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.     

Koran reading and negotiation with jinn: strategies to deal with mental ill health among Swedish Somalis

In this paper, we discuss traditional Somali concepts of mental ill health. Qualitative interviews were conducted with some 20 Swedish Somali interviewees about factors causing mental ill health, traditional classification, strategies to deal with mental ill health, and attitudes to the mental health care services in Sweden. Social mobilisation and religious healing are cornerstones of traditional Somali measures to deal with mental suffering. Traditional Somali views of mental ill health stand in stark contrast to classification of mental ill health in the western biomedical model. These views deserve attention since they may have an impact on health-seeking behaviour among Somali immigrants in western countries. Yet a too strong focus on cultural aspects may over-shadow the fact that much mental suffering among Somali migrants must be understood within social, economic, and political contexts.     

Effects of encoding strategy,presentation modality,and scoring method on STM performance with the Peterson and Peterson technique

The Peterson and Peterson (1959) STM experiment was replicated with variation of presentation modality and encoding strategy. The effect of various scoring criteria was also analyzed. The recall data showed that a Peterson and Peterson type forgetting curve was obtained using auditory presentation and instructions to rehearse vocally the trigrams when scoring only completely correct recall within the first 3 sec of the recall interval. With visual presentation and instructions to find meaningful trigram interpretations, the forgetting curve was higher and much more flat, especially when scoring position correct recall within the total 0-10-sec recall interval. In a buildup of PI experiment, no buildup of PI could be detected when visual presentation was used together with instructions to find meaningful trigram interpretations. The importance of the different encoding activities for recall performance was discussed.     

Autonomic Activity, Pain, and Perceived Health in Patients on Sick Leave Due to Stress-Related Illnesses

OBJECTIVE: The aim of the present study was to compare autonomic activity, pressure-pain thresholds, and subjective assessments of health and behavior between patients with stress-related illnesses and healthy control subjects. METHODS: Twenty sick-listed patients with stress-related illnesses and 20 age- and gender-matched healthy subjects performed tests of autonomic regulation and algometric tests, and completed questionnaires about physical and mental health and behavioral patterns. RESULTS: Patients exhibited higher autonomic reactivity to cognitive and physical laboratory tasks (p < 0.05), and had lower pressure-pain thresholds in the shoulders and lower back than healthy control subjects (p < 0.05). Furthermore, the patients rated considerably poorer health and health behavior than the control subjects (p < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: The results indicate an engagement of the autonomic nervous system in stress-related illnesses. Furthermore, they show that patients with stress-related illnesses experience symptoms of musculoskeletal pain, and it is therefore recommended that assessments of musculoskeletal pain be incorporated in the clinical examinations and the rehabilitation of patients with stress-related illnesses.     

An experimental simulation study of advanced decision support system for ship navigation

A bridge with an integrated navigation system is compared to a less advanced conventionally equipped bridge in a full mission ship simulator to assess the extent to which fairway navigation benefits from information aids. Realistic scenarios were constructed including several demanding situations when navigating in a fairway. Twenty-two teams each consisting of two members with varying experience as Master Mariners and navigating officers participated in a repeated-measures design. Workload, performance and affective responses were measured. No statistical differences between the bridges were found on any of the dependent measures. The results imply that other factors than the available technology account for the observed differences across teams. A tendency was observed that experienced navigation officers performed better on the conventional bridge than the technically advanced bridge, whilst the opposite was true for less experienced navigation officers.     

The Grossarth-Maticek and Eysenck Personality Types,Health-related behaviour,and indicators of transitory ill-health

The aim of this study was to scrutinize the relationship between personality type as described by Grossarth-Maticek and Eysenck, health-related behaviours, and indicators of transitory ill health in a community sample. The sample consisted of all per sons aged 40 years (45 men and 35 women) in a Swedish municipality who agreed to take part in a health examination at the primary health care centre of the municipality. The Short Interpersonal Reactions Inventory (Grossarth-Maticek and Eysenck, 1990) was used to measure personality type. Self-report data were obtained regarding seven health-related behaviours. Health was assessed in three ways; self-report (paper and pencil), self-report (interview response to physician), and measures of 36 biological variables including immune system indicators. The allocation of persons to the different personality types proved problematic using the established methods. By combining the types, according to Eysenck's personality model, and performing a cluster analysis on this combination, a ‘healthy’ and a ‘stressed’ profile were identified within both the male and the female group of subjects. Persons in the healthy personality cluster showed more favourable scores on the health-related behaviour indices and on the self-report health scales than the persons in the stressed cluster. They also tended to score lower than those in the stressed cluster on most of the biological markers known to increase during acute stress. The possibility that this implies a higher level of strain for the persons in the stressed cluster on various bodily systems is discussed.     

APPROACH AND WITHDRAWAL IN YOUNG OF TILAPIA MOSSAMBICA (CICHLIDAE, PISCES) AS A FUNCTION OF AGE AND SOCIAL EXPERIENCE

G oude G., E dlund B., E ngqvist -E dlund U. & A nderson M. Approach and withdrawal in young of Tilapia mossambica (Cichlidae, Pisces) as a function of age and Social experience. Scand. J. Psychol ., 1972, 13 , 89–97.—In an experiment with eight groups of young of Tilapia mossambica , approach and withdrawal behavior was registered during brief (5 min) periods of stimulation with a moving dummy; the experiment lasted twelwe days (towards the end and immediately after the sensitive period). Four of the groups comprised young which had been isolated from each other until the first stimulation period; in the other four groups the young had been kept together in the experimental tanks. The age of the young when first stimulated was varied experimentally. Changes in approach and withdrawal behavior over time were studied along with e.g. changes in group strength. Age at first stimulation was found to be of some consequence but no clear differences were obtained between groups with different environmental experiences.