Effective interventions and the Good Lives Model: Maximizing treatment gains for sexual offenders

The effective risk management of sexual offenders is arguably one of the most contentious social issues of our day. The community is justifiably outraged by what it perceives to be a failure of correctional and mental health practitioners to demonstrate that rehabilitative and supervisory methods promote public safety. Those who treat offenders and attempt to manage risk are often frustrated by what appear, at times, to be emotion-based reactions to low base-rate incidents. The literature on effective correctional programming has produced a workable model—Risk/Needs/Responsivity (RNR)—in which interventions match intensity of treatment to level of risk, specifically target criminogenic needs, and tailor treatment to the personal and interpersonal needs and capacities of participants. However, this model has been criticized regarding an apparent failure to appreciate the totality of client needs, specifically with respect to offender responsivity concerns. The Good Lives Model (GLM) suggests that treatment for sexual offenders must regard participants as whole beings in need of focus in many principal life areas (e.g., family, employment, leisure, community, personal well-being). This article proposes that RNR and GLM are complementary and that, by emphasizing the merits of each, offender management and general well-being can be maximized while community safety is increased.     

L’anxiété maternelle de séparation et l’aménagement du temps de travail

In order to examine the reasons of the choice and the effectiveness of the strategies of conciliation related to the adaptation of working time, we present two empirical studies which investigate the relationships between the level of maternal separation anxiety and the choice of the duration of the schedules of work. The first study was conducted among two groups of working mothers, one of 41 mothers working at full-time, the other of 33 mothers having chosen to work part-time. The second study relates to 45 employees of mass marketing having the possibility of choosing nonstandard work schedules (early the morning, late the evening) or in day. The results confirm that, on a psychological level, the question of worked time is crucial for the active mothers. They illustrate how the new constraints related to the changes of the world of work (flexibility and precariousness) can be sometimes undergone by the women, sometimes appropriated by them in order to reconcile work and their family role.     

Experimental modification of interpretation bias in socially anxious children: Changes in interpretation, anticipated interpersonal anxiety, and social anxiety symptoms

We report on an experimental manipulation of interpretation bias in socially anxious youths. A non-clinical sample of 10–11-year-olds selected for high social anxiety was trained over three sessions to endorse benign rather than negative interpretations of potentially threatening social scenarios. This group was subsequently less likely to endorse negative interpretations of new ambiguous social situations than children in a test–retest condition. Children who received interpretation training also showed reduced trait social anxiety and reported significantly less anxiety about an anticipated interpersonal encounter, compared with the control group.     

A Response to Steve Bruce's "Praying Alone?"

This article argues that neither Steve Bruce's theory of secularisation nor Grace Davie's theory of voluntary organisations are needed to explain British attitudes to religious belief and practice.     

Visuomotor tracking abilities of speakers with apraxia of speech or conduction aphasia

This investigation examined the visuomotor tracking abilities of persons with apraxia of speech (AOS) or conduction aphasia (CA). In addition, tracking performance was correlated with perceptual judgments of speech accuracy. Five individuals with AOS and four with CA served as participants, as well as an equal number of healthy controls matched by age and gender. Participants tracked predictable (sinusoidal) and unpredictable signals using jaw and lip movements transduced with strain gauges. Tracking performance in participants with AOS was poorest for predictable signals, with decreased kinematic measures of cross-correlation and gain ratio and increased target-tracker difference. In contrast, tracking of the unpredictable signal by participants with AOS was performed as well as for other groups (e.g. participants with CA, healthy controls). Performance of the subjects with AOS on the predictable tracking task was found to strongly correlate with perceptual judgments of speech. These findings suggest that motor control capabilities are impaired in AOS, but not in CA. Results suggest that AOS has its basis in motor programming deficits, not impaired motor execution.     

Development and factor analysis of the Coaching and Athletic Training Questionnaire

To explore athletes' perceptions related to coaching and athletic training care, the Coaching and Athletic Training Questionnaire was developed. A 10-item version was administered to 708 varsity athletes from three Division I universities in the National Collegiate Athletic Association. 341 women and 344 men completed questionnaires. Data from half of the sample of 685 were used for an exploratory factor analysis using principal components analysis with oblique rotation and the second half for a confirmatory factor analysis. Analyses yielded three interpretable factors, accounting for 68% of the variance, which were labeled Comfort with Athletic Trainer or Coach, Sex Influence on Quality of Care, and Athletic Trainer Preference. Multivariate analysis of variance indicated that factor scores of women and men differed significantly, and at followup women and men differed significantly on Comfort with Athletic Trainer or Coach, but the small effect size minimizes its meaningfulness. No significant difference was noted for the other two factors. It appears coaches should be sensitive and available in case of injury or other need. Athletes' perceived quality of care by athletic trainers does not appear related to sex of athlete or trainer.     

Determinants of linear judgment: a meta-analysis of lens model studies

The mathematical representation of E. Brunswik's (1952) lens model has been used extensively to study human judgment and provides a unique opportunity to conduct a meta-analysis of studies that covers roughly 5 decades. Specifically, the authors analyzed statistics of the "lens model equation" (L. R. Tucker, 1964) associated with 249 different task environments obtained from 86 articles. On average, fairly high levels of judgmental achievement were found, and people were seen to be capable of achieving similar levels of cognitive performance in noisy and predictable environments. Further, the effects of task characteristics that influence judgment (numbers and types of cues, inter-cue redundancy, function forms and cue weights in the ecology, laboratory versus field studies, and experience with the task) were identified and estimated. A detailed analysis of learning studies revealed that the most effective form of feedback was information about the task. The authors also analyzed empirically under what conditions the application of bootstrapping--or replacing judges by their linear models--is advantageous. Finally, the authors note shortcomings of the kinds of studies conducted to date, limitations in the lens model methodology, and possibilities for future research.     

Individual differences in category learning: sometimes less working memory capacity is better than more

We examined whether individual differences in working memory influence the facility with which individuals learn new categories. Participants learned two different types of category structures: rule-based and information-integration. Successful learning of the former category structure is thought to be based on explicit hypothesis testing that relies heavily on working memory. Successful learning of the latter category structure is believed to be driven by procedural learning processes that operate largely outside of conscious control. Consistent with a widespread literature touting the positive benefits of working memory and attentional control, the higher one’s working memory, the fewer trials one took to learn rule-based categories. The opposite occurred for information-integration categories - the lower one’s working memory, the fewer trials one took to learn this category structure. Thus, the positive relation commonly seen between individual differences in working memory and performance can not only be absent, but reversed. As such, a comprehensive understanding of skill learning - and category learning in particular - requires considering the demands of the tasks being performed and the cognitive abilities of the performer.