Effects of Abusive Parenting,Caretaker Arrests,and Deviant Behavior on Dating Violence Among Homeless Young Adults

Although dating violence is widespread among young adult homeless populations, its risk factors are poorly understood by scholars. To address this gap, this study uses a social learning theory to examine the effects of abusive parenting and caretaker arrests on dating violence among 172 homeless young adults. Results from path analyses revealed that child physical abuse and caretaker arrests were positively associated with engaging in a greater number of school fights, which, in turn, was strongly and positively correlated with participating in more deviant subsistence strategies (e.g., stealing) since being on the street. Young people who participated in a greater number of delinquent acts were more likely to report higher levels of dating violence. Study results highlight the extent of social learning within the lives of homeless young adults, which is evident prior to their leaving home and while they are on the street.     

Psychometric Properties of Bully,Fighting, and Victimization Scales Among Clinically Referred Youth

Bullying involvement is a multidimensional issue and a significant concern for school-aged youth. However, research on bullying involvement within clinical samples is limited. The present study examines the psychometric properties of the University of Illinois Bully, Fighting, and Victimization Scales among children and adolescents presenting for mood symptoms at a behavioral health outpatient clinic. Patients (n = 165) with an age range of 8–18 years were included in this investigation. Item frequencies, internal consistency, and construct validity were examined while confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses were conducted. Results showed that the scales were low to moderately correlated with each other. Internal consistencies were acceptable for the Bully (α = .70), Fighting (α = .84), and Victimization (α = .88) Scales. Exploratory factor analysis revealed clean three-factor solutions with items loading on their intended factors and with few cross-loadings. Fit of the confirmatory factor analysis was good when items were treated as ordinal and two items were allowed to cross-load on more than one factor. The University of Illinois Bully, Fighting, and Victimization Scales show utility for use with clinically referred youth.     

Tooley’s account of the necessary connection between law and regularity

Fred Dretske, Michael Tooley, and David Armstrong accept a theory of governing laws of nature according to which laws are atomic states of affairs that necessitate corresponding natural regularities. Some philosophers object to the Dretske/Tooley/Armstrong theory on the grounds that there is no illuminating account of the necessary connection between governing law and natural regularity. In response, Michael Tooley has provided a reductive account of this necessary connection in his book Causation (1987). In this essay, I discuss an improved version of his account and argue that it fails. First, the account cannot be extended to explain the necessary connection between certain sorts of laws—namely, probabilistic laws and laws relating structural universals—and their corresponding regularities. Second, Tooley’s account succeeds only by (very subtly) incorporating primitive necessity elsewhere, so the problem of avoiding primitive necessity is merely relocated.     

Responses to false physiological feedback in individuals with panic attacks and elevated anxiety sensitivity

Participants with elevated anxiety sensitivity and a history of panic attacks were compared to a low anxiety comparison group with respect to physiological and subjective reactivity to false heart-rate feedback and reactivity to a priming procedure. Whereas accurate heart-rate feedback elicited minimal responses, participants across groups showed significant physiological and subjective responses to false feedback. High risk and low risk participants did not differ in heart-rate responses to false feedback, though panic attack frequency did predict physiological and subjective reactions to false feedback in the high risk group. Self-reported nonspecific anxiety was significantly higher in high risk female participants than in low risk female participants, while males did not different in general subjective anxiety. However, high risk participants reported more panic-specific symptoms during the false feedback task than low risk participants, regardless of the sex of the participant. Therefore, although the experimental paradigm appeared to trigger nonspecific anxiety in high risk female participants, panic attack symptoms in reaction to the task were specific to risk group, not sex, and consistent with hypotheses. Surprisingly, the priming procedure did not influence physiological or subjective responses to false feedback in either group. These results raise additional questions regarding the process and impact of interoception in individuals with panic attacks, and suggest that false perception of internal changes may contribute to risk for panic disorder when exposed to believable cues.     

Psychological trauma and schizotypal personality disorder

Two studies examined the relation between psychological trauma and schizotypal symptoms. In Study 1, in which 1,510 adults completed telephone interviews, both childhood maltreatment and the experience of an injury or life-threatening event were significantly associated with schizotypal symptoms. In Study 2, in which 303 adults (oversampled for having elevated levels of schizotypal symptoms) completed extensive in-person assessments, both childhood maltreatment and meeting posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) Criterion A were significantly associated with schizotypal symptoms. The links between schizotypal symptoms and at least some forms of psychological trauma could not be fully accounted for by shared variance with antisocial and borderline personality disorders, absorption/dissociation, PTSD symptom severity, family history of psychotic disorder, or signs of neurodevelopmental disturbance (as indexed by minor physical anomalies and inconsistent hand use). Schizotypal symptoms were more strongly associated with childhood maltreatment among men than among women, whereas schizotypal symptoms were more strongly associated with PTSD Criterion A among women than among men. Finally, among men, the association between childhood maltreatment and schizotypal symptoms was moderated by signs of neurodevelopmental disturbance.     

Motherhood: a potential source of bias in employment decisions

Results of 2 experimental studies in which job incumbents were said to be applying for promotions to traditionally male positions demonstrated bias against mothers in competence expectations and in screening recommendations. This bias occurred regardless of whether the research participants were students (Study 1) or working people (Study 2). Although anticipated job commitment, achievement striving, and dependability were rated as generally lower for parents than for nonparents, anticipated competence was uniquely low for mothers. Mediational analyses indicated that, as predicted, negativity in competence expectations, not anticipated job commitment or achievement striving, promoted the motherhood bias in screening recommendations; expected deficits in agentic behaviors, not in dependability, were found to fuel these competence expectations. These findings suggest that motherhood can indeed hinder the career advancement of women and that it is the heightened association with gender stereotypes that occurs when women are mothers that is the source of motherhood's potentially adverse consequences.     

Procedural justice and compliance behaviour: the mediating role of emotions

Procedural justice researchers have consistently found that if authorities treat people with trust, fairness, respect and neutrality, people will not only be more willing to cooperate with authorities, but they will also be more likely to comply with authority decisions and rules. New research in this area has gone on to explore the role that emotions play in response to procedural justice and injustice. What this new research has neglected to do, however, is examine whether emotions mediate the effect of procedural justice on subsequent compliance behaviour in real life settings. Using longitudinal survey data collected in two real‐life contexts (Study 1: a taxation dispute (N = 652), and Study 2: workplaces (N = 2366)), the present study will show that perceptions of procedural justice influence the emotions experienced by people, but more importantly these emotional reactions (i.e. anger and happiness) mediate the effect of justice on subsequent compliance behaviour. In other words, it is these positive and negative emotional reactions to perceived justice or injustice that go on to predict who will and will not comply with authority decisions and rules. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reply to David Kemmerer's "a critique of Mark D. Allen's 'the preservation of verb subcategory knowledge in a spoken language comprehension deficit'"

Allen [Allen, M. D. (2005). The preservation of verb subcategory knowledge in a spoken language comprehension deficit. Brain and Language, 95, 255-264] presents evidence from a single patient, WBN, to motivate a theory of lexical processing and representation in which syntactic information may be encoded and retrieved independently of semantic information. In his critique, Kemmerer argues that because Allen depended entirely on preposition-based verb subcategory violations to test WBN's knowledge of correct argument structure, his results, at best, address a "strawman" theory. This argument rests on the assumption that preposition subcategory options are superficial syntactic phenomena which are not represented by argument structure proper. We demonstrate that preposition subcategory is in fact treated as semantically determined argument structure in the theories that Allen evaluated, and thus far from irrelevant. In further discussion of grammatically relevant versus irrelevant semantic features, Kemmerer offers a review of his own studies. However, due to an important design shortcoming in these experiments, we remain unconvinced. Reemphasizing the fact the Allen (2005) never claimed to rule out all semantic contributions to syntax, we propose an improvement in Kemmerer's approach that might provide more satisfactory evidence on the distinction between the kinds of relevant versus irrelevant features his studies have addressed.