Heat and Violence: New Findings from Dallas Field Data, 1980–19811

Research in both laboratory and field settings has suggested a link between thermal stress and violent behavior, and both linear and curvilinear models have been investigated. A dearth of field studies prompted the analysis reported here, which is based on data for some 10,000 aggravated assaults occurring the City of Dallas in 1980 (a summer of severe heat stress) and 1981. This analysis replicates and extends certain aspects of recent work by Anderson and Anderson (1984) relating to the so-called linear and curvilinear hypotheses. Thermal stress is measured in two ways: a Discomfort Index (DI), which takes into account the influence of humidity acting in concert with temperature, and ambient temperature. Regression analyses were performed in two stages. In the first, data for all neighborhoods and all days of the study period were combined into ambient temperature and DI models. At the second stage, models differentiated between the three levels of neighborhood socioeconomic status. With weekend controlled, DI and ambient temperature were significant independent variables in the ‘overall’ model and in medium and low status neighborhoods. However, when linear effects were controlled, the curvilinear measures were never significant. The analysis generally tended to confirm Anderson and Anderson's suggestion that a reduction of aggression with increasing temperature does not appear to occur within the normal range of temperatures. This analysis further suggested that the hypothesized curvilinear effect is weak, if not entirely absent, even during conditions of extreme heat.     

Combining cognitive-behavioral therapy and pharmacotherapy in the treatment of pedophilic incest offenders

Treatment programs for incest offenders traditionally do not differentiate between pedophilic and nonpedophilic perpetrators. This oversight has failed to meet the specialized needs of pedophilic incest offenders, who differ from other incest as well as nonfamilial sex offenders in important ways. This paper describes a treatment intervention combining cognitive-behavioral therapy and pharmacotherapy for the specialized treatment needs of the pedophilic incest offender. A case report is presented to illustrate the use of combined treatment and to highlight indicators for this strategy.     

Rapid Automatized Naming and gesture by normal and language-impaired children

This study investigates whether language-impaired (LI) children show deficits in rapid automatized naming and whether RAN performance is specific to verbal output (or to rapid motor output in general). A total of 67 LI and 54 age-matched control children were tested with the Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) test (Denckla & Rudel, 1976) and with a manual version of the RAN (RAN-manual) in which subjects were required to provide a nonverbal, pantomime response. Subjects also completed tests of rapid oral and manual sequencing skills and standardized tests of reading ability. Each subject was tested at 4, 6, and 8 years old. The results showed that LI children perform significantly poorer on both versions of the RAN than age-matched controls. Correlations between RAN scores and tests of reading ability were significant for normal and LI subjects and were particularly high for 8-year-old LI children. RAN-manual scores also correlated with 8-year-old LI children's reading scores. Further, RAN and RAN-manual scores for the LI children correlated significantly with these children's manual sequencing abilities, whereas this was not the case for the control subjects. These findings suggest that LI children's rapid sequential processing deficits are not limited to verbal output, but also generalize to other motoric domains.     

The differentiation of rhythmic structure

Listeners judged whether two five-tone nonmetric rhythms were the same or different. Each rhythm was presented one, two, or four times to study the process of perceptual differentiation. The results indicated that the listeners perceived these rhythms in-terms.of the grouping of the tones, and not in terms of the timing between the groups. Two rhythms that had the same perceptual grouping were judged as being identical, even if the timing between the groups was different. The perception of the groupings of tones developed gradually. If each rhythm was presented only once, then the listeners had only a global percept, focused on groups (runs) of three elements, and often judged two different rhythms as being identical. If the rhythms were presented two or four times, then the grouping of the tones became more differentiated and the listeners were less likely to judge different patterns as being identical. Thus, perception of auditory rhythmic structure appears to follow the same developmental process as the perception of visual spatial structure.     

Children’s competitive behavior: A challenging alternative

The effect of challenge on the cooperative and competitive behavior of 120 urban American children was assessed using two experimental game apparatuses, one of which provided a challenging cooperative response. Significantly more cooperation was observed when the subjects were presented with a challenging cooperative response. In addition, a reliable age effect was found indicating that the older subject group (10–12 years old) was more cooperative than the younger two age groups (5–7 and 8–10 years old). Finally, a significant game condition x order interaction was discovered suggesting that under some conditions the order in which the games were played affected the degree of subject cooperation. Results are related to a theory of competence motivation. It is argued that cooperation among American children may be increased if the task involves the presence of challenge. A portion of this research was presented at the biennial meetings of the Society for Research in Child Development, Detroit, Michigan, 1983.     

The phases of renewal: Steps to integration of the self in psychotherapy

This is a study of the psychology of self-renewal. The myth of Psyche is examined since it is among the finest rebirth stories antiquity has left us and can be read as representative of the renewal process in general. The story as such, points to a number of psychological states of being necessary for the self to pass through if change is to occur. Renewal can be understood as a series of ontological situations, and these can be structurally considered in terms of phases. This in turn, provides a general theoretical framework for a psychological analysis of self-renewal. The phases of renewal, derived from the Latin, are:immanence, obstruence, descendence, experience, ascendence, emergence andtranscendence. The case of Lee is used to illustrate the process of integration of self in psychotherapy.     

Sex roles, gender, and fear

Male and female college students classified as masculine, feminine, androgynous, or undifferentiated on the Bem (1974) Sex Role Inventory (N = 199) were given the Wolpe (1969) Fear Inventory. Significant differences in average fear scores were seen between men and women and between the four sex-role categories, with sex role and gender contributing equally to the variability. The argument is raised here that excessive fearfulness or fearlessness might be as much a product of sex-role conditioning as a product of gender.     

A longitudinal comparison of couples with sex-typical and non-sex-typical orientations to intimacy

The present study was designed to investigate the relationship experience of males and females who do not conform to sex-typical orientations to intimacy. One hundred sixty-three couples' and 88 nondating singles' (total N=414) responses to the Relationship World Index—Version 2 (RWI-2) were analyzed via discriminant analysis to determine if subjects' sex could be predicted accurately upon the basis of their RWI-2 scores. One discriminant function was found which was significant by the Wilks' lambda test [x²(60)=140.57, p<.001]; the procedure correctly classified 76% of the respondents. Those who were classified correctly were considered sex-typical and the remaining 24% of the sample was considered non-sex-typical in their orientations to intimacy. Additional analyses using data from a 6-month longitudinal study located qualities which significantly distinguished sex-typical from non-sex-typical subjects and couples in which at least one member was non-sex-typical from couples in which both members were classified as sex-typical.