Counselors’ Mandated Responsibility to Report Child Maltreatment: A Review of U.S. Laws

Although counselors in 44 states are mandatory reporters of child maltreatment, they may lack an understanding of their legally designated role. This article presents the results of a systematic review of child maltreatment reporting laws in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The authors apply relevant legislation to real‐life contexts for counselors.     

The SNARC effect is not a unitary phenomenon

Models of the spatial–numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect—faster responses to small numbers using left effectors, and the converse for large numbers—diverge substantially in localizing the root cause of this effect along the numbers’ processing chain. One class of models ascribes the cause of the SNARC effect to the inherently spatial nature of the semantic representation of numerical magnitude. A different class of models ascribes the effect’s cause to the processing dynamics taking place during response selection. To disentangle these opposing views, we devised a paradigm combining magnitude comparison and stimulus–response switching in order to monitor modulations of the SNARC effect while concurrently tapping both semantic and response-related processing stages. We observed that the SNARC effect varied nonlinearly as a function of both manipulated factors, a result that can hardly be reconciled with a unitary cause of the SNARC effect.     

A computerized test for the assessment of mild cognitive impairment subtypes in sentence processing

This study examines thesentence processing ability of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) subtypes. In addition to standard MCI neuropsychological tests, an experimental approach was applied to assess language. 133 people (93 MCI/40 controls) participated in novel computerized sentence processing tasks. Results presented statistically significant differences between MCI/controls andMCI subtypes (ANOVA):(a) duration F(2,92) = 19.259,p < .001) in sentence construction; (b) correct answers (F(2, 89) = 8.560,p < .001) and duration (F2,89) = 15.525,p < .001)in text comprehension; (c) correct answers (F(2, 92) = 8.975,p < .001) andduration (F(2, 92) = 4.360,p = .016) in metaphoric sentences comprehension; (d) correct answers (F(2, 92) = 12.836,p < .001) andduration (F(2, 92) = 10.974,p < .001) in verb form generation. Subtle changes in MCIsubtypes could affect sentence processing and provide useful information for cognitive decline risk estimation and screening purposes.     

Irrational Option Exclusion

In this paper, I describe a hitherto overlooked kind of practical irrationality, which I call irrational option exclusion. An agent who suffers from this problem does not merely fail to act on her best judgement – she fails to realize that the superior action is even an option for her. I furthermore argue that this kind of irrationality is serious enough to undermine moral responsibility. I show that an agent suffering from this problem has compromised reasons-responsiveness, does not really express her will through action, and has a hard time doing otherwise; thus, from the standpoint of several popular moral responsibility theories, we ought to conclude that her responsibility is at the very least diminished.     

Theory of mind and joint action in Parkinson’s disease

It has been suggested that the Theory of Mind (ToM) may rely on more basic processes of social cognition, such as action control (e.g., joint action), even if little is known about this relationship. The relationship between ToM and joint action can be studied in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD), because they are characterized not only by a deficit in ToM (and in its cognitive and affective subcomponents) but also by a deficit in the inhibition of competing responses. Sixty PD patients and 60 matched healthy controls (HCs) performed a go/no-go Flanker task in both joint and individual conditions. Cognitive (Advanced Test or AT) and affective (Emotion Attribution Task or EAT) ToM also were measured. Thirty-five PD patients and matched HCs also performed the standard Flanker task, as a control measure. In patients, only individuals with high AT scores exhibited a joint Flanker effect, whereas in HCs the joint effect was found irrespectively of AT score. Patients with low EAT scores showed a greater interference effect than patients with high scores, whereas the opposite pattern was found for HCs. In regression analysis AT and EAT scores predicted the Flanker effect in the joint condition only. In the standard task, both groups showed a Flanker effect. The role of different fronto-striatal circuits, especially in PD patients, could explain the different involvement of cognitive and affective ToM in joint tasks. The Flanker effect is discussed considering the referential coding account and the attention-focus account as possible candidates to explain joint action effects.     

The cyber dating violence inventory. Validation of a new scale for online perpetration and victimization among dating partners

Cyber dating abuse is a new kind of dating violence. Several recent measures assess this phenomenon, but do not focus on a severe aggression that aims to spoil a partner’s relational network (relational cyber abuse). This study developed and validated the Cyber Dating Violence Inventory (CDVI) with 1405 adolescents and young adults (M_age = 18.17; SD_age = 2.39; 65.1% females), an instrument that considers the relational dimension of online dating abuse. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses found two correlated factors (Psychological and Relational) for both perpetration and victimization, showing good reliability. CDVI factors were positively correlated with offline dating violence, showing good criterion validity. This instrument has clinical and educational implications.     

Stress-induced salivary cortisol secretion during hypobaric hypoxia challenge and in vivo urinary thromboxane production in healthy male subjects

Few studies have assessed the effects of stress on in vivo platelet activation. In the present study, hypobaric hypoxia induced by rapid decompression during high-altitude simulated flight in a hypobaric chamber was used to evaluate the effects of environmental stress on salivary cortisol and urinary thromboxane metabolite (TXM) excretion, a noninvasive marker of in vivo platelet function. Twenty-one male aviators (mean ± SD age = 36 ± 7 years) experiencing hypoxia by removing their oxygen mask for 4-5 min during a simulated flight to 25,000 ft (7,620 m; pO(2) = 59.17 mmHg) and a matched control group of thirteen flying instructors wearing oxygen masks during the challenge, were studied. Hypobaric hypoxia induced a transient significant increase (P < 0.001) in the aviators' salivary cortisol concentration; the overall pattern of diurnal cortisol fluctuation was maintained in both groups. Urinary TXM showed a significant ～30% reduction (P < 0.01) after the chamber session in aviators exposed to hypobaric hypoxia, but not in controls. A significant inverse correlation was found between salivary cortisol and urinary TXM in aviators (r = - 0.64, P = 0.0015). Salivary cortisol was a significant predictor (P < 0.001) for urinary TXM concentrations in aviators. In conclusion, here we observed that an acute stress-induced salivary cortisol increase was associated with reduced urinary thromboxane biosynthesis, providing the first indirect evidence for an inhibitory effect of acute stress on in vivo platelet function.     

Genetic Counseling for Early-onset Familial Alzheimer Disease in Large Aboriginal Kindred from a Remote Community in British Columbia: Unique Challenges and Possible Solutions

A novel, pathogenic presenilin 1 (PS1) mutation has recently been identified in a large Aboriginal kindred living in dispersed communities throughout British Columbia, Canada. Disseminating genetic information and ensuring that appropriate genetic counseling services are provided to all concerned relatives have posed several unique challenges. These challenges include knowledge exchange and continuity of care in a geographically remote and culturally distinct community. To our knowledge, this is the first time a specific genetic counseling approach has been needed for early-onset familial Alzheimer disease (EOFAD) in a North American Aboriginal community.     

Sad people are more accurate at face recognition than happy people

Mood has varied effects on cognitive performance including the accuracy of face recognition (Lundh & Ost, 1996). Three experiments are presented here that explored face recognition abilities in mood-induced participants. Experiment 1 demonstrated that happy-induced participants are less accurate and have a more conservative response bias than sad-induced participants in a face recognition task. Using a remember/know/guess procedure, Experiment 2 showed that sad-induced participants had more conscious recollections of faces than happy-induced participants. Additionally, sad-induced participants could recognise all faces accurately, whereas, happy- and neutral-induced participants recognised happy faces more accurately than sad faces. In Experiment 3, these effects were not observed when participants intentionally learnt the faces, rather than incidentally learnt the faces. It is suggested that happy-induced participants do not process faces as elaborately as sad-induced participants.     

The cost of a strategy

Abstract

Experiment 1 demonstrated a new kind of dual-task interference effect. The primary task was a speeded left-right discrimination of stimulus position (R1). The un speeded secondary task consisted of reporting verbally whether the stimuli were the same or different (R2). Stimulus exposure time was either 150 or 2000 msec. Two groups of subjects performed the primary task only, whereas two other groups performed both tasks and were instructed to emit R1 before R2. It was reasoned that the decision would be made to emit R1 before R2, and that this decision would produce a lengthening of R1. The results supported this prediction. Experiment 2 showed that the interference effect also occurred when the subjects were not explicitly instructed to emit R1 before R2, and was not due to either the mere presence of the second task or to response grouping. Experiments 3 and 4 compared two possible models for explaining the interference effect, i.e. the capacity-sharing model and the postponement model. As predicted by the postponement model, task difficulty did not interact, or interacted underadditively, with task overlap (Experiment 3), and the interference effect was not influenced by the amount of processing resources devoted to the primary task (Experiment 4). It was concluded that this new type of interference effect is best explained by the version of the postponement model that locates the bottleneck at the decision stage.