Binge drinking and violence against dating partners: the mediating effect of antisocial traits and behaviors in a multinational perspective

Research has consistently shown a link between alcohol use and partner violence (PV). Little is known concerning the strength of this association across cultures and genders, and few have assessed possible mediators. This study assesses the link between binge drinking and PV among 7,921 college students in 38 sites around the world, and investigates the mediating role of antisocial traits and behaviors (ASTB). A significant association was found between binge drinking and PV, the strength of which differed by site but not by gender. ASTB fully mediated this association. The mean level of binge drinking at each site did not significantly influence the strength of the association between binge drinking and PV.     

Gender symmetry in prevalence, severity, and chronicity of physical aggression against dating partners by university students in Mexico and USA

The paper reports results from analyses of the physical aggression against dating partners by four samples of university students in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Mexican Americans and Non-Mexican Whites in El Paso and Lubbock Texas, and New Hampshire (N=1,544). The percent reporting partner violence (PV) was high in all samples, but also differed significantly between samples. The lowest rate was in New Hampshire (29.7%), followed by Texas, Non-Mexican Whites (30.9%), Texas Mexican American (34.2%), and the highest rate was in Juarez (46.1%). When only severe assaults were compared, the differences between samples was similar, i.e., lowest in New Hampshire and highest in Juarez. In all four samples, there was no significant difference between males and females in either the overall prevalence of physical aggression or the prevalence of severe attacks. Among the 553 couples where one or both of the partners were violent, in almost three quarters of the cases (71.2%) there was gender symmetry in the sense that both partners engaged in this type of behavior. When only one partner was violent, this was twice as likely to be the female partner (19.0%) as the male partner (9.8%). Among the 205 couples where there was an act of severe aggression, symmetry was less prevalent (56.6%), but when only one partner was violent, it was again twice as likely to be the female partner (29.8% female only versus 13.7 male partner only). These results are consistent with the gender symmetry in PV found in many studies. They extend those results by showing that gender symmetry prevails in four different cultural contexts. The presence of gender symmetry in these different cultural contexts, combined with studies showing that women are injured more often and more seriously by partner-assaults, and studies showing that women initiate PV as often as men, suggests that programs and policies aimed at primary prevention of PV by women are crucial to ending PV and for reducing the victimization of men and women.     

Where am I? Distal cues use requires sensitivity to start location change in the rat

Place learning is impaired when a single plus maze is moved between adjacent locations 33-120 cm apart. This maze translation creates distinct start locations but maintains a single goal location with respect to distal cues. Hippocampal cell recording data suggest the majority of place fields are tied to apparatus boundaries, not to distal cues, when an apparatus is moved these distances to the left or right. Thus, rats may fail to appreciate the existence of multiple start locations with respect to distal cues when the maze is moved in this way and their start location on the surface is constant. Performance on the single plus maze problem was improved when texture cues were correlated with different start locations. Place learning was supported when multiple start locations were provided on a single large surface (double plus maze), even though rats did not explore the entire surface. Place learning was also supported when random extensions were added to a double plus maze such that start locations, relative to surface boundaries, were not informative as to goal location. This outcome suggests sensitivity to multiple start locations is required for distal cue use in translational place problems.     

Of texts and contexts: reflections upon the publication of The Jung-White Letters

In addition to his many other personae, Jung was a writer and an author, which means a creator, whose written works underlie and authorize a field of thought and clinical work, i.e., analytical psychology. Not widely recognized is that many of his authored texts were stimulated by important and intense personal relationships. Freud and Victor White loom large, the first standing behind major early analytical texts like Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido and Psychological Types, the second behind later texts on culture, religion, and Christian theology. The publication of The Jung-White Letters reveals the significance of his relationship with Victor White for the authoring of Answer to Job.     

Care and the self: biotechnology,reproduction, and the good life

This paper explores a novel philosophy of ethical care in the face of burgeoning biomedical technologies. I respond to a serious challenge facing traditional bioethics with its roots in analytic philosophy. The hallmarks of these traditional approaches are reason and autonomy, founded on a belief in the liberal humanist subject. In recent years, however, there have been mounting challenges to this view of human subjectivity, emerging from poststructuralist critiques, such as Michel Foucault's, but increasingly also as a result of advances in biotechnology itself. In the face of these developments, I argue that the theoretical relevance and practical application of mainstream bioethics is increasingly under strain. Traditionalists will undoubtedly resist. Together, professional philosopher-bioethicists, public health policymakers, and the global commercial healthcare industry tend to respond conservatively by shoring up the liberal humanist subject as the foundation for medical ethics and consumer decision-making, appealing to the familiar tropes of reason, autonomy, and freedom.     

Charpentier (1891) on the size-weight illusion

This paper offers background for an English translation of an article originally published in 1891 by Augustin Charpentier (1852-1916), as well as a summary of it. The article is frequently described as providing the first experimental evidence for the size-weight illusion. A comparison of experiments on the judged heaviness of lifted weights carried out by Weber (1834) and by Charpentier (1891) supports the view that Charpentier's work deserves priority; review of other experimental studies on the size-weight illusion in the 1890s suggests that the idea that the illusion depended on "disappointed expectations," especially with respect to speed of lift, became dominant almost immediately following the publication of Charpentier's paper. The fate of this and other ideas, including "motor energy," in 20th-century research on the illusion is briefly described.     

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.     

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.