Behavioral determinants of mothers' safety measures to prevent injuries of pre-school children

Home-related injuries are a major threat to pre-school children in the western world. In this study the behavioral determinants of 18 parental safety measures were assessed. To select behavioral determinants, the Attitude-Social influence-Self-efficacy/barriers model was used with the inclusion of variables from the Health Belief Model and the Protection Motivation Theory. A written questionnaire was completed by 1129 Dutch mothers of pre-school children. Most safety measures were explained (rather) well by the same set of determinants. Main determinants for adopting or not adopting a safety measure were the mother's belief in the necessity of the safety measure according to the child's age, her belief about her partner's opinion on the necessity and her belief about the success of taking the measure. Subsequent important determinants were the mother's belief about the inconvenience and instrumentality of the safety measure; the perceived susceptibility had a minor or moderate influence on most measures. This study did not indicate that more highly educated mothers were more knowledgeable about safety-related subjects. The theoretical implications of this study are discussed.     

The treatment of youthful sexual offenders

Approximately 20% of all rapes and between 30% and 50% of child molestations are perpetrated by adolescent males. These statistics underscore the need for improved understanding of youthful sexual offending so that effective prevention measures may be utilized for those adolescents at risk of offending and effective treatments may be utilized with those adolescents who have already committed sexual offenses. In this article we review the current knowledge of the characteristics of youthful offenders, proposed etiologies of youthful offending, proposed typologies of, assessment protocols, and treatments for youthful offenders. Finally we discuss the need for further research in the area of youthful sex offending.     

Context and companion's behavior as determinants of cooperation and competition in school-age children

Information about the social context and a companion's actions were studied as determinants of cooperation and competition in middle childhood. In Experiment 1, first-, third-, and fifth-grade children were told that they would play a board game with another same-age, same-sex child (actually a bogus companion). The experimenter's instructions established shared rewards or winner-take-all as outcome conditions. Preprogrammed responses—100% cooperative or 100% competitive—provided information about the companion's actions. Results revealed that the companion's responses alone determined cooperation and competition among the first graders. Third graders used both types of information. Fifth graders, however, demonstrated a bias to respond cooperatively whenever a cooperative cue was present. In Experiment 2, first-grade subjects were given extra rehearsal of the game strategies, a scorekeeping procedure for use during the game, or a combination of the two. Results indicated that, under these conditions, younger subjects were able to use the instructions about reward distribution as well as the companion's actions in guiding their social behavior.     

Speech acquisition in a nonverbal isolate child

The present study attempted to evaluate experimentally the relationship between two response classes: cooperative play and speech. One child was observed in a preschool free-play setting. Base rates of speech and play with peers indicated that the child never spoke to or played with peers during free-play periods. Base rates of teacher attention were observed to fluctuate directly with the child's isolate play. When differential attention and extinction operations were presented, removed and presented again, the frequency of cooperative play with peers increased, decreased and increased accordingly. Moderate fluctuations in verbal behavior also correlated with the presence and absence of the differential attention and extinction operations, even though the operations were applied only to cooperative play. The results suggest that some nonverbal isolate children may begin producing speech when play behaviors with peers are reinforced by teachers.     

Sensitivity to binocular depth information in infants

In order to study infants' sensitivity to binocular information for depth, 11 infants, 20 to 26 weeks of age, were presented with real and stereoscopically projected virtual objects at three distances, and the infants' reaching behavior was videotaped. When the virtual object was positioned out of reach, infants tended to lean further forward and to reach less frequently than when the virtual object was positioned within reach. In addition, the proportion of reaches in which the infants patted, closed their hands, or brought their hands together was greater when the virtual object was within reach. However, no difference in the terminal location of the infants' reaches was found as a function of the virtual object's position. Examination of reaches to a near real object revealed that infants frequently did not contact the object or show appropriate hand shape or orientation. The effectiveness of the cue of retinal size and of binocular information for the depth of an object is discussed. It is concluded that 5-month-old infants are sensitive to binocular information for depth.     

Age trends in children's time-sharing performance

To investigate developmental differences in time-sharing performance, 60 boys, 20 in each of three age groups (7-, 10-, and 13-year-olds) performed an auditory matching task and a tracking task alone and concurrently, the latter under two sets of instructions. Decrements produced by concurrent performance were compared for the three age groups. When the time-shared tasks were presented as equally important, time-sharing produced significantly greater proportional decrements in the tracking performance of the younger children and for all age groups tracking task decrements were directly related to matching task difficulty. Subsequently, the children were instructed that one or the other of the tasks was more important and that they were to improve their performance on that task. All three age groups showed a significant improvement on the task emphasized by instructions. The relationship of the results to two models of information processing is discussed.     

Monaural recall and the right-ear advantage

Lists of eight nonsense syllables were monaurally presented to right-handed men and women for free recall, half to each ear on each trial. Results showed a right-ear advantage (REA) in the recall of recency items, but not primacy items and for males only. Among males only that subgroup without familial sinistrality demonstrated the REA. Results offer support for the following: (A) the language mechanisms involved in short-term “echoic” memory are particularly well-lateralized; (B) mechanisms underlying monaural REAs may be similar to those responsible for the asymmetries found in other paradigms; (C) processing demands and strategies inherent to the monaural technique may account in part for its limited reliability in yielding REA and for the present absence of REA among females.     

Developmental differences in the allocation of processing capacity

Recently psychologists have formulated a comprehensive view of attention involving allocation of processing capacity. Although developmental changes in processing capacity have been proposed as one source of age differences in certain cognitive skills, there has been little systematic investigation of this hypothesis. In the present study, second and sixth graders and adults (8, 12, and 20 years of age, respectively) performed a letter-matching task (primary task) concurrently with an auditory detection task (secondary task). Changes in reaction time in the secondary task as a function of manipulations of the primary task were used to estimate capacity allocation to the primary task. Primary task variables included stage of processing (alerting, encoding, rehearsing, responding) and matching condition (physical-identity vs name-identity matching). Age differences in secondary task performance were found to be related to stage of processing but not to matching condition. Earlier stages of the letter match task (alerting, encoding) required somewhat more capacity allocation in younger subjects. Later stages (rehearsing, responding) made substantially higher demands on capacity in children. Capacity allocation may be an important cognitive variable mediating developmental differences in basic information processing skills, and may underlie age trends found in performance of certain complex cognitive tasks.