Future Contingents,Indeterminacy and Context

In Facing the Future, Belnap et al. reject bivalence and propose double time reference semantics to give a pragmatic response to the following assertion problem: how can we make sense of assertions about future events made at a time when the outcomes of those events are not yet determined? John MacFarlane employs the same semantics, now bolstered with a relative‐truth predicate, to accommodate the following apparently conflicting intuitions regarding the truth‐value of an uttered future contingent: at the moment of utterance, if asked to evaluate the truth‐value of the asserted future contingent one has the intuition that the assertion is neither true nor false, yet later, at the moment of the predicted event, one has the intuition that the assertion was, already, either true or false. Both MacFarlane and Belnap assume that assertions of future contingents have complete propositional content – the traditional propositional contents that, according to him ‘are the contents of assertions and beliefs’. This assumption is challenged.     

An Examination of Post-Traumatic Stress Symptoms and Aggression among Children with a History of Adverse Childhood Experiences

Childhood aggression is associated with many deleterious outcomes and is a common reason for psychiatric referral (Card & Little, 2006; Gurnani et al., 2016). One factor associated with childhood aggression is Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs; Felitti et al., 1998). However, existing research remains equivocal on which characteristics of ACEs (e.g., cumulative impact, typology, etc.) are significantly elated to aggression, especially when considering differential effects of ACEs on proactive aggression (PA) and reactive aggression (RA; Dodge & Coie, 1987). Post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) are a common negative sequalae of ACEs and are characterized by disruptions in several cognitive, emotional, and behavioral processes similar to those associated with both RA and PA (e.g., Marsee, 2008). As such, the examination of PTSS as an underlying mechanism of influence on the relation between ACEs, PA, and RA is warranted. The present study fills several gaps in the literature by examining ACE characteristics that might be related to PTSS, PA, and RA while also examining direct and indirect effects on the relation between ACEs, PTSS and PA and RA. Results indicated the type of ACE, specifically child maltreatment ACEs (CM-ACEs), was most strongly related to all outcome variables. Therefore, CM-ACEs were included in a path analysis with PTSS, PA, and RA. Results indicated a significant indirect effect for PTSS on the relation between CM-ACEs and RA (β?=?.18, p?<?.01) but not PA. Findings have several implications for future research and clinical practice, especially for children with an extensive history of CM-ACEs.

     

ABUSED WOMEN'S PERSPECTIVES ON THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM'S RESPONSE TO DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

This study used Q methodology to better understand battered women's views about the criminal justice system (CJS). Fifty-eight abused and formerly abused women, representing a broad range of experiences, were involved in the study. Participants sorted 72 statements about domestic violence and the CJS according to how strongly they agreed with each one in relation to the other statements. A small subset of women was interviewed to help illuminate the emerging perspectives. Five perspectives that are new in both their complexity and in their substance were identified: (1) The CJS can be trusted; (2) The CJS has potential, but is ultimately disappointing to victims; (3) Victims should have input into the CJS and be sure they want to use it; (4) The CJS cannot protect women and can make matters worse; and (5) The CJS should be used for her safety, for his rehabilitation, and for justice despite its problems.     

Sluggish Cognitive Tempo in Psychiatrically Hospitalized Children: Factor Structure and Relations to Internalizing Symptoms, Social Problems, and Observed Behavioral Dysregulation

As research examining sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT) advances, it is important to examine the structure and validity of SCT in a variety of samples, including samples of children who are clinically-distressed but not referred specifically for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The present study used a large sample of psychiatrically hospitalized children (N?=?680; 73 % male; 66 % African American) between the ages of 6 and 12 to examine the latent structure of SCT, ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), depression, and anxiety using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Results of the CFA analyses demonstrated that SCT is distinct from these other dimensions of child psychopathology, including ADHD inattention, depression, and anxiety. Regression analyses indicated that SCT symptoms were positively associated with depression and, to a lesser degree, anxiety. SCT symptoms were also positively associated with children’s general social problems, whereas SCT symptoms were negatively associated with an observational measure of behavioral dysregulation (i.e., frequency of time-outs received as a part of a manualized behavior modification program). These associations were significant above and beyond relevant child demographic variables (i.e., age, sex, race), children’s other mental health symptoms (i.e., ADHD, ODD, depression, anxiety symptoms), and, for all relations except child anxiety, parents’ own anxiety and depression symptoms.     

ESCOLEX: A grade-level lexical database from European Portuguese elementary to middle school textbooks

In this article, we introduce ESCOLEX, the first European Portuguese children’s lexical database with grade-level-adjusted word frequency statistics. Computed from a 3.2-million-word corpus, ESCOLEX provides 48,381 word forms extracted from 171 elementary and middle school textbooks for 6- to 11-year-old children attending the first six grades in the Portuguese educational system. Like other children’s grade-level databases (e.g., Carroll, Davies, & Richman, 1971; Corral, Ferrero, & Goikoetxea, Behavior Research Methods, 41, 1009–1017, 2009; Lété, Sprenger-Charolles, & Colé, Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 36, 156–166, 2004; Zeno, Ivens, Millard, Duvvuri, 1995), ESCOLEX provides four frequency indices for each grade: overall word frequency (F), index of dispersion across the selected textbooks (D), estimated frequency per million words (U), and standard frequency index (SFI). It also provides a new measure, contextual diversity (CD). In addition, the number of letters in the word and its part(s) of speech, number of syllables, syllable structure, and adult frequencies taken from P-PAL (a European Portuguese corpus-based lexical database; Soares, Comesaña, Iriarte, Almeida, Simões, Costa, …, Machado, 2010; Soares, Iriarte, Almeida, Simões, Costa, França, …, Comesaña, in press) are provided. ESCOLEX will be a useful tool both for researchers interested in language processing and development and for professionals in need of verbal materials adjusted to children’s developmental stages. ESCOLEX can be downloaded along with this article or from http://p-pal.di.uminho.pt/about/databases.