Issues presented by mandatory reporting requirements to researchers of child abuse and neglect

Mandatory reporting laws, which vary slightly from state to state, require reporting by helping professionals when there is reasonable cause to suspect child abuse. Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) require researchers to warn subjects of this duty to report, which may have a chilling effect on subject rapport and candor. Certificates of confidentiality, in conjunction with other precautions, may reduce some barriers to valid research. Attempts to resolve problems created by reporting laws must produce the most valid research, while minimizing harm and distress to research participants, their families, and the researcher and meeting local and federal legal requirements.     

A NINETEENTH-CENTURY IRASian: SARAH ALDEN BRADFORD RIPLEY

Abstract. Almost entirely self-educated, Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley (1793–1867) combined wide-ranging personal studies with the daily responsibilities of a New England minister's wife, mother, and teacher in her husband's boarding school. As she struggled to reconcile the conventional Unitarian Christian beliefs of her time with her own life experience and with the discoveries of advancing science, her childhood faith gave way to skepticism. Gradually she was able to integrate her understanding of nature, science, philosophy, and religion into a mature faith. She would have welcomed the companionship and support of IRAS if it had existed in her day.     

Naming times for the Snodgrass and Vanderwart pictures

This paper reports the results of two experiments. In the first, voice-key naming times were collected and in the second, keypress naming times were collected for 250 of the Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980) pictures. The resulting naming times and correct naming rates were well predicted in multiple regression analyses by one or another measure of codability (name or concept agreement) and by age-of-acquisition ratings collected specifically for this study. Voice-key responses appeared to be somewhat more sensitive indicators of naming difficulty, although keypress responses did remarkably well. The Appendix presents the age-of-acquisition ratings, the trimmed vocal and keypress naming times, and the correct naming rates from the two experiments for the 250 pictures.     

Inferior temporal lesions do not impair discrimination of rotated patterns in monkeys.

Ablation of inferior temporal cortex in the rhesus monkey produces a visual discrimination learning deficit. The severity of this deficit has often been found to be a function of task difficulty. This report concerns a type of visual discrimination problem that, although difficult, is not sensitive to inferior temporal lesions. Monkeys with anterior, posterior, and complete inferior temporal lesions were repeatedly unimpaired or only slightly impaired in learning to discriminate a pattern from the same pattern rotated 90 degrees or 180 degrees; yet they were very severely impaired in learning equally or more difficult discriminations of two different patterns. This demonstration that discrimination of orientation of patterns is relatively spared after inferior temporal lesions helps specify the pattern-recognition processes that require inferior temporal cortex.     

Strategies of rule discovery in an inference task

It has long been known that subjects in certain inference tasks will seek evidence which can confirm their present hypotheses, even in situations where disconfirmatory evidence could be more informative. We sought to alter this tendency in a series of experiments which employed a rule discovery task, the 2-4-6 problem first described by Wason. The first experiment instructionally modified subjects confirmatory tendencies. While a disconfirmatory strategy was easily induced, it did not lead to greater efficiency in discovering the rule. The second experiment introduced subjects to the possibility of disconfirmation only after they had developed a strongly held hypothesis through the use of confirmatory evidence. This manipulation also failed to alter the efficiency of rule discovery. In the third experiment, subjects were taught to use multiple hypotheses at each step, in the manner of Platt's “Strong Inference”. This operation actually worsened performance. Finally, in the fourth experiment, the structure of the problem was altered slightly by asking subjects to seek two interrelated rules. A dramatic increase in performance resulted, perhaps because information which in previous tasks was seen as merely erroneous could now be related to an alternative rule. The four studies have broad implications for the psychological study of inference processes in general, and for the study of scientific inference in particular.     

Sensitivity of 5- and 7-month-old infants to pictorial depth information

An Ames (1951, Psychological Monographs, 65(1, Whole No. 324)) static trapezoidal window, under monocular view, was used to test young infants' responsiveness to pictorial depth. When adults view this display monocularly with the smaller side of the window rotated toward them, they report that the orientation of the display becomes ambiguous: When the head is moved, the window may appear to be in the fronto-parallel plane or either side may appear closer. The 7-month-olds we tested appeared to experience a similar ambiguity; they reached to the near side of the rotated trapezoidal window with significantly less consistency or directedness than infants in a control group tested with a rotated object that lacked pictorial depth information. When 5-month-olds were tested, however, they reached with equal consistency to the closer side of the trapezoidal window and of the control display, apparently uninfluenced by the pictorial depth information available in the trapezoidal window. Thus, sensitivity to the pictorial information for depth that is present in the trapezoidal window appears to develop after the age of 22 weeks.     

An information processing system for the psychiatric emergency room

An information processing system for a psychiatric emergency room is described. Several studies are presented that show the utility of the system. In the first study, variables involved in diagnosis are explicated. The second study attempts to determine the characteristics that distinguish recidivists from nonrecidivists at an emergency room. The third study attempts to find patient variables related to success in short-term treatment programs. The final study is aimed at discovering whether there are psychopathological effects related to the use of inhalants. Together, these studies show the potential of a mental health information system for learning more about the nature of mental disorders and their treatment.     

Tomboys and sissies: Androgynous children?

Psychological studies of masculinity-femininity in children have paralleled those done with adults, which often consider deviations from masculinity for males and femininity for females as abnormal and perhaps pathological. Children who demonstrate cross-sex behaviors, however, may become androgynous adults whose cross-sex behaviors mean flexibility, not pathology. This study had two purposes: (1) to identify potentially androgynous children as those labeled by their peers as tomboys and sissies; (2) to compare personality characteristics of androgynous children with those of peers. Subjects were 312 elementary school children in a midwestern city. Results indicate that the labels tomboy and sissy are not necessarily indicators of androgynous children, but important social behaviors are related to the labels. For males, the possibility of frustrated creativity was raised.