canonical analysis. The analysis revealed a relationship between a component of the SSHA and a component of the VPI which accounted for 31% of the variance of the two instruments. The related components were interpreted as indicating that a dimension running from an academic orientation to a nonacademic orientation was measured by certain scales of each instrument.     

A comparison of olfactory adaptation among seven odorants and their relationship with several physicochemical properties

A study was made comparing olfactory sensitivity before and after 100 sec of adaptation for stimuli representing several odorant classes with varying physicochemical properties. Measures taken were absolute detection thresholds and magnitude estimates of suprathreshold stimuli. Significant rank-order correlation coefficients (<.90) were found between nonadapted and adapted absolute detection thresholds, vapor pressure, and percent adaptation.     

A method for studying visually guided perception and learning in newborn macaques

A maintenance technique was developed in which neonatal monkeys obtain all liquid food by placing their heads in a face mask mounted on their cage wall. Complete self-feeding required only 3-6 days for animals started at birth. Once under a self-feeding Schedule, operant responses were shaped to study visual perception, visually guided motor performance, and discrimination learning at ages much younger than those allowed by most alternative methods. Dark rearing, with the only source of visual input being through the face mask eyeholes, allowed the E to control completely the neonate’s visual experiences and its opportunities for visual-motor responding. The method has proven useful in rhesus monkey newborns for studying adaptation to prismatic displacement at 30 days of age, and to performance on CRF, FI, and FR reinforcement schedules.     

Intermodality relations in localization in blind and sighted people

Developmental data were gathered on the relative importance of vision, audition, and proprioception in determining spatial direction in a conflict situation. Age trends did not support the hypothesis that information from different modalities becomes better differentiated with age. In a follow-up study, blind children of different ages were tested under auditory-proprioceptive conflict conditions. No age changes were found. The possibility of a visual involvement in auditory and proprioceptive localization is discussed.