Index of suspicion: feeling not believing

Throughout the U.S., state laws require professionals who work with children to report cases of suspected child abuse to child protection services. Both practically and conceptually, however, significant problems arise from a lack of clarity regarding the threshold that has been set for reporting. Specifically, there is no consensus as to what constitutes reasonable suspicion, and little direction for how mandated reporters should gauge their legal and professional responsibilities when they harbor suspicion. In this paper we outline the context of the problem, discuss the nature and scope of its conceptual underpinnings, and offer recommendations for moving towards a concrete, practical solution.     

Look into my eyes: gaze direction and person memory

The current research considered the effects of gaze direction on a fundamental aspect of social cogition: person memory. It was anticipated that a person's direction of gaze (i.e., direct or averted) would impact his or her subsequent memorability, such that recognition would be enhanced for targets previously displaying direct gaze. In Experiment 1, participants were presented with faces displaying either direct or averted gaze in a person-classification (i.e., conceptual) task. Then, in a surprise memory test, they were required to report whether a presented face had been seen before. As expected, a recognition advantage was observed for targets displaying direct gaze during the initial classification task. This finding was replicated and extended in a second experiment in which participants initially reported the spatial location (i.e., perceptual task) of each face. We consider the implications of these findings for basic aspects of social-cognitive functioning and person perception.     

Senior capstone design and ethics: A bridge to the professional world

A senior level capstone design experience has been developed and offered with a particular emphasis on many of the professional issues raised in Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) Engineering Criterion IV. The course has sought to develop student awareness of the ethical foundation of the engineering profession, the global and societal framework within which engineers practice, and the environmental impact on engineering. The capstone design course also focused upon improving the technical communications skills of the graduating senior class with both extensive instruction in writing and multiple workshops dealing with the art of making an effective oral presentation. The effectiveness of the design course was assessed using Kirkpatrick’s model for evaluating training programs. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the “Ethics and Social Responsibility in Engineering and Technology” meeting, New Orleans, 2003.     

Adjustment to chronic low back pain--the relative influence of fear-avoidance beliefs, catastrophizing, and appraisals of control

The present study investigated the relative extent to which patients' adjustment to chronic low back pain (CLBP) was influenced by their fear-avoidance beliefs, their tendency to catastrophize, and their appraisals of control. Eighty-three CLBP patients completed a series of self-report measures before participating in a physical therapist-led intervention. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed that patients' perceptions of their ability to decrease pain explained a small, but statistically significant, proportion of the variance in pain intensity. In addition, patients' levels of catastrophizing, as well as their fear-avoidance beliefs about both work and physical activity, were independently associated with levels of disability. Interestingly, however, when exploring the relative predictive utility of these three psychological factors, it became evident that fear-avoidance beliefs about physical activity (FABs-PA) were the only significant predictor of patients' disability. Specifically, those patients who exhibited higher levels of FABs-PA tended to report greater levels of disability, even after adjusting for age, sex and pain intensity.     

Estimates of emotional and psychometric intelligence: evidence for gender-based stereotypes

The authors examined participants' estimates of own and parental psychometric intelligence (IQ) and emotional intelligence (EI). The authors asked 224 participants (82 men, 138 women, 4 people who did not report their gender) to estimate their own and their parents' IQ and EI scores on a normal distribution ranging from 55 to 145 points. The authors hypothesized that men would give higher IQ but lower EI self-estimates than women and that participants, regardless of gender, would rate their fathers as higher on IQ but lower on EI than their mothers. The results confirmed the hypotheses, supporting the view that people perceive psychometric intelligence as a primarily masculine attribute in contrast with emotional intelligence, which they perceive as a primarily feminine attribute. The results also showed that the intensity of the stereotypical perception of EI as a feminine attribute diminished when the authors asked participants to estimate their scores on a range of specific EI facets instead of providing a direct overall self-estimate.     

Orientational manoeuvres in the dark: dissociating allocentric and egocentric influences on spatial memory

Subjects in a darkroom saw an array of five phosphorescent objects on a circular table and, after a short delay, indicated which object had been moved. During the delay the subject, the table or a phosphorescent landmark external to the array was moved (a rotation about the centre of the table) either alone or together. The subject then had to indicate which one of the five objects had been moved. A fully factorial design was used to detect the use of three types of representations of object location: (i) visual snapshots; (ii) egocentric representations updated by self-motion; and (iii) representations relative to the external cue. Improved performance was seen whenever the test array was oriented consistently with any of these stored representations. The influence of representations (i) and (ii) replicates previous work. The influence of representation (iii) is a novel finding which implies that allocentric representations play a role in spatial memory, even over short distances and times. The effect of the external cue was greater when initially experienced as stable. Females out-performed males except when the array was consistent with self-motion but not visual snapshots. These results enable a simple egocentric model of spatial memory to be extended to address large-scale navigation, including the effects of allocentric knowledge, landmark stability and gender.     

Perceptions of Ethical Behaviour among Business Faculty in Canada

Faculty members at Canadian business schools were surveyed regarding their ethical perceptions of behaviours related to undergraduate instruction. Fifty-five behavioural statements were listed and respondents were asked to rate the extent to which they felt each behaviour was ethical or unethical. The only item that respondents endorsed as unequivocally unethical (90% indicated it was definitely unethical) was Becoming sexually involved with an undergraduate in one of your classes. We also compared the results of our sample to those of an American sample. Overall, an interesting pattern of differences emerged between the responses obtained in Canada and the U.S. In general, the direction of the significant differences was such that Canadian professors viewed the behaviours in question as less ethical than did their American counterparts.     

Inhibition and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in adults

The inhibitory account of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) was tested by examining the performance of college-aged adults on a variety of inhibitory tasks. The poorer performance of adults with ADHD compared with controls on negative priming, stopping, and continuous performance tasks, combined with similar group performances on a test of working memory capacity, indicates a specific inhibitory deficit as opposed to a general limitation in attentional capacity. Overall results provide evidence for extending the inhibitory deficit hypothesis to adult ADHD, not only for mechanisms of response (or motor) inhibition but also for mechanisms of cognitive inhibition.     

Children's behavioral styles at age 3 are linked to their adult personality traits at age 26

We observed 1,000 3-year-old children who exhibited five temperament types: Undercontrolled, Inhibited, Confident, Reserved, and Well-adjusted. Twenty-three years later, we reexamined 96% of the children as adults, using multiple methods of comprehensive personality assessment, including both self- and informant-reports. These longitudinal data provide the longest and strongest evidence to date that children's early-emerging behavioral styles can foretell their characteristic behaviors, thoughts, and feelings as adults, pointing to the foundations of the human personality in the early years of life.