Impulsive corporal punishment by mothers and antisocial behavior and impulsiveness of children

This study tested the hypothesis that corporal punishment (CP), such as spanking or slapping a child for purposes of correcting misbehavior, is associated with antisocial behavior (ASB) and impulsiveness by the child. The data were obtained through interviews with a probability sample of 933 mothers of children age 2–14 in two small American cities. Analyses of variance found that the more CP experienced by the child, the greater the tendency for the child to engage in ASB and to act impulsively. These relationships hold even after controlling for family socioeconomic status, the age and sex of the child, nurturance by the mother, and the level of non-corporal interventions by the mother. There were also significant interaction effects of CP with impulsiveness by the mother. When CP was carried out impulsively, it was most strongly related to child impulsiveness and ASB; when CP was done when the mother was under control, the relationship to child behavior problems was reduced but still present. ln view of the fact that there is a high risk of losing control when engaged in CP, even by parents who are not usually impulsive, and the fact that impulsive CP is so strongly associated with child behavior problems, the results of this study suggest that CP is an important risk factor for children developing a pattern of impulsive and antisocial behavior which, in turn, may contribute to the level of violence and other crime in society. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Promoting Safe Driving Behaviors: The Influence of Message Framing and Issue Involvement

This study examined the influence of framing and issue involvement on the intentions of participants to perform safe driving behaviors. It was hypothesized that when participants were involved with the issue, gain messages would increase intentions to perform safe driving behaviors more than would loss messages. To examine this hypothesis, participants were classified as either being high or low in involvement, and then were required to read either a gain or a loss message promoting a particular safe-driving behavior. After reading the message, the participants' agreement with the message, cognitive and affective responses to the message, and intentions to perform the behavior were recorded. The results supported the hypothesis.     

Attitudes Toward Technologies for Conception: A 15-Year Follow-Up

The attitudes of students toward technologies related to conception were assessed in 1984 and again in 1999. It was expected that increased routinization of such technologies over time would result in higher approval ratings in the second survey. This hypothesis was not supported by the results; there were no changes in approval for most methods that were included in both surveys, and in some cases, approval decreased. It was also hypothesized that methods included in the 1984 survey would receive higher approval than would newer technologies added in 1999, and this was supported by the data. Differences in approval of specific items were found by the gender and religion of respondents. Results suggest that methods involving donors continue to be unacceptable to most students, that the "older" methods are not becoming more acceptable, and that newer methods (gestational surrogacy, egg donation, and cloning) are even more problematic.     

The effects of varying attentional demands on the word retrieval skills of adults with aphasia, right hemisphere brain damage, or no brain damage

Adults with mild aphasia, right hemisphere brain damage (RBD), or no brain damage (NBD) provided one-word phrase completions under isolation, focused attention, and divided attention conditions and in response to relatively constrained or unconstrained phrase stems. Despite comparable word retrieval accuracy among groups during the isolation condition, aphasic and RBD groups performed less accurately than the NBD group during focused and divided attention conditions. Across conditions, there were no significant differences between aphasic and RBD groups. Only aphasic subjects demonstrated a significant effect of phrase type, responding more accurately when completing constrained versus unconstrained stimuli. For aphasic and RBD groups, error type analysis indicated that semantic and phonological aspects of word retrieval were influenced by increased attentional demands. These findings suggest that for adults with aphasia or RBD, there is a negative relation between attention impairments and word retrieval abilities.     

The mirror effect in recognition memory

The mirror effect in recognition memory refers to the fact that, with several different classes of stimuli, performance on new items from each class mirrors (is correlated with) performance on the corresponding classes of old items. Classes of stimuli that are accurately recognized as old when old are also accurately recognized as new when new; those that are poorly recognized as old when old are also poorly recognized as new when new. The statement above is shown not to be a tautology. A survey demonstrates that the effect holds for several types of variables (ways to classify stimuli)—word frequency, concreteness, meaningfulness, and others. The survey includes a total of 80 findings. The theoretical implications of the effect are considered.     

School-climate differences and problem admission in secondary schools

349 pupils in fifteen secondary schools in the Republic of Ireland completed the Porteous Problem Checklist and the Finlayson school-climate questionnaire. Differences were found between school types on pupil mean scores on both questionnaires. There was evidence of a relationship between school climate as perceived by pupils and the disclosure of personal problems by pupils. The average problem profile of a school's pupils differed among the four school types in the sample. Differences also existed between religious and non-religious schools. The conclusion is drawn that schools create an environment within which pupils then experience particular patterns of personal problems related to the characteristics of that environment.     

Postpartum depression

Though postpartum depression has been observed for years, research into it has increased recently, especially in England. Distinguishing the rarer, severe puerperal psychosis from milder, more frequent "maternity blues" has provided a clearer framework for new research. Hormonal changes, biogenic amines, stress, and lack of social support have been proposed as explanations for postpartum depression, but the etiology is still not clear. Hormones, tranquilizers, and antidepressants are some modern therapeutic measures employed, whereas electroconvulsive shock therapy was once the most frequent therapy. Fortunately, the mortality rate for childbirth-related psychiatric illness is low.     

State and regional differences in U.S. infant homicide rates in relation to sociocultural characteristics of the states

Infant homicide rates for the United States from 1960 to 1980 were examinedto determine if the etiological pattern associated with adult homicides also applies to homicide of infants. Although the rates for males and for nonwhites are higher than for females and whites, in other respects the infant rates did not follow the adult pattern. The rates for infants did not increase betweeen 1960 and 1980, and no significant correlations were found with 22 variables which explain a large percentage of the state-to-state variation in adult homicide. Consequently, criminal justice and public health policies based on the etiology of adult homicide may not apply to infant homicides.     

Answering yes-no questions about causes: Question acts and question categories

Three experiments examined the cognitive process of answering yes-no questions about causes. Singer’s VAIL model of question answering predicted that readers would take longer to correctly answer “no” than “don’t know” to such questions. In Experiment 1, the antecedent sentences used either the causal conjunction so orbecause. Experiment 2 compared so with an implicit causal link. In all conditions, the main prediction was strongly supported. However, when the questions referred to brief stories in Experiment 3, correct “no” and “don’t know” response latencies did not differ. It was concluded that (1) VAIL identifies the cognitive operations underlying the answering of causal questions; (2) answering yes-no questions about causes resembles answering yes-no questions about case-filling elements; (3) the yes-no versus wh- distinction is orthogonal to the type of relation asked about; and (4) studying question answering about sentences will contribute to the understanding of question answering about text.     

The Towers of Silence: creative and destructive issues for therapeutic teams dealing with sexual abuse

Intra-familial sexual abuse of children is a peculiarly potent area for subsequent inter-agency responses and interventions to become inappropriate, irrational, and damaging. A major component of the damaging responses by the inter-agency system is the mirroring processes which occur between that system and the family.
A case example is presented in some detail to illustrate the ways in which such mirroring processes also effect therapeutic teams dealing with such families. Some therapeutic techniques from an experiential base are described. It is argued that productive therapeutic work can only occur if the mirroring processes within the inter-agency system, and the therapeutic team system, are considered systemically.