PROMOTING LAW ENFORCEMENT FOR CHILD PROTECTION: A COMMUNITY ANALYSIS

The Colorado Occupant Protection Project (COPP) intervention provided police with brief instruction concerning the importance of citations for drivers' failure to use child safety seats and special coupons to accompany citations. Coupons were exchangeable by drivers for a safety seat and brief training in its use, plus a waiver of the $50 citation fine. Over 4.5 years of archival records were employed, using an ABA design and a comparison community to evaluate the program. Few tickets were issued for nonuse of safety seats during the 3-year baseline in either community. Citations for nonuse of safety seats increased to over 50 per month during the intervention period at the test site, whereas rates remained essentially zero at the comparison site. After the COPP intervention was removed at the intervention site, citation rates for nonuse of safety seats decreased to about 15 per month. Differences between intervention conditions and settings were statistically significant. During the intervention, officers were 44 times more likely to write citations than were controls. Results suggested that a behavioral program can increase police citation writing for child protection purposes.     

Development and validation of a standardized measure of employee turnover risk

This article describes the development, reliability, and initial validation of the Tenure Scale. The scale was designed as an attitudinal predictor of turnover risk to be used for pre-employment selection. Two validation studies are reported. In study one, significant results were obtained between Tenure Scale scores and self report measures of: a) past and present job tenure; b) intentions to quit; c) job search behaviors; and d) intentions to remain committed to one's job. In study two, significant relationships were established between Tenure Scale scores and on-the-job measures of turnover risk, including work performance, absenteeism rates, and length of employment. No adverse impact was found against any protected group in study two. The relationship of these results with job turnover theory is discussed, and future validation research is suggested.Portions of this research study were presented at the 1988 Annual Conference of the Association of Human Resources Management and Organizational Behavior, Long Beach, California, October 26–29.     

Electrophysiological correlates of semantic features

Analyses of averaged auditory evoked responses to a list of 10 positive and 10 negative words led to the identification of a restricted region in the brain response which reliably discriminated between words differing in the semantic features positive and negative. These data support the view that word meanings are composed of more basic components or features and are not stored simply as dictionary items in the brain.     

Book Reviews

The Psychological Record -     

Accelerated development of cardiac sympathetic responses in spontaneously hypertensive (SHR) rats

The functional development of cardiac and adrenal medullary responses to reflex activation of the sympathetic nervous system was studied in preweanling spontaneously hypertensive (SHR) and Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) normotensive rats. Pups of the two strains received injections of insulin or saline at 2, 4, 8, 12, or 16 days of age and were sacrificed 3 h later. Insulin administration produces a significant decrease in circulating levels of glucose which in turn results in a centrally mediated increase in sympathetic outflow. The induction of ornithine decarboxylase (ODC) in heart and the depletion of epinephrine from the adrenal medulla served as tissue markers of functional sympathetic neurotransmission. WKY and SHR pups had comparable levels of ODC activity in heart under basal conditions. In contrast, levels of catecholamines in the adrenals were greater in SHR pups at 2 and 4 days of age. Following insulin administration, SHR pups exhibited a greater induction of cardiac ODC activity at 2, 4, and 8 days of age compared to age-matched WKY controls. However, there were no differences between SHR and WKY pups in the magnitude of the adrenal medullary response to insulin-induced hypoglycemia. These alterations in sympathetic-target tissue development during the first postnatal week of life may contribute in part to the higher arterial pressures maintained by SHRs throughout the lifespan.