Intrafamilial physical victimization and externalizing behavior problems: Who remain the ‘forgotten’ children?

Over the past few decades, researchers have documented positive associations between direct child maltreatment and exposure to interpersonal violence (including intimate partner violence, community violence, school violence, and media violence) and children's externalizing behavior problems. However, current family violence literature largely ignores the effects of child abuse on other children in the family. A handful of studies have focused on exposure to child abuse and documented the behavioral effects on siblings, and these studies lend support for broadening scholarship focused on this type of family violence. This article presents empirical research and theories that focus on the relationships between child physical abuse and exposure to intimate partner violence and children's externalizing behavior problems. Using this literature as a foundation, an argument is made for the need to focus on children's exposure to child physical abuse. This article presents information from the few studies that have focused on children who were exposed to the physical abuse of a sibling and offers theoretical frameworks, including social learning theory and psychological proximity, as a foundation for future research. The article concludes with a discussion of services that may be necessary for children who have been exposed to the physical abuse of a sibling, including services focused on safety and mental health.     

Some thoughts on the creation of the child psychotherapist's role in a major teaching hospital

Twenty-three children, aged four to eight years, who had been exposed to violent attacks, were videotaped in individual 40-minute play sessions. These play narratives were recorded by a student researcher trained in narrative analysis and play therapy. She then sorted these play vignettes into three patterns of post-traumatic play, defined in the Children's Play Therapy Instrument/Adaptation for Trauma Research (CPTI/ATR). The three patterns were re-enactment with soothing; re-enactment without soothing; and overwhelming re-enactment. Each pattern was analysed further by the student researcher and the two authors of the scale to specify in detail the qualitative features of each pattern. Factors leading to resilience are identified and the contribution of play activity to repair is discussed.     

Visual influences on interactive speech alignment

Speech alignment describes the unconscious tendency to produce speech that shares characteristics with perceived speech (eg Goldinger, 1998 Psychological Review 105 251-279). In the present study we evaluated whether seeing a talker enhances alignment over just hearing a talker. Pairs of participants performed an interactive search task which required them to repeatedly utter a series of keywords. Half of the pairs performed the task while hearing each other, while the other half could see and hear each other. Alignment was assessed by naive judges rating the similarity of interlocutors' keywords recorded before, during, and after the interactive task. Results showed that interlocutors aligned more when able to see one another suggesting that visual information enhances speech alignment.     

Perceived force in fatiguing isometric contractions

An integrative approach emphasizing both psychological and physiological components in force perception has started to emerge in motor psychophysics. In this experiment, the relation between isometric force (produced by the elbow flexors~ and perceived force was examined over a range of forces maintained until maximal endurance. A contralateral-limb matching procedure in which subjects estimated the force of a sustained, constant force contraction by contracting their unfatigued arm at regular intervals was employed. A linear increase in perceived force was observed during the fatiguing contractions, the rate of which depended on the level of force exerted. The sensation of force at maximal endurance was also found to vary with the force exerted. Based on the similarity between these results and those derived from electromyographic studies, we propose that observers use the efferent input to the muscle in preference to its afferent responses in judging the force of muscular contractions.     

Reasoning from unfamiliar premises: a study with unschooled adults

A long tradition of research initiated by Luria in the 1930s has established that unschooled adults perform poorly on reasoning tasks. Particularly when the premises are unfamiliar, they adopt an inappropriate empirical bias. However, recent findings show that young children with little or no schooling reason competently if prompted to think of the unfamiliar premises as pertaining to a distant planet. We tested two groups of adults: illiterate, unschooled adults and adults with limited schooling. Both groups received problems that included either a premise with unknown content or a premise contradicting their everyday experience. When given a minimal prompt, both groups manifested the customary empirical bias. By contrast, when explicitly prompted to think of the unfamiliar premises as pertaining to a distant planet, they reasoned accurately and appropriately justified their conclusions in terms of the supplied premises.     

Why do we share aggressive online content? Testing a short cycle model

The present study aimed to observe the impacts of aggressive online content exposure and personality on aggressive content sharing, considering the mediating role of positive and negative affects. A total of 302 Brazilians, equally divided into two groups, participated in a social network simulation, being exposed to aggressive (experimental group) or neutral (control group) posts and choosing what they would like to share on this site (among aggressive or nonaggressive material). A factorial MANOVA showed a significant difference for positive and negative affects and aggressive content sharing (Wilks' Λ = 0.936; F[3, 298] = 6.812; p = .001; η² = 0.064). Through structural equation modeling, an explanatory model was also tested, in which this behavior was directly predicted by aggressive online content exposure and suffered indirect effects from openness, conscientiousness, and extroversion, mediated by positive affects (goodness-of-fit index = 0.997, comparative fit-index = 0.998, Tucker-Lewis index = 0.996, SRMR = 0.028, root-mean-square error of approximation = 0.035, CI = 0.003−0.054). It is possible to conclude that the objectives are met, highlighting the contribution to understanding aggressive online behavior through the proximal processes described in the general aggression model.     

Interaction between consecutive learnings: inhibitory avoidance and habituation

Rats were submitted to step-down inhibitory avoidance training and to habituation of a rearing response to a tone with a 2-h interval between the two tasks, and were tested for retention of both tasks on the next day. When animals were trained first in inhibitory avoidance and then in habituation, retention of the avoidance behavior was impaired. When the animals were trained first in the habituation task and then in the avoidance task, retention of the two tasks was normal. The same results were obtained regardless of the order in which the two tasks were presented on the day of testing. This asymmetrical influence of habituation training on inhibitory avoidance retention could be due either to cognitive or, more likely, to task-specific neurochemical interactions.     

The Influence of Traditional Male Initiation (Lebollo) on School Discipline: Educators’ Perspectives

This study explores the influence of traditional male initiation on school discipline. Eight educators teaching in township schools in Bloemfontein, South Africa, were purposefully selected to take part in a focus-group interview. The results from a content analysis indicate that initiates may exacerbate disciplinary problems at schools and that certain types of misbehavior may be attributed to initiation schools. The study found that initiation schools might perpetuate gender inequalities, patriarchy, gangsterism, and criminality. Recommendations on how to deal with disciplinary problems arising from initiates’ behavior are made.