Child Characterization Sketch

The aim of this paper is to describe a novel method of eliciting and exploring the constructs that parents use to anticipate their children's behavior. The need for such a method arises from the inadequacies of alternative measures used in early intervention studies. The method is called the Child Characterization Sketch, in acknowledgment of the method of self-characterization first described by Kelly. The technique and subsequent analysis are described in detail to enable others to evaluate its potential. In the present paper its use is illustrated both from a counseling viewpoint and in relation to research questions concerning mothers of children with intellectual impairments. The results provide an exploratory consideration of the types of constructs mothers use and a comparison of mothers of children with or without intellectual impairment.     

Assessment and treatment of hoarding in an individual with dementia

The authors used a reinforcer assessment to evaluate possible interventions for hoarding in an older individual with dementia. The most preferred condition from the assessment (sorting activity) was compared to a staff developed treatment involving item removal and redirection. Hoarding was reduced during both interventions with a greater reduction in the sorting condition. The behavioral reductions were maintained during schedule thinning of social interactions and follow-up.     

Attention Problems as a Mediator of the Relation between Executive Function and Social Problems in a Child and Adolescent Outpatient Sample

Social functioning is critical for the successful navigation of everyday life for children, adolescents, and adults. Recent theories have postulated a neuropsychological basis for social functioning with particularly strong links with the executive functioning (EF) system. The current study examined attention problems as a mediator between EF (e.g., working memory, planning, and response inhibition) and social functioning in a child and adolescent outpatient sample. Participants were 218 children ages 6–16 (M = 10.23; SD = 2.52; 68.8 % males) who were referred to an outpatient clinic for psychoeducational assessment. Bias-corrected bootstrapping mediation analyses were used to examine the hypothesized models. The effects of working memory and planning (but not response inhibition) on social problems were mediated by attention problems in both teacher- and mother-reported models. These findings also held up in cross-source models (e.g., mother-reported attention problems as a mediator in a model predicting teacher-reported social problems). These findings have implications for dimensional models of social functioning and conceptual models for specific clinical populations (e.g., attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder).     

The knowledge-structure and inductivist strategies in causal attribution: A direct comparison

Two different strategies for making causal attributions are distinguished. The first is the classic inductivist approach, which uses covariation information to arrive at causal attributions. The second is the knowledge-structure approach, which uses information relevant to knowledge about plans and goals to explain behaviour. Two experiments are reported in which information activating both types of strategy is given. The results indicate that goal-relevant information activates expectancies that resist the presence of explicit covariation information. The results are interpreted as indicating that expectancies generated by knowledge-structures are therefore different to those activated by verbs, which do not resist the effect of explicit covariation information. It is concluded that knowledge-structures constitute an alternative strategy of causal attribution to the inductivist strategy, and the nature of the relationship between the two strategies is considered.     

Knowledge-based information acquisition: norms and the functions of consensus information

Mill's (1872/1973) method of difference prescribes that the lay scientist should use consensus information as a control condition for the person and distinctiveness information as a control condition for the stimulus when analyzing their causal effects on the occurrence of the target event. However, in studies of information acquisition, subjects have shown a consistent preference for distinctiveness information when answering causal questions about the person, and for consensus information when answering causal questions about the stimulus. To explain this discrepancy, we distinguish between the evaluative, contrastive, and corroborative functions of consensus and distinctiveness information. In addition, we suggest that subjects seek consensus information only if it is relevant to the question posed to them, and if they cannot supply it from their own presupposed knowledge of behavioral norms. We report four information acquisition experiments that provide support for our analysis.     

A brief actuarial assessment for the prediction of wife assault recidivism: the Ontario domestic assault risk assessment

An actuarial assessment to predict male-to-female marital violence was constructed from a pool of potential predictors in a sample of 589 offenders identified in police records and followed up for an average of almost 5 years. Archival information in several domains (offender characteristics, domestic violence history, nondomestic criminal history, relationship characteristics, victim characteristics, index offense) and recidivism were subjected to setwise and stepwise logistic regression. The resulting 13-item scale, the Ontario Domestic Assault Risk Assessment (ODARA), showed a large effect size in predicting new assaults against legal or common-law wives or ex-wives (Cohen's d = 1.1, relative operating characteristic area =.77) and was associated with number and severity of new assaults and time until recidivism. Cross-validation and comparisons with other instruments are also reported.     

Maternal stress and affect influence fetal neurobehavioral development

The authors investigated the association between maternal psychological and fetal neurobehavioral functioning. Data were provided by 52 maternal-fetal pairs at 24, 30, and 36 weeks gestation. The relations between maternal measures and fetal heart rate, variability, and motor activity were statistically modeled. Fetuses of women who were more affectively intense, appraised their lives as more stressful, and reported more frequent pregnancy-specific hassles were more active across gestation. Fetuses of women who perceived their pregnancy to be more intensely and frequently uplifting and had positive emotional valence toward pregnancy were less active. Associations with fetal heart-rate measures were detected at 36 weeks gestation. These data provide evidence for proximal effects of maternal psychological functioning on fetal neurobehavior.     

Attitudes and the Implicit Association Test.

Three studies examined the relationship between the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and explicit attitudes. In the 1st and all subsequent studies, the lack of any correlation between the IAT and explicitly measured attitudes supports the view that the IAT is independent from explicit attitudes. Study 2 examined the relationships among the IAT, explicit attitudes, and behavior and found that the explicit attitudes predicted behavior but the IAT did not. Finally, in Study 3 it was found that the IAT was affected by exposing participants to new associations between attitude objects, whereas the explicit attitudes remained unchanged. Taken together, these results support an environmental association interpretation of the IAT in which IAT scores reflect the associations a person has been exposed to in his or her environment rather than the extent to which the person endorses those evaluative associations.     

Normalization in the courtroom: Does the formation of a group norm affect how judges adjust prosecutors' demands?

Legal archives concerning a new type of offence first introduced onto the French statute books in 2005 reveal a normalization effect over the following 2 years in judges' sentence decisions but not in prosecutors' sentence demands. We examine the hypothesis that the formation of a normally accepted range of sentences will influence how judges respond to the extremity of the prosecutor's initial sentence demand. In line with a normalization perspective, results reveal that judges were less influenced by extreme (out‐of‐range) sentence demands but more influenced by moderate (in‐range) sentences in 2007 than in 2005. Over time, it seems that a shared standard of reference is established, which appears to lead judges to adjust moderate prosecutor demands less and extreme prosecutor demands more. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.