Women in male-dominated professions: Contrasts in their personal and vocational histories

Women in four high-status, male-dominated professions—architecture, law, medicine, and psychology—are described in terms of a variety of historical, social, and career variables. The women share common antecedents of their vocational choices and similar perceptions of their work, but the occupational groups are dissimilar on a number of dimensions. Psychologists stand in particular contrast to the other three groups of professionals, describing experiences and career patterns less in conflict with stereotypic female roles. These contrasts may reflect differences in the sex-typed characterizations of the professions even though all are male-dominated.     

An approach to families of acting-out adolescents--a case study.

Certain types of acting-out in the adolescent express the feelings of deprivation of the parental pair in a maladaptive aggressive way. Family therapists have attempted to convert the acting-out behavioral disorders into an effective state, i.e., make the family aware of their feelings of deprivation by focusing on the aggressive component. In many instances, the family becomes depressed and then interrupts or terminates treatment. The authors feel that this is due to the therapist's interpretations which bring about the depressive state via guilt provocation. The family understands the interpretations as meaning "You are bad to have your adolescent offspring behave in such a way". The therapist is thus seen as the family's collective super-ego. In order to prevent premature termination, the therapist should instead help the members of the family to become more conscious of their loving, "welfare" feelings for one another. In this way the self-esteem of the family is increased, which then permits more verbal action of aggressive feelings--thus a decrease in the acting-out, and ultimately an increase in the capacity to mourn. It should be pointed out, however, that in certain families, the technique described is not applicable. In these cases, although there is acting-out, the families are unable to draw on sufficient good experiences together which are necessary to elicit positive feeling for one another. The absence of readily available "welfare" feelings is of diagnostic and prognostic significance and differentiates the disorganized, sociopathic or schizophrenic family from the acting-out of parental deprivation as illustrated in this paper.     

Dual processes in reasoning?

Previous results have shown that the introduction of negatives into the sentences used in a deductive problem affected behavior in a systematic way which was independent of the logical structure of the problem. In the present investigation, the subjects were asked to justify their responses when reasoning about such sentences. In accordance with previous results, the responses were dominated by the terms in the sentences regardless of whether they were negated. However, the justifications did vary when negatives were introduced in accordance with the logical consequences of the responses. The interpretation of these justifications as causes of behavior seemed implausible. It was suggested that they were rationalizations, or that there was at least some form of dual processing between behavior and conscious thought.     

Difficulty and Degrees of Moral Praiseworthiness and Blameworthiness

In everyday life, we assume that there are degrees of blameworthiness and praiseworthiness. Yet the debate about the nature of moral responsibility often focuses on the “yes or no” question of whether indeterminism is required for moral responsibility, while questions about what accounts for more or less blameworthiness or praiseworthiness are underexplored. In this paper, I defend the idea that degrees of blameworthiness and praiseworthiness can depend in part on degrees of difficulty and degrees of sacrifice required for performing the action in question. Then I turn to the question of how existing accounts of the nature of moral responsibility might be seen to accommodate these facts. In each case of prominent compatibilist and incompatibilist accounts that I consider, I argue that supplementation with added dimensions is required in order to account for facts about degrees of blameworthiness and praiseworthiness. For example, I argue that the reasons‐responsiveness view of Fischer and Ravizza (1998) requires supplementation that takes us beyond even fine‐grained measures of degrees of reasons‐responsiveness in order to capture facts about degrees of difficulty (contrary to the recent attempt by Coates and Swenson (2013) to extend the reasons‐responsiveness view by appealing to such measures). I conclude by showing that once we recognize the need for these additional parameters, we will be in a position to explain away at least some of the appeal of incompatibilist accounts of moral responsibility.     

A Comparison of Structural Brain Imaging Findings in Autism Spectrum Disorder and Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

ASD and ADHD are regarded as distinct disorders in the current DSM-5. However, recent research and the RDoC initiative are recognizing considerable overlap in the clinical presentation of ASD, ADHD, and other neurodevelopmental disorders. In spite of numerous neuroimaging findings in ASD and ADHD, the extent to which either of the above views are supported remains equivocal. Here we compare structural MRI and DTI literature in ASD and ADHD. Our main findings reveal both distinct and shared neural features. Distinct expressions were in total brain volume (ASD: increased volume, ADHD: decreased volume), amygdala (ASD: overgrowth, ADHD: normal), and internal capsule (ASD: unclear, ADHD: reduced FA in DTI). Considerable overlap was noted in the corpus callosum and cerebellum (lower volume in structural MRI and decreased FA in DTI), and superior longitudinal fasciculus (reduced FA in DTI). In addition, we identify brain regions which have not been studied in depth and require more research. We discuss relationships between brain features and symptomatology. We conclude by addressing limitations of current neuroimaging research and offer approaches that account for clinical heterogeneity to better distinguish brain-behavior relationships.     

Criminally Involved Parents Who Misuse Substances and Children’s Odds of Being Arrested as a Young Adult: Do Drug Treatment Courts Mitigate the Risk?

This paper examined (1) the association between parents who are convicted of a substance-related offense and their children’s probability of being arrested as a young adult and (2) whether or not parental participation in an adult drug treatment court program mitigated this risk. The analysis relied on state administrative data from North Carolina courts (2005–2013) and from birth records (1988–2003). The dependent variable was the probability that a child was arrested as a young adult (16–21). Logistic regression was used to compare groups and models accounted for the clustering of multiple children with the same mother. Findings revealed that children whose parents were convicted on either a substance-related charge on a non-substance-related charge had twice the odds of being arrested as young adult, relative to children whose parents had not been observed having a conviction. While a quarter of children whose parents participated in a drug treatment court program were arrested as young adults, parental completion this program did not reduce this risk. In conclusion, children whose parents were convicted had an increased risk of being arrested as young adults, irrespective of whether or not the conviction was on a substance-related charge. However, drug treatment courts did not reduce this risk. Reducing intergenerational links in the probability of arrest remains a societal challenge.