The perspective of evil in understanding and treating child abuse

This paper places the problem of child abuse in the perspective of evil. In so doing it calls into question the amoral assumptions of social science and human services. The current social science paradigm paradoxically dismisses evil as a real factor in the world, despite its concern for indisputably moral issues such as child abuse. The practical advantages of a perspective incorporating evil are several. Among them are a more realistic appreciation of the need for mechanisms of social control in preventing abuse, the role of confession and conversion, and the role of pastoral care as a support system for families.     

Conditioned inhibition of fear: Evidence for a competing response mechanism

In two experiments, inhibitory conditioning was attempted by presenting a discrete CS in a neutral stimulus environment shortly following the termination of either shock (Experiment 1) or a second discrete CS which had been paired in a forward manner with shock (Experiment 2). Evidence of successful inhibitory conditioning was mixed in Experiment 1, where the properties of the CS were assessed within an escape-from-fear procedure. Postresponse presentations of the CS enhanced performance, whereas the presentation of the CS prior to responding did not have the expected degrading effect on performance. In Experiment 2, the inhibitory properties of the CS were assessed by combining this stimulus with an excitatory CS and presenting the compound to rats engaged in a water-reinforced licking response. Less response suppression was found in reaction to this compound relative to three separate comparison conditions, thus witnessing the success of the inhibitory-conditioning procedure used. The common assumption that inhibitory conditioning results from the nonreinforcement of a CS in a situation where reinforcement is expected, i.e., one which contains previously reinforced cues, is not supported by these data, for no previously reinforced cues were simultaneously presented with the CS during inhibitory training. The data are in agreement with a conditioned antagonistic-response interpretation of inhibitory conditioning.     

Blocking acquisition of the rabbit's nictitating membrane response to serial conditioned stimuli

Three experiments demonstrated that prior training with one stimulus (CS1) would block acquisition of the rabbit's nictitating membrane response (NMR) to another stimulus (CS2) which was more contiguous to the US during serial compound training (CS1-CS2-US). Specifically, the CS1-US interval was 800 msec, which produces only a modest rate of CR acquisition, while the CS2-US interval was 400 msec, which is an optimal value for the NMR preparation. Experiment 1 demonstrated blocking when CS1 overlapped CS2, and Experiment 3 demonstrated blocking when CS1 and CS2 were presented in a strictly sequential fashion. Experiment 2 showed that the magnitude of blocking in the serial compound was comparable to that obtained in a simultaneous compound in which both the CS1-US and CS2-US intervals were 800 msec, thus making CS2 less contiguous with the US than in the serial compound. Moreover, the level of responding to CS2 in all serial compound groups (blocking and control) was lower than in the simultaneous compound groups. The present findings provide further evidence that the associative consequences of CS-US contiguity can be highly attenuated by processes of attention or competition for associative strength.     

The role of attentional resources in automatic detection

The question of whether an automatic detection task requires the use of limited-capacity resources was investigated in a series of dual-task experiments. The automatic task required subjects to detect a consistently mapped target digit in a display of letters. This task was paired with a variety of concurrent visual discriminations that could either occur in close proximity to the automatic target or in a disparate display area. The main finding was that accuracy in each task was higher in conditions allowing attention to be shared than when it had to be divided between separate areas. These results indicate that detection of automatic targets depends on the allocation of spatial attention to the target's area.     

A procedural theory of eye movements in doing arithmetic

A procedural theory of eye movement that accounts for main features of the stochastic behavior of eye-fixation durations and direction of movement of saccades in the process of solving arithmetic exercises of addition and subtraction is presented. The best-fitting distribution of fixation durations with a relatively simple theoretical justification consists of a mixture of an exponential distribution and the convolution of two exponential distributions. The eye movements themselves were found to approximate a random walk that fits rather closely in both adult and juvenile subjects the motion postulated by the normative algorithm ordinarily taught in schools. Certain structural features of addition and subtraction exercises, such as the number of columns, the presence or absence of a carry or a borrow, are well known to affect their difficulty. In this study, regressions on such structural variables were found to account for only a relatively small part of the variation in eye-fixation durations.     

Implicit psychophysiology: Effects of common beliefs and idiosyncratic physiological responses symptom reporting

Every individual exhibits unique perceptual, behavioral, and physiological responses within and across a variety of settings. Despite the idiosyncratic nature of responses, we seek to establish theories that generalize across a large number of individuals. A strict idiographic method intensively examines the response patterns of a small number of individuals, whereas a nomothetic approach focuses on common responses across a large number of individuals. In the present investigation, we seek to learn how individuals perceive and report physical symptoms and sensations. We offer a methodology that capitalizes on the unique physiological responses of individuals but, at the same time, assumes that the underlying perceptual processes relevant to symptom reporting are comparable across individuals. Our approach, then, is both idiographic and nomothetic. As will be discussed, this integrative approach has the potential to be applied to a multitude of behaviors and processes that are of interest to social and personality psychologists.     

Personality characteristics of the users of corporal punishment in the schools

The Rokeach Dogmatism Scale and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire were correlated with educator-reported use of corporal punishment. Respondents were from a medium-size school system in Tennessee. Results indicated that closed-mindedness, as measured by the Rokeach scale, and Neuroticism, as measured by the Eysenck Scale, were highly correlated with reported use of corporal punishment. Of the remaining two dimensions of personality measured by the Eysenck questionnaire, Extraversion was found to be moderately correlated with reported use of corporal punishment while Psychoticism showed no significant relationship. A significant negative correlation was found between years of experience in teaching and use of corporal punishment. Frequency of physical punishment used on an educator when he/she was in grades K-12 was positively correlated with reported use of corporal punishment. Heavy users of corporal punishment tended to be relatively inexperienced, close-minded, neurotic, and impulsive as compared to their peers who did not use corporal punishment.     

The SOMPA: A brief examination of technical considerations,philosophical rationale,and implications for practice

The SOMPA is examined in terms of the multicultural model and Mercer's justification for multiple normal distributions within that model. The philosophical basis of the approach and the environments in which any assessment strategy must function are also examined. It is concluded that multiple normal distributions are not justified based on the variance accounted for in WISC-R scores by the Sociocultural Scales of the SOMPA. The pholosophical basis of the SOMPA, the sociology of knowledge, is not considered helpful or useful in the assessment process because of internal logic problems associated with the paradigm and because it creates an artificial separation of populations. Some of the components which influence education are examined in an effort to place the SOMPA in a realistic operational environment and to contrast the complexity of that environment with the oversimplified view offered by the SOMPA.     

Accommodation fatigue and dark focus: The effects of accommodation-free visual work as assessed by two psychophysical methods

Past studies of accommodation fatigue have yielded inconsistent results, partly because they have not used direct measures of accommodation, and partly because they may have been based on a misleading conception of the nature of accommodation. The dual-innervation theory of accommodation suggests that the resting position of accommodation may be neuromuscular rather than just muscular, and that it lies not at optical infinity, as assumed by older conceptions, but at some intermediate position (dark focus). Among the predictions that may be deduced from this theory is that long-term visual work not requiring active accommodation will not induce fatigue. The present study involved continuous measurements of dark focus for 10 young adults over a 3-h period, using the laser optometer with two psychophysical procedures Ibracketing and staircase. Consistent with the prediction, no changes in dark focus were found, in spite of the demanding visual task. Furthermore, it was found that both psychophysical methods yielded essentially identical results. The practical and theoretical implications of these results are discussed, and recommendations are given regarding situations in which each of the psychophysical methods is likely to be most useful.     

Reflex inhibition in humans: Sensitivity to brief silent periods in white noise

A white noise (60 dB SPL) was always present except for brief silent periods (“gaps”) which occurred just before an eyelid reflex was elicited in human volunteers by a brief innocuous shock to the forehead. In Experiment 1 (n=8), 10-msec gaps (“S1”) were given 40, 80, 120, 160, or 200 msec before the shock (“S2”). Compared with S2-alone trials, the reflex was inhibited by about 50% at intervals of 80 msec and beyond. Experiment 2 (n=12) first provided detection thresholds for gaps using a simple version of the method of limits: on average a gap of 5.4 msec duration was just detected. Then gaps of 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 msec were given in random order, each 100 msec before S2. The 4-msec stimulus was an effective inhibitor of the reflex, and inhibition further increased on to 6- and then to 8-msec durations. A comparison of the values obtained on reflex inhibition with the 5.4-msec threshold obtained with the conventional psycho-physical test reveals that in humans reflex inhibition provides an objective index of stimulus detection that is at least of sufficient sensitivity to warrant its clinical application. The steady increase in reflex inhibition as gap duration increased from 2 to 8 msec may be of significance for tracing the rate of decay of afferent stimulation following noise offset, as it presumably reflects the growing sensitivity to the resumption of the noise as the duration of the silent period is increased.