The long-term evaluation of a behavioral treatment program for child molesters

Recidivism data derived from various sources over a follow-up period of 1–11 yr, provided the basis for appraising the effectiveness of a comprehensive cognitive-behavioral treatment program for familial and nonfamilial child molesters. Unofficial records held by police and Children's Aid Societies proved to be the best data for estimating recidivism. These data revealed increases in recidivism with longer follow-up periods, but there were consistent advantages for the treated over the untreated patients. Men who had sexually abused the daughters of other people demonstrated the clearest treatment benefits. The younger offenders and those who had engaged in genital-genital contact with their victims were more likely to reoffend even if they were treated. Contrary to the expectations of behavior therapists, indices of deviant sexual preferences did not predict outcome.     

The effects of contextual information and gender on the prediction of hypnotic susceptibility

Council, Kirsch, and Hafner (1986) obtained empirical support for the hypothesis that significant correlations between questionnaire measures of absorption and hypnotic susceptibility are an artifact of subjects' beliefs about their own hypnotizability. We tested this hypothesis in a two-session experiment. During Session 1, subjects completed questionnaire measures of absorption, mystical experience, daydreaming frequency, and paranormal beliefs. During Session 2, subjects were tested for hypnotic susceptibility. Subjects were also exposed to one of three information manipulations: They were told about hypnotic testing either before or after filling out the questionnaires or were not told about hypnotic testing. The information manipulation moderated the prediction of susceptibility by the questionnaire measures for women, but not for men. For women, scores on the absorption questionnaire predicted susceptibility only when subjects were informed about hypnotic testing. In the told-after condition, this effect generalized to all of the remaining questionnaire measures. For men, none of the questionnaires was a reliable predictor of susceptibility.     

Role of visual information in ball catching

The present study is concerned with the perceptual information about the body and space underlying the act of catching a ball. In a series of four experiments, subjects were asked to catch a luminous ball under various visual conditions. In general, catching in a normally illuminated room was contrasted with catching the luminous ball in an otherwise completely dark room. In the third and fourth experiments, intermediate conditions of visual information were included. The results suggest that it is possible to catch a ball with one hand when only the ball is visible, but performance is better when the subject has the benefit of a rich visual environment and two hands. The second experiment indicated that subject performance does improve with practice in the dark, but time spent in the darkened room itself doesn't result in a significant decrement in performance. Results of the third study suggest that vision of one's hand does not aid in the performance of this task whereas the presence of a minimal visual frame appears to aid performance. The final study examined the relation between catching performance and body sway under similar visual conditions. Results of this experiment imply that persons who exhibit relatively little postural sway in full-room lighting performed better at this catching task.