Participation in school environment of children and youth with disabilities: a person-oriented approach

This study investigated patterns of interrelated positive subject and environmental factors related to participation in school activities of pupils with different kinds of disabilities. Questionnaires concerning participation were collected from 472 pupils with disabilities and their teachers, parents and special education consultants. A person-oriented approach with the aim to identify patterns of variables related to a high degree of participation of pupils with disabilities was used. Cluster-groups were formed based on scores for individual subjects on factors identified as important for participation. Groups with a high degree of participation were characterized by high scores in autonomy and perceived interaction with peers and teachers and an internal locus of control. Type and degree of disability did not predict cluster group membership. A conclusion is that the outcome participation is better predicted by patterns of interrelated positive subject and environmental factors than by type of disability or any other single factor.     

A suicide peak after weekends and holidays in patients with alcohol dependence

This paper analyzes the variation of suicide by day of the week in alcohol dependence, with public holidays taken into consideration. From 1949 through 1969, 1,312 patients with alcohol dependence were admitted to the Department of Psychiatry in Lund. By 1997, a total of 102 (99 men) alcoholic patients had taken their own life. Suicide victims with severe depression and other diagnoses were compared. There was a suicide peak on the first two days after weekends and holidays in patients with alcohol dependence (p < .05). Alcohol withdrawal is proposed as a contributor to the suicide peak.     

Economic Antecedents of Foster Care

Individual and ecological research suggests that rising unemployment may affect the incidence of violence through two countervailing mechanisms suggested by frustration–aggression theory. The first, or provocation effect, assumes increased violence among persons who feel anger because they believe their job loss was arbitrary. The second, or inhibition effect, posits less violence among employed persons who attempt to reduce their chances of job loss by curtailing behavior objectionable to employers. The literature also reports that these mechanisms affect victimization measured as foster care sought by the state for abused children. The foster care finding, although consistent with theory and important for basic as well as applied reasons, arises from methods that cannot rule out several rival hypotheses. We revisit this research and apply improved methods to test the reported association in Los Angeles and San Francisco counties. We find that, as implied by the provocation and inhibition mechanisms, differences in monthly prevalence of foster care placements increase with modest increases in unemployment but decline when unemployment becomes much higher than usual levels.     

Fairness Evaluations of Encounters With Police Officers and Correctional Officers1

The fairness of treatment can be inferred from 2 aspects of the relationship between authority and other party: the person-related aspect and the role-related aspect. One hundred seventy-five American detainees were interviewed about their encounters with police officers and correctional officers. The role-related aspect affected procedural fairness judgments most when first-time incarcerated detainees evaluated the encounter with police officers. The person-related aspect affected procedural fairness judgments most when first-time detainees and repeatedly incarcerated detainees evaluated encounters with correctional officers. Consequences for the group value model of procedural fairness as well as for the legal practice are discussed.     

Realism of confidence in sensory discrimination: The underconfidence phenomenon

This paper documents a very pervasive underconfidence bias in the area of sensory discrimination. In order to account for this phenomenon, a subjective distance theory of confidence in sensory discrimination is proposed. This theory, based on the law of comparative judgment and the assumption of confidence as an increasing function of the perceived distance between stimuli, predicts underconfidence&#x2014;that is, that people should perform better than they express in their confidence assessments. Due to the fixed sensitivity of the sensory system, this underconfidence bias is practically impossible to avoid. The results of Experiment 1 confirmed the prediction of underconfidence with the help of present-day calibration methods and indkated-a-good quantitative fit of the theory. The results of Experiment 2 showed that prolonged experience of outcome feedback (160 trials) had no effect on underconfidence. It is concluded that the subjective distance theory provides a better explanation of the underconfidence phenomenon than-do previous accounts in terms of subconscious processes.     

Internal Cue Theory: Calibration and Resolution of Confidence in General Knowledge

A theory is proposed in which beliefs in the form of internal cue validities mediate the processing of ecological cue validities in the assessment of confidence. The conditions necessary for perfect calibration are specified: (a) correspondence between ecological and internal validity, (b) perfect translation of internal validity into a confidence assessment, and (c) consistent utilization of cues. Process errors are then added to these conditions to investigate how calibration is affected by error variance of confidence assessments. To accomplish this, the calibration score (C) is decomposed into three additive parts: D² = bias, i.e., the squared difference between mean confidence and proportion correct; R² = resolution, i.e., the squared difference between the standard deviations of confidence and proportion correct; L = linearity, i.e., how closely the calibration curve follows a linear function. In the equation C = D² + R² + L, R² (resolution) reflects the subject′s ability to discriminate cue validities. Selection of items is a critical factor in studies of confidence. Informal selection with a tendency to avoid easy items results in overconfidence. Internal cue theory predicts both that overconfidence should disappear (in accordance with previous research) and that resolution should improve when item selection is made representative of the natural environment. Both predictions are confirmed by data from published studies on confidence in general knowledge. It is noteworthy that resolution is still poor and accounts for the major portion of miscalibration under representative item selection.     

Sleepiness and days of recovery

In the literature recovery after work is taken for granted – one has 16 h off between work bouts and one has 36 h off each weekend. However, the situation for those working irregular work hours may be quite different because of night work, long shifts, or long sequences of working days. Strictly speaking we don't have any scientific support for theories on how recovery days should be patterned. This paper, therefore, brings together data from a series of our own studies that involve irregular work hours, with the specific purpose of looking at the recovery process. The results show that for the average normal office week worker two days of recovery are normally sufficient. For those who work long shifts in long sequences three days are needed for normalization, whereas 12 h shifts in 2–3 day sequences seem not to cause accumulated fatigue. Interestingly, fatigue/sleepiness is often at its peak during the first day of recovery – not the last day of the working week. Air crew and oil rig workers take a longer time to recover, probably because of too much adjustment of the biological clock. As a rule, long haul air crew is usually much more fatigued than short haul crew during their days off, despite the fact that long haul flying is voluntary and opted for by those who fly it. Also train drivers are affected during their days off by their irregular work hours – in particular backwards rotating schedules seem to cause accumulation of fatigue. The results suggest that one day of recovery never is sufficient, two days usually is, whereas 3–4 days are necessary after periods of severely disturbed circadian rhythmicity.     

Effects of cognitive behavioural therapy and return-to-work intervention for patients on sick leave due to stress-related disorders: Results from a randomized trial

The aim of this study was to evaluate specific effects for patients with adjustment or exhaustion disorder, the Stress subgroup (n = 152), regarding symptom severity and sick leave after CBT, a return-to-work intervention (RTW-I), and a combination of them (COMBO), using data from a randomized trial. In the original study, primary care patients on sick leave (N = 211) were randomized to CBT (n = 64), RTW-I (n = 67), or COMBO (n = 80). Blinded Clinician Severity Rating (CSR) of symptoms and sick leave registry data were primary outcomes. Subgroup analyses showed that for the Stress subgroup, CBT led to greater reduction of symptoms than RTW-I posttreatment, but COMBO did not differ from CBT or RTW-I. Regarding sick leave, there was no difference between treatments in the Stress subgroup. An exploratory analysis of the treatment effects in a subgroup of patients with depression, anxiety or insomnia indicates that RTW-I reduced sick leave faster than CBT. We conclude that CBT may be promising as an effective treatment of stress and exhaustion disorder.     

The moral judgment test: comments on Villegas de Posada's critique

The Moral Judgment Test is an operationalization of Kohlberg's notion of moral judgment competence and Piaget's two-aspect model of behavior and thus differs from tests of preferred moral orientations and Kohlberg's own Stage measurement. As this best presents counter-arguments to be rated in regard to their moral quality, it is a difficult task for many, and the C score reflects the respondents' competence to cope with the task. Validation studies of 27 language versions and thirty years of use in research and evaluation studies have indicated the Moral Judgment Test is valid and useful for assessing affective and cognitive aspects of moral behavior for research and evaluation.