Behavioral/emotional indicators of sexual abuse in child psychiatric inpatients: A controlled comparison with physical abuse

Several behavioral and emotional indicators of child sexual abuse were compared for both sexually (n = 29) and physically abused (n = 52) children from a sample of 103 hospitalized psychiatric patients. The measures included (1) scores from a factor-analyzed sexual abuse symptom checklist covering home/community behavior that was rated by parents during a clinical interview and (2) frequency counts of psychological symptoms exhibited by the children during a 3-week period of hospitalization. Results of a 2 (sexual abuse status) X 2 (physical abuse status) X 2 (gender) Multivariate Analysis of Variance indicated that sexually abused children exhibited greater sexual behavior, fear/mistrust/anxiety, and withdrawal at home, and greater sexual behavior, fear/anxiety, and sadness in the hospital than nonabused children. In contrast, there were no significant differences between physically abused and nonabused children, and no significant interactions. Few significant correlations were found between symptoms exhibited at home and in the hospital.     

Stigma and incest survivors

The impact of incestuous child sexual abuse continues to affect victims into their adult lives. Survey responses from college students indicate the predicted stigma surrounding this childhood event varies with gender as well as with length and type of relationship at the time of the disclosure. Women indicate differences in stigma when anticipating various types of relationships with male survivors. Particularly, women show dating as less comfortable than opposite sex friendship, and parenting as less comfortable than marriage. Men do not indicate these differences in stigma based on the type of relationship, but instead predict comfort with female survivors based on the length of relationship.     

Effects of rhizobacteria <Emphasis Type="Italic">Paenibacillus polymyxa</Emphasis> APEC136 and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Bacillus subtilis</Emphasis> APEC170 on biocontrol of postharvest pathogens of apple fruits

In this study, plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) were evaluated as potential biocontrol agents against postharvest pathogens of apple fruits. In vitro bioassays revealed that, out of 30 isolates screened, isolates APEC136 and APEC170 had the most significant inhibitory effects against the mycelial growth of several fungal pathogens. Analysis of 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) sequences identified the two effective isolates as Paenibacillus polymyxa and Bacillus subtilis, respectively. The two strains showed greater growth in brain-heart infusion broth than in other growth media. Treatment of harvested apples with suspensions of either strain reduced the symptoms of anthracnose disease caused by two fungal pathogens, Colletotrichum gloeosporioides and Colletotrichum acutatum, and white rot disease caused by Botryosphaeria dothidea. Increased productions of amylase and protease by APEC136, and increased productions of chitinase, amylase, and protease by APEC170 might have been responsible for inhibiting mycelial growth. The isolates caused a greater reduction in the growth of white rot than of anthracnose. These results indicate that the isolates APEC136 and APEC170 are promising agents for the biocontrol of anthracnose and white rot diseases in apples after harvest, and suggest that these isolates may be useful in controlling these diseases under field conditions.     

Learning Neuroscience: An Interactive Case-Based Online Network (ICON)

We have developed an interactive case-based online network (ICON) that provides a new learning environment and integrates the student's thinking across the different concentration tracks of one of Harvard's interfaculty science initiatives. ICON takes advantage of this cross-disciplinary, undergraduate curriculum as a model system to bring a compelling, integrative focus to bear on reshaping how Harvard students learn neuroscience. ICON contains 9 learning modules specific to each case: Case, Working Papers, Blackboard, Neuroimaging, Research Programs and Trials, Decision Tree, Learning Objectives, Virtual Contact, and Brainstorm. Modules allow the student to get away from interpreting vast amounts of available information, move toward selecting useful information, recognize discriminating findings, and build a conceptual understanding of real and meaningful problems in neuroscience. The result is that ICON introduces a new landscape within the academic curriculum where the active participation of faculty and students effectively intersects and captures an immediate, integrative learning experience for the student. The benchmark of ICON is the time spent by students and faculty to create a user-defined learning network that engages faculty to participate in the students' learning and transforms the way the student thinks.     

Accompanying the adolescent on the career journey: A cognitive developmental approach

Summary In our present society, it is not enough to continue to provide adolescents with a stimulating career environment in the hope that appropriate career planning and development will result. Attention needs to be paid to the way in which adolescents structure their career environment and how they function in the face of the career stimulation that they receive. In this paper, the position is taken that the pressure on adolescents can result in some of them trying to adapt too readily and quickly to the information which they receive. By doing so, they fail to gain the perceived internal locus of control and self-reflection which are needed to deal with the complex and changing career issues. This problem can be understood and dealt with in counselling by focussing on the assimilative functions of the adolescent. Specific couselling strategies which may facilitate such a focus include the responsive counselling conditions and such techniques as the repertory grid and fantasy.He graduated from McGill University and has taught at The University of Western Ontario. One of his primary interests is in relating dimensions of human development to counselling practice.     

Preschoolers’ Understanding of How Others Learn Through Action and Instruction

It is widely believed that exploration is a mechanism for young children's learning. The present investigation examines preschoolers’ beliefs about how learning occurs. We asked 3‐ to 5‐year‐olds to articulate how characters in a set of stories learned about a new toy. Younger preschoolers were more likely to overemphasize the role of characters’ actions in learning than older children were (Experiment 1, N = 53). Overall performance improved when the stories explicitly stated that characters were originally ignorant and clarified the characters’ actions, but general developmental trends remained (Experiment 2, N = 48). These data suggest that explicit metacognitive understanding of the relation between actions and learning is developing during the preschool years, which might have implications for how children learn from exploration.     

Cumulative environmental risk in substance abusing women: early intervention, parenting stress, child abuse potential and child development

OBJECTIVE: To assess the relationship between cumulative environmental risks and early intervention, parenting attitudes, potential for child abuse and child development in substance abusing mothers. METHOD: We studied 161 substance-abusing women, from a randomized longitudinal study of a home based early intervention, who had custody of their children through 18 months. The intervention group received weekly home visits in the first 6 months and biweekly visits from 6 to 18 months. Parenting stress and child abuse potential were assessed at 6 and 18 months postpartum. Children's mental and motor development (Bayley MDI and PDI) and language development (REEL) were assessed at 6, 12, and 18 months postpartum. Ten maternal risk factors were assessed: maternal depression, domestic violence, nondomestic violence, family size, incarceration, no significant other in home, negative life events, psychiatric problems, homelessness, and severity of drug use. Level of risk was recoded into four categories (2 or less, 3, 4, and 5 or more), which had adequate cell sizes for repeated measures analysis. DATA ANALYSIS: Repeated measures analyses were run to examine how level of risk and group (intervention or control) were related to parenting stress, child abuse potential, and children's mental, motor and language development over time. RESULTS: Parenting stress and child abuse potential were higher for women with five risks or more compared with women who had four or fewer risks; children's mental, motor, and language development were not related to level of risk. Children in the intervention group had significantly higher scores on the PDI at 6 and 18 months (107.4 vs. 103.6 and 101.1 vs. 97.2) and had marginally better scores on the MDI at 6 and 12 months (107.7 vs. 104.2 and 103.6 vs. 100.1), compared to the control group. CONCLUSION: Compared to drug-abusing women with fewer than five risks, women with five or more risks found parenting more stressful and indicated greater inclination towards abusive and neglectful behavior, placing their infants at increased risk for poor parenting, abuse and neglect. Early home-based intervention in high-risk families may be beneficial to infant development.