Incarcerated adolescent girls: personality, social competence, and delinquency

The aim of this study was to gain greater insight into the relationship of delinquency to personality and social competence in incarcerated girls. It was hypothesized that agreeableness and conscientiousness would correlate negatively with delinquency, and that the sensation-seeking aspect of extroversion would correlate positively. Two theoretical views were used to predict the relationship between social competence and delinquency: (a) delinquency as an expression of lack of social competence (i.e., social deficit), and (b) delinquency as socially competent and rationally analyzed behavior. The first view implies a negative correlation between delinquency and social competence, while the second indicates a positive one. The participants were thirty-three 12- to 18-year-old incarcerated girls. An adaptation of the Self-Reported Delinquency Scale was used for measuring delinquency; personality was measured using the Five-Factor Personality Inventory; and the Scale for Interpersonal Behavior was used to measure social competence. Agreeableness was not found to correlate with the overall delinquency score or with any specific type of delinquency or crime. The more crimes the girls reported, the less conscientious they were, and the more neurotic and open they were. The correlation between delinquency and extroversion was not statistically significant. A higher level of delinquency was accompanied by higher social competence when negative self-assertion was required (i.e., a low level of tension was felt in expressing negative feelings that were appropriate to the situation). In other social situations, however, the girls reported more situation-inappropriate feelings of tension. It was concluded that some personality factors and aspects of social competence can predict delinquency.     

Motor imagery vividness and symptom severity in Parkinson's disease

Motor imagery (MI), the mental simulation of movement in the absence of overt motor output, has demonstrated potential as a technique to support rehabilitation of movement in neurological conditions such as Parkinson's disease (PD). Existing evidence suggests that MI is largely preserved in PD, but previous studies have typically examined global measures of MI and have not considered the potential impact of individual differences in symptom presentation on MI. The present study investigated the influence of severity of overall motor symptoms, bradykinesia and tremor on MI vividness scores in 44 individuals with mild to moderate idiopathic PD. Linear mixed effects modelling revealed that imagery modality and the severity of left side bradykinesia significantly influenced MI vividness ratings. Consistent with previous findings, participants rated visual motor imagery (VMI) to be more vivid than kinesthetic motor imagery (KMI). Greater severity of left side bradykinesia (but not right side bradykinesia) predicted increased vividness of KMI, while tremor severity and overall motor symptom severity did not predict vividness of MI. The specificity of the effect of bradykinesia to the left side may reflect greater premorbid vividness for the dominant (right) side or increased attention to more effortful movements on the left side of the body resulting in more vivid motor imagery.     

PARENT EDUCATION PROJECT II. INCREASING STIMULATING INTERACTIONS OF DEVELOP MENTALLY HANDICAPPED MOTHERS

Two studies are reported on the assessment and training of parent-child interactional skills in developmentally handicapped mothers. Study 1 compared the interactions of eight developmentally handicapped versus eight nonhandicapped mothers during play with their young (6–25 months) children. Results showed that the former group generally interacted much less with their children and that they were less likely to praise appropriate child behavior and imitate child vocalizations. Study 2 attempted to remediate these deficits, using a training package consisting of discussion, modeling, feedback, social reinforcement, and self-recording. Results showed, first, that the training did increase the targeted skills to well within the range found for the nonhandicapped mothers. Second, training effects generalized from the group instructional setting to the mothers' own homes. Third, newly acquired skills were generally maintained at or above levels found for the nonhandicapped mothers over a 5- to 10-month follow-up period. Finally, all seven children showed increases in vocalizations concomitant with parent training. The results suggest that developmentally handicapped mothers can be taught to provide more effective and stimulating interactions to their young children.     

Dismantling noah's ark

Sex Roles - Feminist theory and research have shown us that gender is a linchpin of social orders, but they have not seriously envisaged a social order without gender. Examination of the various...     

Joint custody and the preschool child

A longitudinal study of 25 families, with children aged 14 months-5 years, in joint custody, is reported. Varying motivations that lead divorcing parents to undertake and sustain joint custody are discussed, together with the stresses and gratifications of these arrangements for the parents and children. Findings are that where both parents are motivated primarily by interest in the child, where the parenting is sensitive and where the child is shielded from interparental conflict, young children do well. Such families were not the majority in this study. Significant differences emerged in the adjustment of the 1–3 age group as compared with the 3–5 age group which point to greater difficulties for the 3–5-year-olds.     

Privacy as a value and as a right

Conclusions Knowledge of others, then, has value; so does immunity from being known. The ability to extend one's knowledge has value; so does the ability to limit other's knowledge of oneself. I have claimed that no interest can count as a right unless it clearly outweighs opposing interests whose presence is logically entailed. I see no way to establish that my interest in not being known, simply as such, outweighs your desire to know about me. I acknowledge the intuitive attractiveness of such a position; but my earlier discussion concluded that the value of privacy is ease, and the value of knowledge is understanding - and it's not obvious that either outweighs the other. Nor is it obvious that the freedom and autonomy which result from the power to limit what others know is more significant than the freedom and autonomy which result from the power to extend one's knowledge. I believe the intuitive attractiveness of the belief that privacy values outweigh knowledge values lies in the entirely correct belief that a society without any privacy would be unpleasant. But a society without mutual knowledge would be impossible.I conclude therefore that there is no right to privacy nor to control over it. Nevertheless, each of these things is a good, and a good made possible (given the presence of other people) by social structures. A desirable society will provide both privacy and control over privacy to some extent. Nothing in my analysis helps determine what the proper extent is, nor what areas of life particularly deserve protection. Those who would argue that privacy and control over it are entailed by respect for persons should, I think, choose instead some particular areas central to being a person, to counting as a person, and then show how one is less likely to exercise one's capacities there fully without privacy or without control over it. Although Gerstein's attempt fails because he inaccurately defines intimacy as a kind of absorption and incorrectly opposes absorption with publicity, I think it is the kind of attempt which must be made. Furthermore, he has probably chosen the right area of life - if anything has a special claim to privacy it is probably the union between people who care for one another. The value of being together alone may be more significant than the value of being alone, if only because words and actions are public while thoughts are not. But I will not try to develop that argument here.In any case both privacy and control over it are social goods; on egalitarian grounds they should, ceteris paribus, be equally available to everyone. This helps explain the dehumanizing effect of institutions which provide no privacy at all- prisons and some mental institutions. It is not so much that the inmates are totally known; it is rather that those who know them are not so fully known by them; further, that the staff has a great deal of control over what they disclose of themselves, and the inmates very little. The asymmetry of knowledge in those institutions is one aspect of the asymmetry of power; the completely powerless are likely to feel dehumanized.My analysis also helps account for the wrongness of covert observation. It is not simply that the observer violates the wishes of the observed, for the question is whose wishes trump. The observer is violating the justified expectations of the observed: expectations supported by weighty social conventions. These have more moral weight than simple desires do. The peeping torn is violating a convention which structures the distribution of knowledge, a convention from which he benefits. Without it his own activities might well be impossible. He might be more easily caught; or his victim, less trusting, might choose houses without windows. More deeply, the thrill of what he is doing depends on the existence of the convention. Even morally permissible excitement - the suggestiveness of some clothing- would disappear without conventions about nudity. Presumably, too, there are elements of his own personal life for which he values his privacy. He is on grounds of justice obligated to observe the rule which makes his benefits possible.(Some claims to privacy result from personal predilections, rather than from convention. Parent describes a person who is extremely sensitive about being short, for instance, and does not want his exact height to be common knowledge. The grounds for these claims are obviously different from those I've been discussing. The grounds are the moral obligation not to cause needless pain, or, if the information was given in confidence, to keep one's promises.)Although there is no right to privacy or to control over it as such, there is a right to equality of consideration and to a just distribution of benefits and burdens. To put it another way: there is no natural human right to privacy or to control over it; but a good society will provide some of each, and justice requires that the rules of a good society be observed.

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Keeping Your Distance: Group Membership,Personal Space,and Requests for Small Favors1

The effects of group membership and interpersonal distance on interpersonal anxiety and compliance with a small request were explored. In a field experiment, people seated alone in the public eating area or a shopping mall were approached by one of two female confederates: an in-group member or an out-group member. Three different interpersonal distances were assumed by the confederates: near, medium, and far. The “medium” distance was the normative distance for interactions between strangers in the experimental situation. Although the out-group confederate aroused greater anxiety and obtained less compliance than the in-group confederate overall, these differences completely disappeared in the far-distance condition. It is suggested that one reason why out-group members are less likely to elicit compliance with a small request is that they arouse interpersonal anxiety on the part of potential helpers. The results of the present experiment indicate that this anxiety can be reduced (and compliance thereby increased) if the out-group member assumes a somewhat greater distance than is normally deemed appropriate for interactions between strangers.     

Automatic and effortful processing in Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

Twenty-five boys with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and 23 age-matched controls were compared on verbal memory tasks differentiating automatic versus effortful information processing. Automatic processing tasks included the recognition of new or old words in a list and the recognition of frequency of occurrence of words in a list. Effortful tasks included free recall of lists of both related and unrelated words. Hyperactive boys did not differ from controls in automatic processing capabilities but demonstrated significantly poorer effortful processing. Intercorrelations of the variables revealed high correlations between scores on effortful measures and also raise questions about the purity of automaticity in some tasks employed. Stepwise discriminant analysis demonstrated that free recall of related words (an effortful task) best discriminated between groups. Effort-related processing in hyperactive and normal children is discussed in relation to variables of motivation, affect, arousal, and other higher-order cognitive processes.     

Sex typing: Construct and measurement issues

This study examined the relationships among commonly used measures of sex typing. A sample of 101 children, three to five years of age, were each seen on three occasions and administered six different measures of sex typing. The results showed that relations among the various measures of sex typing were quite modest for girls and only moderate for boys. Gender constancy scores did not mediate the relationships among measures for either girls or boys. The results are interpreted as supporting a multidimensional view of children's sex typing and as urging caution in generalizing results based on single measures of sex typing.     

Taking a taxi: Front or back seat? The effects of gender and community size

A study of seat choice, front or back, of solo taxi passengers found that a significantly greater number of men than women sat next to the driver in large urban areas, but that no sex difference in front-seat choice appeared in smaller communities. Very few women taxi drivers were observed. The data were interpreted in terms of sex differences in feelings of security, with solo women feeling more vulnerable than men, particularly in large cities.