Weapons and violence: A review of theory and research

Weapons are used in approximately one quarter of all violent incidents and the majority of homicides in the US, and the UK. Despite their overwhelming contribution to violent harm, theories of weapon related behaviors are scarce, and little is known of their correlates. This paper reviews available theories of weapon related behavior and identifies a number of motivations for weapon carrying, such as self defense, victim coercion, causing harm and self presentation. Correlates of weapon carrying and weapon use such as age, gender, socioeconomic status, exposure to weapons and history of aggression are explored and a number of limitations to current research approaches are identified. The review concludes with a discussion of future directions for research.     

Bullying in different contexts: Commonalities,differences and the role of theory

Research on bullying has grown very rapidly in the last two decades, initially in schools but also in a variety of other settings and relationships; and there has been relatively little communication between the different groups of researchers. We describe the nature of bullying in schools, between siblings, in children's residential care homes, in prisons, and in the workplace. Commonalities and differences in the phenomenon, and the ways in which it is exhibited and experienced are explored. The role of individual and organizational factors in the development and maintenance of these behaviors across contexts is compared. We then examine a number of theoretical approaches which have been suggested as relevant to our understanding of bullying. Integrative approaches from different research traditions are proposed which view these behaviors as being influenced by a combination of situational and individual factors.     

Warnings given to observers can eliminate order effects

ObjectivesThe aim of the study was to examine the impact of warnings on order effects in attributions of ability.MethodQualified soccer coaches (N = 146) rated the ability of two soccer players (a control and target player) each shown, on video, performing a passing task eight times. For the control player, all participants saw the same footage in the same order. For the target player, participants viewed the same footage with half viewing a declining (successful to unsuccessful) performance pattern and half viewing an ascending pattern. Additionally, coaches either received no warning of the danger of order effects, a warning prior to viewing any footage, a warning prior to viewing the target player or a warning prior to rating the target player.ResultsResults indicated that primacy effects were observed in the no warning condition and the warning prior to rating the target. However, when warnings were given prior to observing the target player no order effects were observed.ConclusionThe results indicate that order effects can be eliminated by warning observers of the phenomenon.     

In Defence of Karl Barth's Doctrine of the Trinity

Two common complaints against Barth's doctrine of the Trinity are here addressed. First it is argued that Barth's adoption of the term Seinsweise , or 'mode of being' to refer to the trinitarian persons is not in any way a departure from the traditional doctrine. Second, the suggestion that Barth's doctrine shifts over the course of the Dogmatics is examined and refuted.     

Encountering the dream: Intersecting anthropological and psychoanalytical approaches

The human dream has been a central and contested therapeutic resource for the various schools of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. However, anthropology has been less concerned with human dreaming, though many anthropologists have studied indigenous peoples' dream theories as a consequence of the importance that such people gave to their dreaming. During the twentieth century there has been a fertile interaction between psychoanalytical approaches to dreaming and pertinent anthropological studies. This paper situates these interconnected disciplinary approaches to dreaming in the context of the historical development of thinking about culture and dreaming. The dream is considered as a multiple human resource. Discussion focuses on a fourfold approach to the dream: as therapeutic and existential encounter; as potential social knowledge; as cultural template; and finally as reflexive opportunity. Overall, the paper asserts the centrality of the dream as both a cultural and therapeutic resource.     

Virtual augmented exercise gaming for older adults.

This paper details the design, development, and testing of virtual augmented exercise (VAE) gaming for older adults. Three versions of an underwater VAE environment were tested with a sample of 22 healthy adults aged 50 or over. Participants strongly preferred VAE to traditional physical exercise, and adherence rate was 100%. The findings suggest that VAE with puzzles changes or negates the expected negative associations among exercise outcomes. Fitness level was not associated with performance in the game, irrespective of VAE type, indicating that persons who are less physically fit can expect to perform similarly to those who are more physically fit. In conclusion, the research found some evidence for the benefits of VAE with cognitive exercise (solving simple puzzles and hitting targets based on the answer). This type of exercise appears to be a promising method of exercise for older adults.     

Non-lateralised deficits of drawing production in hemispatial neglect

Spatially lateralised deficits that typically define the hemispatial neglect syndrome have been shown to co-occur with other non-lateralised deficits of attention, memory, and drawing. However even a simple graphic task involves multiple planning components, including the specification of drawing start position and drawing direction. In order to investigate the influence of these factors in neglect we presented patients with a circle-copying task, and specified the drawing start point. The ability to draw from the instructed location was strongly related to tests that measure constructional abilities, but not related to start point laterality. In contrast, the direction in which patients drew the circle was affected by start point laterality: patients with neglect were less likely to draw in a typical direction when the cue was on the affected side of space and this was strongly related to severity of the neglect. Patients with neglect consistently produced circles that were smaller than the model; however, the scaling was not affected by the laterality of the start point, nor was the proportion of drawings correctly started at the cue. These findings demonstrate the complex relationship between neglect and even the simplest test for the syndrome.     

Effort during visual search and counting: insights from pupillometry

We investigated the processing effort during visual search and counting tasks using a pupil dilation measure. Search difficulty was manipulated by varying the number of distractors as well as the heterogeneity of the distractors. More difficult visual search resulted in more pupil dilation than did less difficult search. These results confirm a link between effort and increased pupil dilation. The pupil dilated more during the counting task than during target-absent search, even though the displays were identical, and the two tasks were matched for reaction time. The moment-to-moment dilation pattern during search suggests little effort in the early stages, but increasingly more effort towards response, whereas the counting task involved an increased initial effort, which was sustained throughout the trial. These patterns can be interpreted in terms of the differential memory load for item locations in each task. In an additional experiment, increasing the spatial memory requirements of the search evoked a corresponding increase in pupil dilation.These results support the view that search tasks involve some, but limited, memory for item locations, and the effort associated with this memory load increases during the trials. In contrast, counting involves a heavy locational memory component from the start.     

Eye movements in a simple spatial reasoning task

We report two experiments in which participants read a question about the spatial relationship between two letters, then viewed a visual display containing the letters and were required to respond to the question. The format of the question influenced the nature of the eye movements generated to the visual display. Participants also had a tendency to make additional eye movements in order to generate a fixation sequence that corresponded to the order of the letters in the question. This demonstrates an influence of stored information on eye movement generation, and suggests that the scanpath plays a role in structuring the visual information to facilitate reasoning.     

Goal-driven modulation of oculomotor capture

In a recent study, Ludwig and Gilchrist (2002) showed that stimulus-driven oculomotor capture by abrupt onset distractors was modulated by distractor-target similarity: Participants were more likely to fixate an irrelevant onset when it shared the target color. Here we test whether this pattern of performance is the result of (1) inhibition of all items in the distractor color, (2) a response bias to local color discontinuities, or (3) the integration of stimulus-driven abrupt onset signals with goal-driven information about the target features. The results of two experiments clearly support the third explanation. We conclude that oculomotor capture is modulated by, but not contingent upon, top-down control, and our findings argue for an integrative view of the saccadic system.