Index of suspicion: feeling not believing

Throughout the U.S., state laws require professionals who work with children to report cases of suspected child abuse to child protection services. Both practically and conceptually, however, significant problems arise from a lack of clarity regarding the threshold that has been set for reporting. Specifically, there is no consensus as to what constitutes reasonable suspicion, and little direction for how mandated reporters should gauge their legal and professional responsibilities when they harbor suspicion. In this paper we outline the context of the problem, discuss the nature and scope of its conceptual underpinnings, and offer recommendations for moving towards a concrete, practical solution.     

The Parents Matter! Program Interventions: Content and the Facilitation Process

The Parents Matter! Program (PMP) has developed three interventions for parents of 4th and 5th grade African-American children (9–12 years old). The overarching goal of all three interventions is to provide parents with knowledge, skills, and support for enhancing their efforts to raise healthy children. The interventions are: (1) Enhanced Communication and Parenting (five 2 -hour sessions), (2) Brief Communication and Parenting (single 2 -hour session), and (3) General Health (single 2 -hour session). This article discusses the development of these interventions, presents an overview of the content of each intervention, and discusses issues related to the facilitation/presentation of these interventions.     

Attention and language in fragile X

Fragile X syndrome (FXS) is a well-recognized cause of mental retardation and developmental delay in males. Alongside the well-documented clinical characteristics of the condition, recent advances in technology and methodology have begun to define FXS at a number of different levels: genetic, brain structure and function, cognition, and behavior. This article suggests that the FXS phenotype is not merely a juxtaposition of spared and impaired functions but rather may be characterized by an inhibitory control deficit that interferes with the individual's ability to modulate output causing perseverative responding across various skill areas. It is further suggested that an inability to modulate arousal may be at least one cause for the inhibitory control deficit that typifies the FXS phenotype. The approach to understanding atypical development outlined here holds exciting promise for future research in FXS and other developmental disorders.     

Senior capstone design and ethics: A bridge to the professional world

A senior level capstone design experience has been developed and offered with a particular emphasis on many of the professional issues raised in Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) Engineering Criterion IV. The course has sought to develop student awareness of the ethical foundation of the engineering profession, the global and societal framework within which engineers practice, and the environmental impact on engineering. The capstone design course also focused upon improving the technical communications skills of the graduating senior class with both extensive instruction in writing and multiple workshops dealing with the art of making an effective oral presentation. The effectiveness of the design course was assessed using Kirkpatrick’s model for evaluating training programs. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the “Ethics and Social Responsibility in Engineering and Technology” meeting, New Orleans, 2003.     

Looking on the One We Have Pierced: Repentance,Resurrection, and Winnicott's “Capacity for Concern”

This work presents a view of Christian repentance as a process analogous to the development of Winnicott's capacity for concern and illuminated by Rowan Williams' theology of the Resurrection. One begins with fear of forfeiting one's attachment to the divine good mother, confronts the evidence of one's destructiveness in the Passion of Christ, experiences the risen Christ's object survival and acceptance of reparations, and attains a desire to contribute-in to God and neighbor.     

Do you "want" to play? Distinguishing between conflicted shyness and social disinterest in early childhood

This study attempted to distinguish two types of social withdrawal in early childhood: (a) one based on social fear and anxiety despite a desire to interact socially (conflicted shyness) and (b) one based on the lack of a strong motivation to engage in social interaction (social disinterest). Two samples of preschoolers (n = 119 and n = 127) 3-5 years of age participated. Their mothers completed the newly developed Child Social Preference Scale, which was designed to assess conflicted shyness and social disinterest. Maternal ratings of child temperament, parenting style, and social goals, teacher ratings of child social adjustment, observations of child free-play behaviors, and child interview assessments of perceived competence and preference for playing with peers were also collected. Distinct patterns of associations were found between conflicted shyness and social disinterest and outcome variables. Implications for the motivational underpinnings and adjustment outcomes of shyness and social disinterest are explored.     

Amodal processing of visual speech as revealed by priming

This study investigated the linguistic processing of visual speech (video of a talker's utterance without audio) by determining if such has the capacity to prime subsequently presented word and nonword targets. The priming procedure is well suited for the investigation of whether speech perception is amodal since visual speech primes can be used with targets presented in different modalities. To this end, a series of priming experiments were conducted using several tasks. It was found that visually spoken words (for which overt identification was poor) acted as reliable primes for repeated target words in the naming, written and auditory lexical decision tasks. These visual speech primes did not produce associative or reliable form priming. The lack of form priming suggests that the repetition priming effect was constrained by lexical level processes. That priming found in all tasks is consistent with the view that similar processes operate in both visual and auditory speech processing.     

Verb deficits in Alzheimer's disease and agrammatism: implications for lexical organization

This study examined the nature of verb deficits in 14 individuals with probable Alzheimer's Disease (PrAD) and nine with agrammatic aphasia. Production was tested, controlling both semantic and syntactic features of verbs, using noun and verb naming, sentence completion, and narrative tasks. Noun and verb comprehension and a grammaticality judgment task also were administered. Results showed that while both PrAD and agrammatic subjects showed impaired verb naming, the syntactic features of verbs (i.e., argument structure) influenced agrammatic, but not Alzheimer's disease patients' verb production ability. That is, agrammatic patients showed progressively greater difficulty with verbs associated with more arguments, as has been shown in previous studies (e.g., Kim & Thompson, 2000; Thompson, 2003; Thompson, Lange, Schneider, & Shapiro, 1997), and suggest a syntactic basis for verb production deficits in agrammatism. Conversely, the semantic complexity of verbs affected PrAD, but not agrammatic, patients' performance, suggesting "bottom-up" breakdown in their verb lexicon, paralleling that of nouns, resulting from the degradation or loss of semantic features of verbs.     

Perceptions of Ethical Behaviour among Business Faculty in Canada

Faculty members at Canadian business schools were surveyed regarding their ethical perceptions of behaviours related to undergraduate instruction. Fifty-five behavioural statements were listed and respondents were asked to rate the extent to which they felt each behaviour was ethical or unethical. The only item that respondents endorsed as unequivocally unethical (90% indicated it was definitely unethical) was Becoming sexually involved with an undergraduate in one of your classes. We also compared the results of our sample to those of an American sample. Overall, an interesting pattern of differences emerged between the responses obtained in Canada and the U.S. In general, the direction of the significant differences was such that Canadian professors viewed the behaviours in question as less ethical than did their American counterparts.