Assessment of deviant arousal in adult male sex offenders with developmental disabilities

Ten individuals, residing in a treatment facility specializing in the rehabilitation of sex offenders with developmental disabilities, participated in an arousal assessment involving the use of the penile plethysmograph. The arousal assessments involved measuring change in penile circumference to various categories of stimuli both appropriate (adult men and women) and inappropriate (e.g., 8- to 9-year-old boys and girls). This approach extends the existing assessment literature by the use of repeated measurement and single-subject experimental design. Data from these assessments were analyzed to determine if clear and informative outcomes were obtained. Overall, three general patterns of results emerged. Some participants showed differentiated deviant arousal or higher levels of arousal to specific inappropriate stimuli (deviant is a term used in the existing sex-offender literature to describe this type of arousal). Other participants showed undifferentiated deviant arousal, in which case they showed nonspecific arousal to inappropriate stimuli. The remaining participants showed no arousal to inappropriate stimuli but did show arousal to appropriate stimuli. Implications for assessment, treatment, and future directions are discussed.     

Effects of varying stimulus size on object recognition in pigeons

The authors investigated the pigeon's ability to generalize object discrimination performance to smaller and larger versions of trained objects. In Experiment 1, they taught pigeons with line drawings of multipart objects and later tested the birds with both larger and smaller drawings. The pigeons exhibited significant generalization to new sizes, although they did show systematic performance decrements as the new size deviated from the original. In Experiment 2, the authors tested both linear and exponential size changes of computer-rendered basic shapes to determine which size transformation produced equivalent performance for size increases and decreases. Performance was more consistent with logarithmic than with linear scaling of size. This finding was supported in Experiment 3. Overall, the experiments suggest that the pigeon encodes size as a feature of objects and that the representation of size is most likely logarithmic.     

Construct validity of the relationship profile test: a self-report measure of dependency-detachment

This study evaluated the construct validity of the Relationship Profile Test (RPT; Bornstein & Languirand, 2003), a 30-item self-report measure of dependency-detachment that yields three subscale scores: (a) destructive overdependence, (b) dysfunctional detachment, and (c) healthy dependency. Scores on the RPT subscales generally showed the expected patterns of intercorrelations and gender differences, and comparison of RPT scores with scores on other tests supported the convergent and discriminant validity of each RPT subscale. Results of internal and retest reliability analyses were generally supportive as well, and suggested that the three RPT subscales assess aspects of the traits they purport to measure     

“Troubles Talk”: Effects of Gender and Gender-Typing

Effects of gender and gender-typing on communication styles were examined in 62 male and 110 female college students. Participants were asked to rate the likelihood of giving certain responses to a friend's problems as well as the likelihood of feeling certain emotions when a friend gives them advice or sympathy for their own problems. Men and masculine people were expected to be more likely to respond to a friend in a way that reduces interpersonal intimacy; women and feminine people were expected to respond in a way that enhances interpersonal intimacy. Although a few gender differences were found, participants' level of expressive/nurturing traits (femininity) was related to more responses than was gender. The importance of examining gender-linked traits and not just gender when studying communication patterns is emphasized.     

Three-month-old infants' object recognition across changes in viewpoint using an operant learning procedure

Object knowledge refers to the understanding that all objects share certain properties. Various components of object knowledge (e.g., object occlusion, object causality) have been examined in human infants to determine its developmental origins. Viewpoint invariance--the understanding that an object viewed from different viewpoints is still the same object--is one area of object knowledge, however, that has received less attention. To this end, infants' capacity for viewpoint-invariant perception of multi-part objects was investigated. Three-month-old infants were tested for generalization to an object displayed on a mobile that differed only in orientation (i.e., viewpoint) from a training object. Infants were given experience with a wide range of object views (Experiment 1) or a more restricted range during training (Experiment 2). The results showed that infants generalized between a horizontal and vertical viewpoint (Experiment 1) that they could clearly discriminate between in other contexts (i.e., with restricted view experience, Experiment 2). Overall, the outcome shows that training experience with multiple viewpoints plays an important role in infants' ability to develop a general percept of an object's 3D structure and promotes viewpoint-invariant perception of multi-part objects; in contrast, restricting training experience impedes viewpoint-invariant recognition of multi-part objects.     

The emotional impact and ease of recall of warning signs for suicide: a controlled study

In light of concerns about potential iatrogenic effects of information about suicide, in the current study we examined the emotional impact of reading a list of warning signs for suicide in comparison to comparable lists for heart attacks and diabetes. All participants read two sets of warning signs, with the experimental group reading the suicide warning signs. Results confirm no difference in emotional impact across groups, along with providing evidence that warning signs for suicide are as easy to recall after exposure as warning signs for heart attack. Implications for pubic health campaigns are discussed.     

Warning signs for suicide on the Internet: a descriptive study

The issue of suicide warning signs on the Internet is considered. In addition to reviewing some of the relevant conceptual issues about warning signs, a random sample of Internet sites was selected and reviewed. Warning signs were grouped and agreement across sites was examined, with results confirming broad disparity in what is presented to the public. The implications of a lack of consensus on warning signs for suicide are discussed.     

Brain-behavior relationships in reading acquisition are modulated by socioeconomic factors

Functional neuroimaging may provide insights into the achievement gap in reading skill commonly observed across socioeconomic status (SES). Brain activation during reading tasks is known to be associated with individual differences in children's phonological language skills. By selecting children of equivalent phonological skill, yet diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, we use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to demonstrate that a child's experience, as operationalized by SES, can systematically modulate the relationship between phonological language skills and reading-related brain activity in left fusiform and perisylvian regions. Specifically, at lower socioeconomic levels, individual differences in skill result in large differences in brain activation. In contrast, as SES increases, this relationship between phonological language skill and activation is attenuated. Socioeconomic background factors are thus found to modulate brain-behavior relationships in reading, indicating that cognitive, social, and neurobiological influences on reading development are fundamentally intertwined.     

A cross-cultural analysis of the Brief Symptom Inventory-18

The Brief Symptom Inventory-18 (BSI-18: Derogatis, 2000) is an abbreviated version of the nine dimension, 53-item BSI (Derogatis, 1993) which is a shortened form of the 90-item Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R: Derogatis, 1994). Criticism focused on factor structure (cf. Boulet & Boss, 1991; Ruipérez, Ibá?ez, Lorente, Moro, & Ortet, 2001) and the two older versions' poor discriminant validity suggest the scales' usefulness is limited to global scores only. Using principal component analysis, the authors explore the three-dimension factor structure of the BSI - 18 with the understudied population of Central American immigrants to the U.S. (N = 100). Results suggest one underlying factor best used in aggregate as a general screening for overall levels of psychological distress. Cultural differences are discussed.