Judges' views of child sexual abuse: Evaluating beliefs against research findings in a Finnish sample

Beliefs impact our decision‐making and different professionals have been shown to have beliefs about child sexual abuse (CSA) that do not coincide with scientific findings. In the present study, judges' beliefs regarding CSA were explored. Finnish judges (N = 104) answered a questionnaire about CSA related issues as well as questions regarding their professional experience of CSA cases. The judges held both correct and incorrect beliefs; while their CSA prevalence estimates were rather well in line with research findings, half of the participants estimated that no professionals use suggestive methods when interviewing children and more than 40% thought suggestive methods can be useful when trying to get a child to tell about real events. Judges correctly assumed symptoms cannot be used to assess a CSA case, however, the majority thought play observations were appropriate means for evaluating such suspicions. Experience seemed to lead to more confidence in their own expertise but not in an actual increase in knowledge, namely, judges thought themselves more expert when more experienced although their expertise as measured by the questionnaire did not improve. Overall, the judges had both correct and erroneous beliefs but while experience did not improve the situation, gaining information about CSA did. More research about the beliefs of judges and how such beliefs impact legal decision‐making is needed.     

Relational Semantics of the Lambek Calculus Extended with Classical Propositional Logic

We show that the relational semantics of the Lambek calculus, both nonassociative and associative, is also sound and complete for its extension with classical propositional logic. Then, using filtrations, we obtain the finite model property for the nonassociative Lambek calculus extended with classical propositional logic.     

Does this book make me look fat? The effect of protagonist body weight and body esteem on female readers’ body esteem

Effects of visual representations of the thin ideal in the media have been widely explored, but textual representations of the thin ideal in novels have received scant attention. The chick literature genre has been criticized for depicting characters who worry about their body weight and who have poor body esteem. Excerpts from two chick lit novels were used to examine the effect of a protagonist's body weight and body esteem on college women's (N = 159) perceptions of their sexual attractiveness and weight concern. Two narratives were used to minimize the possibility that idiosyncratic characteristics of one excerpt might influence the study's results. Underweight (vs. healthy weight) protagonists predicted readers’ lower perceived sexual attractiveness. Protagonists with low body esteem (vs. control) predicted readers’ increased weight concern. Scholars and health officials should be concerned about the effect chick lit novels might have on women's body image.     

Stress,psychiatric co-morbidity and coping in patients with chronic idiopathic urticaria

This study examined life event stress, perceived stress and psychiatric co-morbidity among patients with Chronic Idiopathic Urticaria (CIU). It also investigated the relationship between coping, stress, the severity of CIU and psychiatric co-morbidity. Total of 100 CIU patients and 60 allergy patients participated in the study. They completed the General Health Questionnaire, the Social Readjustment Rating Scale, the Perceived Stress Scale, and the Ways of Coping Checklist. Compared with allergy patients, CIU patients had worse co-morbidity and higher levels of life event stress and perceived stress. Emotion-focussed coping was associated with the severity of CIU; perceived stress was associated with co-morbidity.     

Synergies between processing and memory in children’s reading span

Previous research has established the relevance of working memory for cognitive development. Yet the factors responsible for shaping performance in the complex span tasks used to assess working memory capacity are not fully understood. We report a study of reading span in 7‐ to 11‐year‐old children that addresses several contemporary theoretical issues. We demonstrate that both the timing and the accuracy of recall are affected by the presence or absence of a semantic connection between the processing requirement and the memoranda. Evidence that there can be synergies between processing and memory argues against the view that complex span simply measures the competition between these activities. We also demonstrate a consistent relationship between the rate of completing processing operations (sentence reading) and recall accuracy. At the same time, the shape and strength of this function varies with the task configuration. Taken together, these results demonstrate the potential for reconstructive influences to shape working memory performance among children.     

Examining the Role of Similarity Coefficients and the Value of Behavioural Themes in Attempts to Link Serial Arson Offences

When relying on crime scene behaviours to link serial crimes, linking accuracy may be influenced by the measure used to assess across‐crime similarity and the types of behaviours included in the analysis. To examine these issues, the present study compared the level of linking accuracy achieved by using the simple matching index (S) to that of the commonly used Jaccard's coefficient (J) across themes of arson behaviour. The data consisted of 42 crime scene behaviours, separated into three behavioural themes, which were exhibited by 37 offenders across 114 solved arsons. The results of logistic regression and receiver operating characteristic analysis indicate that, with the exception of one theme where S was more effective than J at discriminating between linked and unlinked crimes, no significant differences emerged between the two similarity measures. In addition, our results suggest that thematically unrelated behaviours can be used to link crimes with the same degree of accuracy as thematically related behaviours, potentially calling into the question the importance of theme‐based approaches to behavioural linkage analysis. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Testing causal models of the relationship between childhood gender atypical behaviour and parent–child relationship

An association between childhood gender atypical behaviour (GAB) and a negative parent–child relationship has been demonstrated in several studies, yet the causal relationship of this association is not fully understood. In the present study, different models of causation between childhood GAB and parent–child relationships were tested. Direction of causation modelling was applied to twin data from a population‐based sample (n= 2,565) of Finnish 33‐ to 43‐year‐old twins. Participants completed retrospective self‐report questionnaires. Five different models of causation were then fitted to the data: GAB → parent–child relationship, parent–child relationship → GAB, reciprocal causation, a bivariate genetic model, and a model assuming no correlation. It was found that a model in which GAB and quality of mother–child, and father–child relationship reciprocally affect each other best fitted the data. The findings are discussed in light of how we should understand, including causality, the association between GAB and parent–child relationship.     

Chimpanzees know what others know, but not what they believe

There is currently much controversy about which, if any, mental states chimpanzees and other nonhuman primates understand. In the current two studies we tested both chimpanzees’ and human children’s understanding of both knowledge-ignorance and false belief - in the same experimental paradigm involving competition with a conspecific. We found that whereas 6-year-old children understood both of these mental states, chimpanzees understood knowledge-ignorance but not false belief. After ruling out various alternative explanations of these and related findings, we conclude that in at least some situations chimpanzees know what others know. Possible explanations for their failure in the highly similar false belief task are discussed.     

Retrospective reports of parental physical affection and parenting style: a study of Finnish twins

Individual differences in parenting behaviors are due, in part, to genetic factors. In the present study, the authors sought to determine whether the degree of genetic influence varied according to the type of parental behavior under consideration. A population-based sample of 2,334 pairs of Finnish twins provided ratings on the physical affection, control, abusiveness, and indifference shown by their father and mother during childhood. Genetic influences, shared environmental influences, and nonshared environmental influences accounted for a small-to-medium proportion (17%-30%), a small-to-large proportion (22%-44%), and a medium-to-large proportion (37%-55%) of the variance in each parenting measure, respectively. There were no significant differences in effect sizes for mothers and fathers or across the 4 types of parental behavior. The genetic results may reflect characteristic styles with which parents respond to genetically influenced behaviors of individuals (gene-environment correlations) or individual perceptions of this relationship (gene-person correlation processes). The findings have implications for intervention and prevention work with families and for interpretation of evidence for interactions between genes and parenting behaviors.