Are juvenile offenders extreme future discounters?

It has been the prevailing view that young offenders are more present oriented than their peers, but this view has little empirical basis other than the actions that have defined these youth as offenders. In the present study, we used a decision task with actual monetary consequences to assess the tendency of young offenders and a control group of high school students to discount the future. The young offenders were not significantly different from the students in discounting the future, even though the young offenders scored significantly higher on a sensation-seeking personality scale, were less likely to have lived with their fathers, and had changed schools more often. Young offenders and control participants were also similar in the extent to which they manifested a clear vision of the future by anticipating which future milestones would occur sooner, in a task pairing milestones with each other and with year markers.     

Stem cell research in a Catholic institution: yes or no?

Catholic teaching has no moral difficulties with research on stem cells derived from adult stem cells or fetal cord blood. The ethical problem comes with embryonic stem cells since their genesis involves the destruction of a human embryo. However, there seems to be significant promise of health benefits from such research. Although Catholic teaching does not permit any destruction of human embryos, the question remains whether researchers in a Catholic institution, or any researchers opposed to destruction of human embryos, could participate in research on cultured embryonic stem cells, or whether a Catholic institution could use any therapy that ultimately results from such research. This position paper examines how such research could be conducted legitimately in a Catholic institution by using an ethical analysis involving a narrative context, the nature of the moral act, and the principle of material cooperation, along with references to significant ethical assessments. It also offers tentative guidelines that could be used by a Catholic institution in implementing such research.     

Long-term inhibition of return for spatial locations: evidence for a memory retrieval account

It has generally been accepted that attention is inhibited from returning to previously attended locations, and that this inhibition of return (IOR) lasts just two or three seconds. Recently, Tipper, Grison, and Kessler (2003) showed that IOR can occur over much longer periods of time provided the inhibition is encoded with a context-rich event. Here we examine standard (i.e., typical time range) and long-term IOR within the same experimental paradigm as a means to compare their properties. Experiment 1 used the simple displays typical of cueing paradigms and revealed that both standard and long-term IOR can be obtained under such conditions. Experiment 2 showed that both standard and long-term IOR occurred when there was incongruence between the required response on the current trial and that stored in memory. Furthermore, IOR was not produced when there was incongruence between a target feature (colour) of the current trial and that stored in memory. These results are consistent with a memory retrieval account of IOR and suggest that the same inhibitory mechanism may underlie both standard and long-term IOR.     

The effect of divided attention on inhibiting the gravity error

Children who could overcome the gravity error on Hood's (1995) tubes task were tested in a condition where they had to monitor two falling balls. This condition significantly impaired search performance with the majority of mistakes being gravity errors. In a second experiment, the effect of monitoring two balls was compared in the tubes task and a spatial transposition task not involving gravity. Again, monitoring two objects produced impaired search performance in the gravity task but not in the spatial transposition task. These findings support the view that divided attention disrupts the ability to exercise inhibitory control over the gravity error and that the performance drop on this task is not due to the additional task demands incurred by divided attention.     

Perceiving motion while moving: how pairwise nominal invariants make optical flow cohere

Computer-generated sequences simulated observer movement toward 10 randomly placed poles, 1 moving and 9 stationary. When observers judged their direction of movement, or heading, they used 3 related invariants: The (a) convergence and (b) decelerating divergence of any 2 poles specified that heading was to the outside of the nearer pole, and the (c) crossover of 2 poles specified that heading was to the outside of the farther pole. With all poles stationary, the field of 45 pairwise movements yielded a coherent specification of heading. With I pole moving with respect to the others, however, the field could yield an incoherent heading solution. Such incoherence was readily detectable; similar pole motion leading to coherent flow, however, was less readily detectable.     

Gaze-eccentricity effects on road position and steering

The effects of gaze eccentricity on the steering of an automobile were studied. Drivers performed an attention task while attempting to drive down the middle of a straight road in a simulation. Steering was biased in the direction of fixation, and deviation from the center of the road was proportional to the gaze direction until saturation at approximately 15 degrees gaze-angle from straight ahead. This effect remains when the position of the head was controlled and a reverse-steering task was used. Furthermore, the effect was not dependent on speed but reversed when the forward movement of the driver was removed from the simulation. Thus, small deviations in a driver's gaze can lead to significant impairments of the ability to drive a straight course.     

It feels like yesterday: self-esteem,valence of personal past experiences,and judgments of subjective distance

Supporting predictions from temporal self-appraisal theory, participants in 3 studies reported feeling farther from former selves and experiences with unfavorable implications for their current self-view than from equally distant selves and experiences with flattering implications. This distancing bias occurred when assignment to negative and positive pasts was random, for both achievement and social outcomes and for single episodes as well as longer term experiences. Consistent with a motivational interpretation, the distancing bias was stronger among high than low self-esteem participants and occurred for personal but not for acquaintances' past events. Frequency of rehearsal and ease of recall of past episodes also predicted feelings of distance, but these variables did not account for the Self-Esteem x Valence interaction on subjective distancing of personal events.     

Restorative justice innovations in Canada

As many jurisdictions move towards more retributive measures as a means to address public discontent with crime, a parallel movement has developed in regard to restorative justice. This article presents three restorative initiatives currently in use in Canada. Each initiative addresses offender behavior and community engagement at a different point in the justice continuum. The use of Sentencing Circles is an example of how restorative justice principles can be instituted at the front end, prior to an offender becoming lodged in the system. The Restorative Justice Options to Parole Suspension project demonstrates how community engagement can assist in preventing offenders from being returned to the system once they have achieved conditional release. The Circles of Support and Accountability project has enlisted the support of professionally supported volunteers in the community reintegration of high-risk sexual offenders. These initiatives are presented within a framework of effective correctional interventions and increased empowerment for a variety of stakeholders.