Myth Information and Bizarre Beliefs of Male Juvenile Sex Offenders

The author describes mythical beliefs, thinking errors, and faulty attitudes collected from a group of male juvenile sex offenders. Therapists need this information to develop effective treatment strategies for replacing distortions and misperceptions with correct and moral information as a foundation for change.     

A simple and sensitive method for monitoring running-wheel movement

A running-wheel movement-detection method is described for use with a modified 1350 Commodore mouse and a Commodore 64, is described. The movement-detection method allows for the detection of partial revolutions and direction of movement, but requires no interface equipment. The modified running wheel is discussed as a new technique that may be useful for bridging empirical and theoretical differences between free-operant and discrete-trial runway procedures.     

Alternating least squares algorithms for simultaneous components analysis with equal component weight matrices in two or more populations

Millsap and Meredith (1988) have developed a generalization of principal components analysis for the simultaneous analysis of a number of variables observed in several populations or on several occasions. The algorithm they provide has some disadvantages. The present paper offers two alternating least squares algorithms for their method, suitable for small and large data sets, respectively. Lower and upper bounds are given for the loss function to be minimized in the Millsap and Meredith method. These can serve to indicate whether or not a global optimum for the simultaneous components analysis problem has been attained.Financial support by the Netherlands organization for scientific research (NWO) is gratefully acknowledged.     

Minimizing the number of observations: A generalization of the spearman-brown formula

A new method for determining the minimum number of observations per subject needed to achieve a specific generalizability coefficient is presented. This method, which consists of a branch-and-bound algorithm, allows for the employment of constraints specified by the investigator.     

ACTH 4-9 analog can retard spatial alternation learning in brain damaged and normal rats

Thirty adult male hooded rats (Long-Evans strain) were assigned randomly to one of three lesion groups (n = 10) and prepared with medial frontal, posterior parietal, or sham neocortical injuries. Following a recovery interval of 10-12 days, access to water was limited to 30 min per day and the rats were shaped to traverse a T-maze for a reward of sweetened water. After a pretraining criterion was attained, osmotic minipumps (Alzet 2002) were installed subcutaneously. The minipumps delivered chronically for the next 14 to 15 days either 0 or 1.2 micrograms of ACTH 4-9 dissolved in bacteriostatic saline per day while the rats were trained on a reinforced spatial alternation task. Analysis of the number of errors made to a criterion of at least 80% correct alternations in two consecutive training sessions, or a ceiling of 62 errors (attained by two rats with parietal lesions), revealed that learning was impaired in the rats with parietal injuries. Contrary to our hypothesis, animals receiving ACTH 4-9 committed more errors than their counterparts receiving only saline.     

Age-dependent facilitation of taste-footshock conditioning by prior exposure to the training context

Among adult rats, gustatory stimuli are easily associated with illness, but not with external unconditioned stimuli such as footshock. Recent evidence indicates, however, that this cue-to-consequence specificity may vary ontongenetically. The present studies examined the acquisition of an aversion to a taste paired with footshock in 5- and 15-day-old rats. Consistent with previous reports, 5-day-old rats avoided the taste that preceded footshock, while 15-day-old subjects did not express an aversion to the taste paired with footshock. Exposure to the training context for either 1 or 5 h prior to conditioning disrupted taste-footshock conditioning in the 5-day-old subjects. For the 15-day-old subjects, 1 h of pre-conditioning exposure to the training context had no effect on conditioning, whereas a longer duration of preexposure promoted conditioning to the taste cue. The results suggest ontogenetic differences in stimulus selection.     

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RECRUITING SOURCE, APPLICANT QUALITY, AND HIRE PERFORMANCE: AN ANALYSIS BY SEX, ETHNICITY, AND AGE

This study investigated both an applicant pool and its resulting class of new hires in an attempt to clarify a number of empirical questions concerning recruiting source effectiveness. A pre-established database of applicants and hires for the job of life insurance agent in a large insurance company was analyzed for recruiting activity. Differences in applicant quality and new hire survival were found in favor of the informal recruiting sources. A second measure of hire success, new business commission credits, failed to show differences across recruiting sources. The informal recruiting sources yielded significantly higher selection ratios than did formal sources for all groups. Examination of recruiting source use showed significant group differences, with females and blacks using the formal recruiting sources more frequently than males, non-minorities, and Hispanics. While the informal recruiting sources yielded higher quality applicants and more successful hires for all groups, this research cautions that the implementation of revised recruiting policies must be carefully monitored for adverse effects on protected groups.     

The naturalistic fallacy: moral inferences drawn from research with children versus adults

The naturalistic fallacy occurs when a person reads a report of scientific research and concludes that the moral implication of the research was included in the article when, in fact, it was not. For example, the fallacy is committed when a study contains the conclusion that TV advertising increases preference for sugar-based foods, but the reader later believes that the study concluded that TV advertising should be controlled. Previous research indicates that the commission of the fallacy was strong when memory for social research was tested. The present study showed that the commission of the fallacy was stronger when the research which was read involved children as subjects compared to adult subjects. Increased empathy for the subjects of a research article strengthens commission of the fallacy.     

Effects of personal experience on self-protective behavior

This article seeks to further our understanding of self-protective behavior by examining the effects of a particularly powerful stimulus to action: personal experience. It reviews the effects of automobile accidents on seat belt use, criminal victimization other than rape on individual crime prevention efforts, natural hazards experience on both natural hazards preparedness and compliance with evacuation warnings, and myocardial infarction on smoking. Theories suggesting mechanisms that could link personal experience to behavior are described, and data concerning the effects of experience on some key variables in these theories are discussed. Tentative propositions are offered to resolve the many apparent discrepancies in this literature. These propositions concern the effects of experience on risk perceptions, the influence of experience on risk salience, the specificity of responses to victimization, and the duration of experience effects.