Legal proceedings,reforms, and emerging issues in child sexual abuse cases

Criminal and civil proceedings are outlined for cases of intrafamilial child abuse. Statutory reforms and court decisions in the area of sex abuse are reviewed, citing their potential beneficial and harmful effects on both offenders and victims. Finally, the roles of children and mental health experts in court proceedings are discussed.     

Self-help efforts in a squatter community: Implications for addressing contemporary homelessness

This analysis addresses the nature of contemporary homelessness in the United States, the historical foundations of the shelter system, and survival strategies utilized by homeless persons in meeting their physical, social, and psychological needs. A framework that examines the degree of publicness/privateness and permanency/temporariness of spaces utilized by homeless persons is applied to a case study of a self-help squatter community living on an empty lot in New York City. By looking at the members of the group, their relationship to their neighbors and the local community, and their approaches in dealing with their needs, an assessment is made of this labor-intensive, self-help effort for providing shelter. Implications of self-help approaches are related to policy development and further research.     

How We Teach Introductory Bible Courses: A Comparative and Historical Sampling

This study identifies the dominant modes of biblical interpretation being taught in introductory Bible courses through a qualitative analysis of course syllabi from three institutional contexts: evangelical Christian colleges, private colleges, and public universities. Despite a proliferation of methods and scholarly approaches to the Bible, this study reveals that historical‐critical approaches continue to predominate in pedagogical contexts, especially private colleges and public universities. In Christian colleges, theological approaches appear more frequently, usually alongside historical criticism and rarely supplanting it. The study also shows that teachers have been deploying social scientific and ideological approaches with increasing frequency over the past decade. Additionally, the study tracked instruments of student assessment in these courses. Public universities showed a particularly high level of pedagogical conservatism in this regard, while Christian colleges exhibit the greatest diversity with respect to course assignments and evaluations. See also “ Response to ‘How We Teach Introductory Bible Courses’ ” by Caryn A. Reeder, Tat‐siong Benny Liew, Jane S. Webster, Alicia J. Batten, and Chris Frilingos, published in this issue of the journal. The complete data set is included in an extended Appendix at the end of the article, and is also available electronically on the “Supporting Information” tab of the article's webpage and at the Wabash Center ( http://www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu/pdfs/AppendixCornellandLeMon.pdf ).     

Serial-position effects in infants’ recognition memory

Preverbal infants (7 months of age) were repeatedly shown a fixed series of photographs of adult female faces. The effects of the order of presentation of a photo (first, middle, or last) and the duration of retention (5 sec, 1 rain, or 5 rain) were subsequently assessed in a probe-recognition test. Both primacy and recency effects were obtained, but there was no evidence of recognition of the face that appeared in the middle of the series. There was also no evidence of recognition of the most recently studied face following the 5-rain retention interval. The bowed serial-position function and labile recency effect match those found in the performance of older subjects in classical verbal learning tasks, and we suggest an automatic process underlying these effects. Our explanation emphasizes differential learning and the context of the items to be remembered.     

Spatial cognition: gathering strategies used by preschool children

How preschool children retrieve hidden objects was examined in two cross-sectional studies. The first was a simple task in which 1- and 3-year-olds saw two treats hidden in their living room. The newly walking infants generally sought the closer treat first, providing evidence for a least-distance spatial strategy. However, this strategy was affected by a tendency to approach the hiding place most recently baited. Three-year-old children used a least-distance strategy regardless of the order of hidings. In Experiment 2, 3- and 5-year-olds saw 12 puzzle pieces hidden in various containers equally spaced within a naturally furnished children's laboratory. Factors in addition to age were the distinctiveness of the containers and a requirement to return to the center of the array after each retrieval. Overall, children of both age groups were quite successful at this task, retrieving 11 of the pieces. However, 3-year-olds were less efficient, retrieving fewer pieces and requiring more searches. Detailed analyses of errors and patterns of choices indicated differential processes in achieving their performance. Three-year-old children showed the use of memories for events, discrimination of classes of hiding places, and efficient spatial biases. Five-year-old children were more likely to exhibit these processes concurrently.     

The effects of cue distinctiveness on infants' manual search

Nine- and sixteen-month-old infants were repeatedly presented a manual search problem in which a toy was hidden in one of two containers, which were then moved into reach. The distinctiveness of the containers or their closeness during the movement was varied in different conditions. Overall, the older infants performed better than younger infants, performance improved across trials, and there were more correct searches when the containers or trajectories were distinctive. Analyses of visual orienting indicated that infants learned to restrict their looking to the hiding place. The ability to maintain attention to discriminative cues may be instrumental to progress in delayed-reaction and object permanence tasks.     

Infants' discrimination of photographs of faces following redundant presentations

Infants' discrimination of photographs of faces, as indicated by fixation toward novel targets, was the criterion used to evaluate familiarization conditions designed to facilitate the exercise of selective attention. Groups of 19- and 23-week-old infants were shown either pictures of different faces of the same sex, differing poses of the same face, or repeated exposures of the face that served as a test stimulus. The older infants demonstrated differential attention to novel over familiar stimuli during subsequent recognition tests, and an examination of their responsiveness during familiarization presentations indicated differing trends of looking activity.     

Attractiveness and Income for Men and Women in Management1

It is commonly believed that attractive people are more successful, but the empirical support for this belief is mixed. A number of role-playing, laboratory studies have demonstrated that more attractive men are more often hired, but the laboratory data for women are less consistent. Few studies have explored the effects of attractiveness on actual hiring and starting salaries for men or women. Even less work has been done on the impact of attractiveness once on the job. It was predicted that there would be positive effects for attractiveness and that the effects would be stronger as people worked longer on their jobs. To test this prediction, a sample of 737 male and female MBA graduates from the years between 1973 and 1982 was used to explore how facial attractiveness relates to starting and later salaries. Results indicated that more attractive men had higher starting salaries and they continued to earn more over time. For women, there was no effect of attractiveness for starting salaries, but more attractive women earned more later on in their jobs. By 1983, men were found to earn $2600 more on the average for each unit of attractiveness (on a 5-point scale) and women earned $2150 more. Implications for research in this area are discussed.     

Polydipsia induced by a schedule of brain stimulation reinforcement

Rats pressed a lever for a signaled brain stimulation reinforcement on either fixed-interval or fixed-ratio schedules. Both schedules induced polydipsia, with a median water intake of 22.5 ml (about four times the control level) in 3-hr sessions. The stimulation did not directly elicit drinking or other behaviors. In a second experiment, two out of four rats became polydipsic during extinction following a continuous schedule of brain stimulation reinforcement. The results were compared with previous attempts to induce polydipsia with a schedule of brain stimulation reinforcement and were discussed in terms of polydipsia as a model of human “compulsive” behaviors.