The personality of the Scottish police officer: The issue of positive and negative affectivity

During the past 20 years, interest has arisen concerning the existence of a specific police personality. Much of the early studies had significant methodological difficulties. The present study aimed to examine the personality traits of ‘Positive and Negative Affectivity’ in a group (n = 699) of serving Scottish police officers. The PANAS scale (Watson, Clark & Tellegen, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 1063–1070, 1988) suggested that the sample did not differ from the norm on either of these indices. No differences were found according to age or length of service, which brings into question previous assertions made concerning the role of the police organisation in the development of police personality. However, the complexity of the issue was demonstrated, as differences in affectivity were observed according to gender, marital status, rank, working location and job satisfaction level.     

Grandparents Raising Grandchildren

Children and youths are being raised by grandparents in greater numbers than would be expected by choice or by chance. These new households represent a transfer of child-rearing responsibilities from an absent or incapacitated parent to an older adult who could also be at risk for disability. This article discusses the implications of this trend for the helping professions, particularly as they apply to interventions required to assure the mental and physical stability of both grandparent and child.     

Social and Situational Factors Associated With Contraceptive Switching: Implications for Practitioners1

This study was an investigation of contraceptive switching in the context of a 5-wave panel design of diaphragm and pill users from the New York City metropolitan area. The respondents were 525 women between the ages of 14 and 46, who came to one of 10 family planning clinics to obtain birth control, Results indicated a hazard function for switching in which the hazard rate increased in the initial weeks and then gradually declined over time. Clinic experiences on the part of the women were found to alter survivorship trends. Implications of the data for service providers were developed.     

The reliability of a computer interview for drug use/abuse information

A computer interview was developed to collect information about drug use/abuse from high school students. Responses to this interview were compared with those obtained from an identical paper-and-pencil questionnaire given to the same students, in counterbalanced order. Results were comparable for the two methods, but missing data and logically inconsistent answers obtained with the paper-and-pencil questionnaire were not possible with the computer interview. The overwhelming majority of respondents preferred the computer interview as a means of data collection.     

Seven Sins of Behaviourism

First, a cautionary tale. Once upon a time there were two hard-working tailors (never mind the quality, measure the width) who promised psychology a new set of clothes. In due course, the old clothes of mentalism and introspectionism were cast off and psychology congratulated itself on its new tough look. But there were murmurings. Then one of the tailors went too far and claimed that his new clothes covered everything. Even the Emperor's Verbal Behavior! At this point a young linguist cried out ‘Transformational Grammar!’ and everyone could see that the Emperor had no clothes at all. Everyone that is apart fiom the tailors.     

BELIEFS OF A CHRISTIAN MINISTER IN LIGHT OF CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE

Abstract. This paper states the author's understanding of the doctrines of the Christian faith in the light of her scientific background and her interpretation of current evolutionary, neuropsychologi–cal, and other scientific theories. It contains the actual ordination vows and her response to them, based upon an outline of questions suggested by the United Church of Christ.     

Evaluation of self-contained training procedures for the Time-Sample Behavioral Checklist

The comparative effectiveness of two time-limited modes of training observers to code the behavior of clients in residential treatment programs on the Time-Sample Behavioral Checklist (TSBC) was evaluated. The susceptibility of training procedures to consensual observer drift and the predictability of TSBC mastery from trainee characteristics were also examined. Two equated groups of undergraduate students (N=15 each) participated in full-time training on the TSBC and another instrument for 27 days, followed by criterion testingin vivo and on videotapes. One group was trained by experienced personnel using procedures known to be effective but potentially subject to consensual observer drift. The other group was trained using a previously untested set of written and videotape procedures that do not rely on experienced personnel. Comparative effectiveness and observer drift were evaluated by multivariate and univariate ANOVAs on mastery scores reflecting both pattern agreement and level differences between each trainee and criterion codings. The new, more efficient training procedures were found to be as effective as the original training procedures in the degree of mastery achieved by trainees. Original training procedures were found to be resistant to consensual observer drift, with such a phenomenon appearing in only 1 instance of 156 opportunities. The high degree of mastery achieved by trainees during the time-limited training period was comparable to that previously achieved with the original training procedures. No meaningful predictions of coding mastery were found, with only one trainee characteristic being significantly related to one of six mastery criteria. The results document procedures that are both efficient and resistant to invalidity for training observers in the use of multidimensional observational systems, as well as providing guidelines for the development of standardized procedures.This article is based on a thesis submitted to the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Ph.D. degree in psychology by the first author and under direction of the second author. The third and fourth authors also participated as supervisors. Appreciation is extended to other members of the thesis committee, Fred Kanfer, Ross Parke, and Julian Rappaport, and to John Gottman and W. Robert Nay for their comments and recommendations. This study was partially supported by Public Health Service Grants MH-25464 and MH-14257 from the National Institute of Mental Health and by grants from the Joyce Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Illinois Department of Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities.     

Teaching autistic children to use extra-stimulus prompts

Autistic children often do not transfer from extra-stimulus prompts, and thus do not utilize a frequent learning aid. It has been hypothesized that this is due to stimulus overselectivity; a failure to respond to simultaneous multiple cues. This study was designed to determine if autistic children who initially respond only to single cues can be taught a set to respond to two cues and subsequently utilize an extra-stimulus (pointing) prompt. Four autistic children were pretested to determine if they could learn a complex visual discrimination by either trial and error or an extra-stimulus prompt fading procedure. Since they did not, the children were then taught to respond to two cues through a multiple-cue training procedure and subsequently tested to determine if they could now utilize a pointing prompt. Results indicated that while all four children initially did not transfer from an extra-stimulus (pointing) prompt, they did so subsequent to multiple-cue training. The results are discussed in terms of implications for treatment (remediating overselectivity) and in relation to normal child development.     

Constraints on the visual accuracy of drawings produced by young children

Errors made by young children when they are asked to draw a model were investigated in two studies. In the first study, the experimenter asked 5- and 8-year-old children to draw a cup that had a flower decal (transfer) attached to its outside surface, attached to its inside surface or positioned beside it. The 8-year-old children in all conditions produced visually accurate drawings. The 5-year-old children produced visually accurate drawings when the flower decal was positioned beside the cup and when the flower decal was attached to the inside surface of the cup but not when the flower decal was attached to the cup's outside surface. In the second study, 5- and 8-year-old children were asked to draw a cup that had either an intact or a broken handle. The handle area of the cup was either in view or not in view. The 5- and 8-year-old children performed comparably in this experiment. The children had difficulty producing accurate copies of the model only when the cup had a handle and the handle was not in view. Taken together, these studies indicate that 5-year-old children are more likely to produce visually accurate drawings than has previously been supposed. Difficulty in producing accurate drawings occurred when drawing rules and drawing conventions interfered with the task.