Teenagers and health

Adolescence is a key period, both because it makes the growing individual more fragile, and also because of the habits that are taken then and which will influence health thereafter.

During this difficult period and on emerging from it, the teenager often reduces the notion of health to “being and staying in shape.” Unfortunately, educators and health carers are ill‐trained to respond to the specific needs of teenagers.     

The long-term retention of time: A developmental study

Two experiments investigated the age-related changes in long-term retention of duration and their effects on time judgement. Children aged 3, 5, and 8 years old were given a temporal bisection task with or without a 15-min interfering task (Experiment 1), or a retention delay lasting for 0 min, 15 min, or 24 hr (Experiment 2) between the presentation of the standard durations and the comparison stimulus durations. An interfering task and the increase of the retention delay significantly decreased the time sensitivity in the 3- and the 5-year-olds, and to a greater extent in the younger children, but had no effect in the 8-year-olds. This decrease in time sensitivity with the interfering task or the retention delay might be due to an increase in the variability of the remembered duration.     

Understanding Intimate Partner Sexual Assaults: Findings from Sexual Assault Kits

ABSTRACT

In 2013, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, began DNA testing and investigating nearly 5000 previously unsubmitted sexual assault kits (SAKs) from 1993 through 2009. We examined case files from a sample of SAKs that were tested but not previously adjudicated (n = 429). More than 10% (n = 45) involved victims who reported to police that a former or current intimate partner sexually assaulted them. This article integrates the available data on the offenders, the victims, the initial investigation, and the specifics of the assaults to provide a more complete understanding of intimate partner sexual assault (IPSA). More than one-third of the IPSA offenders were serial sex offenders; that is, the offenders sexually assaulted an intimate partner and another person(s). Comparing IPSAs to all other sexual assaults, IPSAs more frequently involved bodily force, less frequently involved a weapon, and IPSA investigations were more frequently closed because (1) the victims stated they lied or the police doubted the victims and (2) the victims declined to prosecute. The most common sequencing of events was a demand for sex by the offender followed by a verbal refusal by the victim and the use of bodily force in the sexual assault. The findings, however, indicate a great deal of variation in the sequencing of events surrounding the sexual assault, with over 25% involving no physical confrontation before or after the sexual assault and no demands for sex. Unsubmitted SAK data provide a unique window into understanding the understudied and underreported issue of IPSA.