Motivational pathways underlying the onset and maintenance of viewing child pornography on the Internet

The staggering rate at which incidents of child pornography (CP) are increasing highlights the need for proactive approaches to this problem. Improving the efficacy and accessibility of interventions designed for individuals who view CP provides one means of addressing this growing concern. This article explores the self-identified motivations underlying the onset and maintenance of viewing Internet-based CP among a sample of 20 men receiving treatment for this behavior. Our findings suggest two primary motivational pathways, namely a desire to achieve sexual gratification and/or an attempt to avoid emotional pain. We propose a behavioral facilitation process, initiated by extensive exposure to Internet pornography, to explain the use of CP in men without a sexual interest in children. We also discuss factors that appeared to facilitate the maintenance of this behavior. Our findings indicate that social skills deficits, maladaptive coping strategies, and a lack of sexual education require further investigation regarding their role in promoting or precluding desistance from viewing CP.     

Functional Neural Correlates of Anosognosia in Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer’s Disease: a Systematic Review

Neuropsychology Review - Functional neuroimaging techniques (i.e. single photon emission computed tomography, positron emission tomography, and functional magnetic resonance imaging) have been used...     

Withstanding the test of time: Multisensory cues improve the delayed retention of incidental learning

Multisensory tools are commonly employed within educational settings (e.g. Carter & Stephenson, 2012 ), and there is a growing body of literature advocating the benefits of presenting children with multisensory information over unisensory cues for learning (Baker & Jordan, 2015 ; Jordan & Baker, 2011 ). This is even the case when the informative cues are only arbitrarily related (Broadbent, White, Mareschal, & Kirkham, 2017 ). However, the delayed retention of learning following exposure to multisensory compared to unisensory cues has not been evaluated, and has important implications for the utility of multisensory educational tools. This study examined the retention of incidental categorical learning in 5‐, 7‐ and 9‐year‐olds (N = 181) using either unisensory or multisensory cues. Results found significantly greater retention of learning following multisensory cue exposure than with unisensory information when category knowledge was tested following a 24‐hour period of delay. No age‐related changes were found, suggesting that multisensory information can facilitate the retention of learning across this age range.     

An imputed dissociation might be an artifact: Further evidence for the generalizability of the observations of Durgin et al. 2010

We recently showed that palm board measures are systematically inaccurate for full-cue surfaces within reach of one's hand, whereas free-hand gestures and reaching actions are quite accurate for such surfaces (Durgin, Hajnal, Li, Tonge, & Stigliani, 2010). Proffitt and Zadra (2010) claim that our demonstration that palm boards are highly inaccurate is irrelevant to interpreting past and present findings concerning dissociations between verbal reports and palm board estimates. In their paper they offer a theoretical representation of the findings of Bhalla and Proffitt (1999) and argue that our analysis is incompatible with their account. We offer here an alternative account of the findings of Bhalla and Proffitt, based on their actual data (which are fully compatible with our original analysis). We further show how our account generalizes to more recent studies that continue (1) to mistakenly describe null statistical effects on (insensitive) palm boards as evidence of a “dissociation” from (more sensitive) verbal measures that show a similar relative magnitude of change and (2) to introduce uncontrolled demand characteristics.     

Use of factor mixture modeling to capture Spearman's law of diminishing returns

Spearman's law of diminishing returns (SLODR) posits that at higher levels of general cognitive ability the general factor (g) performs less well in explaining individual differences in cognitive test performance. Research has generally supported SLODR, but previous research has required the a priori division of respondents into separate ability or IQ groups. The present study sought to obviate this limitation through the use of factor mixture modeling to investigate SLODR in the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children-Second Edition (KABC-II). A second-order confirmatory factor model was modeled as a within-class factor structure. The fit and parameter estimates of several models with varying number of classes and factorial invariance restrictions were compared. Given SLODR, a predictable pattern of findings should emerge when factor mixture modeling is applied. Our results were consistent with these SLODR-based predictions, most notably the g factor variance was less in higher g mean classes. Use of factor mixture modeling was found to provide support for SLODR while improving the model used to investigate SLODR.     

Physical growth delays and stress dysregulation in stunted and non-stunted Ukrainian institution-reared children

To study the effect of institutional rearing on physical growth and stress regulation we examined 16 institution-reared children (3–6 years old) in Ukraine and compared them with 18 native family-reared children pair-matched on age and gender. Physical growth trajectories were examined on the basis of archival medical records and current measurements of height, weight, and head circumference. Stress regulation was studied on the basis of diurnal salivary cortisol sampled six times during 1 day. 31% of institution-reared children were stunted at 48 months whereas none of the family-reared children were. Substantial delays in physical growth were observed in institution-reared children especially during the first year of life. From 24 months onwards a tendency for improvement in physical growth was evident among the temporarily stunted institution-reared children, with complete catch-up in weight and partial catch-up in height by the time of assessment. Chronically stunted institution-reared children demonstrated persistent severe growth delays. Institution-reared and family-reared children showed similar patterns of diurnal cortisol production with decreases over the day. However, temporarily stunted institution-reared children had a significantly higher total daily cortisol production than both chronically stunted institution-reared children and family-reared children. These data confirm previous findings regarding physical growth delays and stress dysregulation associated with institutional care, but also point to differences in cortisol production between stunted and non-stunted institution-reared children.     

Assessing risk of reoffending in adolescents who have committed a sexual offense: the accuracy of clinical judgments after completion of risk assessment instruments

As courts often rely on clinicians when differentiating between sexually abusive youth at a low versus high risk of reoffense, understanding factors that contribute to accuracy in assessment of risk is imperative. The present study built on existing research by examining (1) the accuracy of clinical judgments of risk made after completing risk assessment instruments, (2) whether instrument-informed clinical judgments made with a high degree of confidence are associated with greater accuracy, and (3) the risk assessment instruments and subscales most predictive of clinical judgments. Raters assessed each youth's (n = 166) risk of reoffending after completing the SAVRY and J-SOAP-II. Raters were not able to predict detected cases of either sexual recidivism or nonsexual violent recidivism above chance, and a high degree of rater confidence was not associated with higher levels of accuracy. Total scores on the J-SOAP-II were predictive of instrument-informed clinical judgments of sexual risk, and total scores on the SAVRY of nonsexual risk.     

Bayes nets and babies: infants' developing statistical reasoning abilities and their representation of causal knowledge

A fundamental assumption of the causal graphical model framework is the Markov assumption, which posits that learners can discriminate between two events that are dependent because of a direct causal relation between them and two events that are independent conditional on the value of another event(s). Sobel and Kirkham (2006) demonstrated that 8-month-old infants registered conditional independence information among a sequence of events; infants responded according to the Markov assumption in such a way that was inconsistent with models that rely on simple calculations of associative strength. The present experiment extends these findings to younger infants, and demonstrates that such responses potentially develop during the second half of the first year of life. These data are discussed in terms of a developmental trajectory between associative mechanisms and causal graphical models as representations of infants' causal and statistical learning.