Offence,offender, and victim characteristics in South Korean filicides, 1948–1962: A descriptive study

Filicide is defined as the killing of children from birth to age 18 by a natural or step-parent. The legal definition of filicide in Korea does not impose such age limits. Although families in contemporary Korea are nuclear in structure, they were multigenerational prior to the industrialisation that occurred during the second half of the twentieth century. While psychiatric and evolutionary theories have been predominantly used in the filicide literature, prior works have neglected to examine how culture shapes violence against one’s offspring. This paper explores the offence, offender, and victim characteristics in South Korean filicides (1948–1962) through a content analysis of a major newspaper (Chosun Ilbo). Results indicate that filicides occur in one-on-one contexts, primarily carried out by biological parents against their offspring while adoptive children appeared as victims due to the genealogical customs practiced in Korean society. Results indicate that more than 12% of filicide victims are adults. The implications of our findings are discussed.     

Family Concerns and Involvement During Kindergarten Transition

The transition from preschool to formal schooling constitutes an important developmental milestone for children and their families. Very few empirical studies investigating the kindergarten transition for typically developing children have been published, and fewer have examined transition experiences from the perspective of caregivers. The aims of our study were to investigate: (1) parent concerns during transition, (2) perceived needs during transition, and (3) parent involvement in kindergarten preparation activities. Parents/caregivers of 86 general education students transitioning to kindergarten completed a survey assessing their concerns, needs, and involvement in transition preparation activities. Results suggest that although the majority of parents expressed few concerns regarding their child’s kindergarten transition, a subset (i.e., 27.9%) reported significant concerns. The areas of concern most often cited by families in this sample were socio-behavioral in nature. Parents in this sample expressed a desire for various types of information during transition. Parents most often reported engaging in low intensity transition practices characterized by generic forms of contact, rather than more individualized and intensive practices often cited in the literature as best practices. In addition, parent involvement in transition preparation activities differed by family socioeconomic status as well as district locale. This study offers practical suggestions and policy implications for coordinating family and school efforts during children’s kindergarten transition.     

Interpretability, validity, and the minimum important difference

Patient-reported outcomes are increasingly used as dependent variables in studies regarding the effectiveness of clinical interventions. But patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) do not provide intuitively meaningful data. For instance, it is not clear what a five point increase or decrease on a particular scale signifies. Establishing ‘interpretability’ involves making changes in outcomes meaningful. Attempts to interpret PROMs have led to the development of methods for identifying a minimum important difference (MID). In this paper, however, I draw on Charles Taylor’s distinction between weak and strong evaluations to suggest that identifying a MID, specifically, a MID that uses a patient-reported reference group, may not provide an adequate interpretation of these measures. Moreover, I argue that the difficulty with interpreting these measures is tied to a larger problem concerning their validity. If researchers wish to interpret PROMs, they may first need to know more about the constructs they attempt to measure, namely, quality of life.     

Choosing a patient-reported outcome measure

There has been much philosophical interest regarding the ‘hierarchy of evidence’ used to determine which study designs are of most value for reporting on questions of effectiveness, prognosis, and so on. There has been much less philosophical interest in the choice of outcome measures with which the results of, say, an RCT or a cohort study are presented. In this paper, we examine the FDA’s recently published guidelines for assessing the psychometric adequacy of patient-reported outcome measures. We focus on their recommendations for demonstrating content validity and also for how researchers should weigh up the sum of psychometric evidence when choosing these measures. We argue that questions regarding judgment and understanding meaning of these measures should play a more central role in determining their adequacy.     

Temporal encoding strategies result in boosts to final free recall performance comparable to spatial ones

The method of loci is a highly effective mnemonic that recruits existing salient memory for spatial locations and uses the information as a scaffold for remembering a list of items (Yates, 1966). One possible account for the effectiveness of the spatial method of loci comes from the perspective that it utilizes evolutionarily preserved mechanisms for spatial navigation within the hippocampus (Maguire et al. in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 97(8), 4398–4403, 2000; O’Keefe & Nadel, 1978; Rodriguez et al. in Brain Research Bulletin, 57(3), 499–503, 2002). Recently, though, neurons representing temporal information have also been described within the hippocampus (Eichenbaum in Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 15(11), 732–744, 2014; Itskov, Curto, Pastalkova, & Buzsáki in The Journal of Neuroscience, 31(8), 2828–2834, 2011; MacDonald, Lepage, Eden, & Eichenbaum in Neuron, 71(4), 737–749, 2011; Mankin et al. in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(47), 19462–19467, 2012; Meck, Church, & Matell in Behavioral Neuroscience, 127(5), 642, 2013), challenging the primacy of spatial-based functions to hippocampal processing. Given the presence of both spatial and temporal coding mechanisms within the hippocampus, we predicted that primarily temporal encoding strategies might also enhance memory. In two different experiments, we asked participants to learn lists of unrelated nouns using the (spatial) method of loci (i.e., the layout of their home as the organizing feature) or using two novel temporal methods (i.e., autobiographical memories or using the steps to making a sandwich). Participants’ final free recall performance showed comparable boosts to the method of loci for both temporal encoding strategies, with all three scaffolding approaches demonstrating performance well above uninstructed free recall. Our findings suggest that primarily temporal representations can be used effectively to boost memory performance, comparable to spatial methods, with some caveats related to the relative ease with which participants appear to master the spatial versus temporal methods.     

Effects of Sensory Deficit on Phalanx Force Deviation During Power Grip Post Stroke

The effect of sensory deficits on power grip force from individual phalanges was examined. The authors found that stroke survivors with sensory deficits (determined by the Semmes-Weinstein monofilament test) gripped with phalanx force directed more tangential to the object surface, than those without, although both groups had similar motor deficits (Chedoke-McMaster and Fugl-Meyer), grip strength, and skin friction. Altered grip force direction elevates risk of finger slippage against the object thus grip loss/object dropping, hindering activities of daily living. Altered grip force direction was associated with altered muscle activation patterns. In summary, the motor impairment level alone may not describe hand motor control in detail. Information about sensory deficits helps elucidate patients' hand motor control with functional relevance.     

Peripheral and central components in variants of the Mueller-Lyer illusion

Illusion decrement with prolonged inspection was used as a technique to assess the relative amount of central component in seven variants of the Mueller-Lyer illusion. Results indicate that all of the variant forms share a common, central component, while the peripheral components, such as lateral inhibition, vary as a function of the presence of converging lines in the illusion configurations.     

Effects of stimulus variation on the reinforcing capability of nonpreferred stimuli

We examined the effects of stimulus (reinforcer) variation in several different contexts. In Study 1, we identified high-quality (HQ) and low-quality (LQ) stimuli based on results of a paired-stimulus assessment and examined their effects when available under concurrent-reinforcement schedules for 8 participants. No participants showed preference for the LQ stimuli when compared singly or in a varied arrangement to the HQ stimulus. In Study 2, we identified nonpreferred (NP) stimuli based on results of a single-stimulus assessment and examined their effects when available under single-reinforcement schedules for 3 participants. Results of Study 2 were mixed. One participant's data indicated that the varied presentation of NP stimuli produced a modest improvement in performance over that observed when the stimuli were presented singly. By contrast, a second participant's data showed no facilitative effect for the varied delivery of NP stimuli and that the inclusion of an HQ stimulus in the varied arrangement obscured the reinforcing effects of the HQ stimulus. The 3rd participant's data showed no effect for the varied delivery of NP stimuli but an apparent facilitative effect when an HQ stimulus was included in the varied arrangement, which was attributable solely to the presence of the HQ stimulus.     

The affective structure of supportive parenting: depressive symptoms, immediate emotions, and child-oriented motivation

This study investigated the maternal concerns and emotions that may regulate one form of sensitive parenting, support for children's immediate desires or intentions. While reviewing a videotape of interactions with their 1-year-olds, mothers who varied on depressive symptoms reported concerns and emotions they had during the interaction. Emotions reflected outcomes either to children (child-oriented concerns) or to mothers themselves (parent-oriented concerns). Child-oriented concerns were associated with fewer negative emotions and more supportive behavior. Supportive parenting was high among mothers who experienced high joy and worry and low anger, sadness, and guilt. However, relations depended on whether emotions were child or parent oriented: Supportive behavior occurred more when emotions were child oriented. In addition, as depressive symptoms increased, mothers reported fewer child-oriented concerns, fewer child-oriented positive emotions, and more parent-oriented negative emotions. They also displayed less supportive behavior. Findings suggest that support for children's immediate intentions may be regulated by parents' concerns, immediate emotions, and depressive symptoms.