Preventing Teen Relationship Abuse and Sexual Assault through Bystander Training: Intervention Outcomes for School Personnel

The purpose of the current study was to examine the impact of exposure to Bringing in the Bystander—High School Curriculum (BITB-HSC) on school personnel, which included a seven session classroom curriculum for ninth through twelfth graders (student curriculum), a bystander training workshop for school personnel (school personnel workshop), and reading materials (handout). We examined how exposure to these various BITB-HSC intervention components was associated with school personnel's knowledge and bystander efficacy, intentions, and barriers specific to student relationship abuse (RA) and sexual assault (SA). Participants were 488 school personnel from 12 high schools in upper New England who completed the 4-month follow-up survey that assessed for intervention exposure (284 participants completed both the baseline and follow-up survey). Whereas 53% of participants were exposed to no intervention components, the other half of the sample were exposed to a combination of intervention components. Higher baseline knowledge and reactive bystander intentions were associated with subsequent exposure to both the student curriculum and the handout, and fewer barriers to bystander action predicted exposure to the school personnel workshop. Exposure to the school personnel workshop, student curriculum, and handout was associated with subsequent greater knowledge, exposure to the student curriculum predicted reactive bystander intentions, and exposure to the handout predicted higher reactive bystander intentions and bystander efficacy. Findings suggest that despite challenges with engagement, exposure to the BITB-HSC components may be a useful tool in improving school personnel's responses to RA and SA among high school students.     

他对前妻说真情

聪明能干的小郝娶了娴淑文静的慧娟做妻子,这在村里传为美谈。但结婚不到半年,厄运便接踵而至:先是养殖场鱼池里的鱼死了大半,损失达十几万元:接着小郝又出了车祸,骑摩托车撞伤了腿:两个月后,老母亲又去世了。这接二连三的打击使他陷入了迷惘与困惑,整日唉声叹气。后来,     

普通话测试的录音评分可行性、信度及经济效率

该研究采用心理测量中的概化(generalizability theory)理论,通过两个研究,分析国家语言文字工作委员会的普通话测试中采用录音评分的可行性,并探讨了其信度、经济效率及心理测量等特性。研究共有25名被试及8名评分员。结果表明录音评分和现场评分测试的结果是一致的,最少能区分90％的能力差异。此外,研究亦指出现行测试的评分者人数及题数已经算足够,但仍可依考生能力特性等,作一些调整以提高测试效率。     

Correlates of victimization in Chinese children's peer groups.

This study reports a cross-sectional investigation of the behavioral and academic correlates of victimization in Chinese children's peer groups. The participants were 296 children (161 boys and 135 girls; mean age = 11.5 years) from Tianjin, China. Multi-informant assessments (peer nominations, teacher ratings, and self-reports) of peer victimization, aggression, submissiveness-withdrawal, assertiveness-prosociability, and academic functioning were obtained. Structural equation models indicated that peer victimization was associated with poor academic functioning, submissive-withdrawn behavior, aggression, and low levels of assertive-prosocial behavior. These findings suggest that there is considerable similarity in the social processes underlying peer group victimization across Chinese and Western cultural settings.     

Does adaptive testing violate local independence?

Item response theory posits local independence, or conditional independence of item responses given item parameters and examinee proficiency parameters. The usual definition of local independence, however, addresses the context of fixed tests, and initially appears to yield incorrect response-pattern probabilities in the context of adaptive testing. The paradox is resolved by introducing additional notation to deal with the item selection mechanism.We are grateful to Charlie Lewis, Ming-Mei Wang, and Pao-Kuei Wu for discussions on this topic, and to the Editor, the reviewers, and Howard Wainer for helpful comments on an earlier version of the paper. The first author's work was supported in part by the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, Student Testing (CRESST), Educational Research and Development Program, cooperative agreement number R117G10027 and CFDA catalog number 84.117G, as administered by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education.     

Structural Priming as Implicit Learning: A Comparison of Models of Sentence Production

Structural priming reflects a tendency to generalize recently spoken or heard syntactic structures to different utterances. We propose that it is a form of implicit learning. To explore this hypothesis, we developed and tested a connectionist model of language production that incorporated mechanisms previously used to simulate implicit learning. In the model, the mechanism that learned to produce structured sequences of phrases from messages also exhibited structural priming. The ability of the model to account for structural priming depended on representational assumptions about the nature of messages and the relationship between comprehension and production. Modeling experiments showed that comprehension-based representations were important for the model's generalizations in production and that nonatomic message representations allowed a better fit to existing data on structural priming than traditional thematic-role representations.     

Steroidal modulation of scent investigation and marking behaviors in male and female ferrets (Mustela putorius furo)

Gonadectomized male and female ferrets (Mustela putorius furo) given either testosterone propionate (TP) or oil vehicle preferred to investigate the side of a test cage previously soiled by a breeding male or female as opposed to a clean side. Male and female ferrets receiving TP showed more urogenital wiping than oil-treated animals in either side of the test cage. In a 2nd experiment, ferrets treated sequentially with TP, oil, and estradiol benzoate (EB) were given simultaneous access to sides of a test cage previously soiled by either a breeding female or male. Either EB or TP treatment of females and TP treatment of males facilitated the investigation of odors of opposite-sex ferrets. Females given TP and males given either TP or EB showed increased urogenital wiping in both sides of the test cage. Sex steroids modulate scent investigation and marking in adult ferrets in a sexually differentiated fashion.     

Mutual interactions between speech and finger movements

Speech output and finger movements were recorded as right-handed males repeated a syllable while making cyclical finger movements in three experimental conditions: (2) maintaining constant amplitude in both response systems; (b) alternating speech amplitude while attempting to maintain constant finger movement amplitude; and (c) alternating finger movement amplitude while attempting to maintain constant speech amplitude. Observations showed that output of the two response systems was coupled (one syllable was uttered with each finger movement) and entrained in amplitude (the amplitude pattern of the response that the subject attempted to keep constant followed that of the concurrently-active amplitude-modulated response). These interactions were bidirectional and were present with both left-handed and right-handed finger movements. The interactions are more extensive and subtle than mere interference wtih one response system by the other, and apparently do not depend on anatomical overlap of the responding neural systems.     

Differential effects of oral reading to improve comprehension with severe learning disabled and educable mentally handicapped students

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of oral reading as a teaching technique for improving reading comprehension of 11 Educable Mentally Handicapped or Severe Learning Disabled adolescents. Students were tested on their ability to answer comprehension questions from a short factual article. Comprehension improved following the oral reading for students with a reading grade equivalent of less than 5.5 (measured from the Wide Range Achievement Test) but not for those students having a grade equivalent of greater than 5.5. This association was statistically significant (p = less than .01). Oral reading appeared to improve comprehension among the poorer readers but not for readers with moderately high ability.