Jugendliche Sexualstraftäter: Spezialfälle der Prognoseerstellung?

This study compared a sample of 273 juvenile (aged 14 to under 18), 178 adolescent (aged 18 to under 21) and 273 adult (older than 20 years) male sex offenders modus operandi (or MO, the way in which they committed their offenses), frequency of recidivism and predicted recidivism via the static-99. In terms of the frequencies of the MO aspects we found that juveniles and adolescents differed significantly from adult sexual offenders. However, concerning the frequency of sexual violent behaviors, adolescents committed more severe offenses in contrast to the two other groups. The comparison of recidivism rates indicated that adolescent sexual offenders were significantly less likely to commit a new sexual offense, but were considerably more likely to commit a non-sexual violent offense compared to adult sexual offenders. For juvenile offenders, only few static-99 variables were predictive of future recidivism in comparison to the other groups, suggesting that the static-99 may only have a restricted utility in juvenile offenders. Further, juvenile offenders risk levels were found to fall primarily within the medium risk group making individual differentiation of potential risk difficult. It is suggested that additional predictors, which help to differentiate young sexual offenders must be investigated.     

The fearless avoiders: Comparison of various strains of rats in an active avoidance task

The effect of exploratory activity and emotional reactivity on the acquisition of active avoidance learning was assessed in rats. Four strains of rats selectively bred for a high or low degree of either of the two traits (Maudsley emotionally reactive animals, Maudsley emotionally non-reactive animals, high rearers, and low rearers) and a control strain (randombred animals) took part in the experiment. Significant differences were found between strains in the number of animals showing active avoidance behaviour. Emotional reactivity was shown to facilitate active avoidance behaviour and so did, unexpectedly, a low degree of exploratory activity. An attempt was made to explain the latter result in terms of differences in channel capacity between high and low exploring animals and the ensuing differences in attention focus on the relevant stimulus for the test situation.     

Multi-template supervised descent method for face alignment

Supervised Descent Method (SDM) is a highly efficient and accurate approach for facial landmark locating and face alignment. In the training phase, it learns a sequence of descent directions to minimize the difference between the estimated shape and the ground truth in feature space. Then in the testing phase, it utilizes these descent directions to predict shape increment iteratively. However, when the facial expression or direction changes too much, the general SDM cannot obtain good performance due to the large variations between the initial shape and the target shape. In this paper, we propose a multi-template SDM (MtSDM) which can maintain high accuracy on training data and meanwhile improve the accuracy on testing data. Instead of only one model is constructed in the training phase, multiple different models are constructed by repeatedly inputting the images which have large variations on expressions or head poses. And in the testing phase, the distances between some specific landmarks are calculated to select an optimal model to update the point location. The experimental results show that our proposed method can improve the performance of traditional SDM and performs better than several existing state-of-the-art methods.     

3D feedback and observation for motor learning: Application to the roundoff movement in gymnastics

In this paper, we assessed the efficacy of different types of visual information for improving the execution of the roundoff movement in gymnastics. Specifically, two types of 3D feedback were compared to a 3D visualization only displaying the movement of the expert (observation) as well as to a more ‘traditional’ video observation. The improvement in movement execution was measured using different methods, namely subjective evaluations performed by official judges, and more ’quantitative appraisals based on time series analyses. Video demonstration providing information about the expert and 3D feedback (i.e., using 3D representation of the movement in monoscopic vision) combining information about the movement of the expert and the movement of the learner were the two types of feedback giving rise to the best improvement of movement execution, as subjectively evaluated by judges. Much less conclusive results were obtained when assessing movement execution using quantification methods based on time series analysis. Correlation analyses showed that the subjective evaluation performed by the judges can hardly be predicted/ explained by the ‘more objective’ results of time series analyses.     

Fighting inequalities in times of pandemic: The role of politicized identities and interdependent self-construal in coping with economic threat

During the COVID-19 pandemic, institutions encouraged social isolation and non-interaction with other people to prevent contagion. Still, the response to an impending economic crisis must be through the collective organization. In this set of pre-registered studies, we analyse two possible mechanisms of coping with collective economic threats: shared social identity and interdependent self-construction. We conducted three correlational studies during the pandemic in May–October 2020 (Study 1, N = 363; Study 2, N = 250; Study 3, N = 416). Results show that shared identity at two levels of politicization (i.e., working-class and 99% identities) and interdependent self-construal mediated the relationship between collective economic threat, intolerance towards economic inequality and collective actions to reduce it. The results highlight that the collective economic threat can reinforce the sense of community—either through the activation of a politicized collective identity, such as the working class or the 99% or through the activation of an interdependent self—which in turn can trigger greater involvement in the fight against economic inequality. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement .     

The possessions at Loudun: tracking the discourse of dissociation

Embedded in the history of dissociation is the best known case of possession in European history, the 17^th century possessions at Loudun, France (1632‐1638). The exorcisms and the trial drew crowds from all over Europe, the outcome prefiguring the direction in which the Western science of mind would be carried. The published debate about the possessed and obsessed Ursuline nuns of Loudun spans four centuries. One can track how theorizing about dissociation changed over time, with psychological contributions by Jean Martin Charcot, Georges Gilles de la Tourette, Pierre Janet, Michel Foucault and Michel de Certeau. Freud's psychoanalytic notion of demonological neurosis emphasized defensive strategies and a diabolic parody of adulthood. Jung's concepts of demonism and possession highlighted dissociated complexes that assimilate the ego and unseat the self, rendering a life ‘provisional’. Dissociation as possession provides a through‐line in Jung's Collected Works, from his 1902 dissertation to one of the last essays he wrote, in 1961. Within the context of psychotherapy, therapists and patients work towards psychological containment, consciously reorienting themselves to the presence of unconscious factors, personifying, embodying and thereby incorporating images of dissociated Otherness into the experience of selfhood.     

The Multidimensional Trauma Recovery and Resiliency Instrument

Abstract

This paper describes two studies leading to the construction of and psychometric support for the MTRR-99, a shortened version of the Multidimensional Trauma Recovery and Resiliency Scale (MTRR-135, formerly MTRR). In the first study, the original body of MTRR-135 data was reevaluated to remove psychometrically weak or theoretically unnecessary items. The remaining 99 items were then assessed for reliability, validity, and internal consistency. In the second study, the new MTRR-99 was applied to assess the recovery status of 164 incarcerated women prisoners with extensive abuse histories. Together, these two studies further document the utility of a multidimensional approach to assessing trauma impact, recovery, and resiliency; in addition, they provide preliminary evidence for the MTRR-99 as a viable measure for use with clinical and non-clinical populations.     

过度担忧和广泛性焦虑障碍与rCBF关系的SPECT脑显像研究

目的：探查过度担忧者和GAD病人的r CBF变化,更好地了解导致病理性焦虑和GAD的神经病理生理学基础。方法：回顾性分析18例过度担忧者和61例GAD病人SPECT脑显像的结果。GAD患者再按病程分为3个亚组。计算各组患者特定脑区r CBF损伤的百分比及损伤的脑区数。结果：12例（66.7%）过度担忧者可见前额叶、基底节、扣带回、颞叶和枕叶r CBF增加（11例）和/或减少（9例）。58例（95.1%）GAD患者可见r CBF减少,主要累及中和下前额叶、中和下颞叶、前扣带、海马旁回、基底节和丘脑。大多数GAD患者累及的主要脑区等于或大于3个。GAD病人的r CBF损伤和病程之间存在一定的相关性。结论：结果支持GAD患者r CBF的变化是一个与担忧和焦虑等心理和情绪改变密切相关的慢性和渐进的过程。GAD的局部脑功能障碍是病理性焦虑产生的先决条件,并出现在局部脑结构异常之前。     

Instinct: A biologically inspired reactive planner for intelligent embedded systems

The Instinct Planner is a new biologically inspired reactive planner, based on an established behaviour based robotics methodology and its reactive planner component — the POSH planner implementation. It includes several significant enhancements that facilitate plan design and runtime debugging. It has been specifically designed for low power processors and has a tiny memory footprint. Written in C++, it runs efficiently on both Arduino (Atmel AVR) and Microsoft VC++ environments and has been deployed within a low cost maker robot to study AI Transparency. Plans may be authored using a variety of tools including a new visual design language, currently implemented using the Dia drawing package.