The Rituals of Public Meetings

Public meetings are often referred to as “rituals” to denote a largely symbolic activity with little concrete meaning. This essay explores how public meeting rituals may produce very real impacts on participants and pragmatic outcomes. Whereas tangible outputs of rituals are not always evident, ritual theory suggests that participants can derive latent meaning and significant comfort from their application. Although rituals serve to reify certain norms or control behaviors, they may also reaffirm civic values and encourage group cohesion. A deeper appreciation of public meeting rituals will enable participants and officials to respond more effectively to restructured or nontraditional formats as well as better deal with the challenges of maintaining participation when rituals lose their meaning.     

Self-Reported and Official Offending from Age 10 to Age 56

In the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development, over 400 London males have been followed up from age 8 to age 48 in face-to-face interviews and up to age 56 in criminal records. About 42 % of the males were convicted up to age 56. During five age ranges up to age 47, 94 % of the males admitted at least one of eight offenses, in comparison with 31 % who were convicted for at least one of these offenses in these age ranges. The prevalence of offending, and the number of offenses committed, decreased steadily after age 18 according to both convictions and self-reports. On average, there were 38 self-reported offenses per conviction, and this ratio also decreased with age. Convicted males self-reported 25 offenses per conviction on average. It is concluded that the “scaling-up factor” from convictions to self-reported offenses is very important, especially in evaluating the effectiveness of intervention programs.     

Urban African American youth exposed to community violence: a school-based anxiety preventive intervention efficacy study

This study evaluated the efficacy of a school-based anxiety prevention program among urban children exposed to community violence. Students who attended Title 1 public elementary schools were screened. Ninety-eight 3rd-5th-grade students (ages 8-12; 48% female; 92% African American) were randomized into preventive intervention versus wait list comparison groups. Students attended 13 biweekly one-hour group sessions of a modified version of FRIENDS, a cognitive-behavioral anxiety intervention program. Results indicated that both intervention and control groups manifested significant reductions in anxiety symptomatology and total exposure to community violence, along with improved standardized reading achievement scores. Additional gains observed only in the intervention group were increased standardized mathematics achievement scores, decreased life stressors, and reduced victimization by community violence. The intervention was equally efficacious for both genders and for children exposed to higher, compared to lower, levels of community violence. Implications for comprehensive, culturally and contextually relevant prevention programs and research are discussed.     

A Comparison of the Effectiveness of Swabbing and Flossing as a Means of Recovering Spermatozoa from the Oral Cavity

This study examined whether flossing the teeth is a more effective collection method in recovering spermatozoa than conventional swabbing techniques. It was hypothesized that inclusion of flossing as a collection method would extend the recovery of spermatozoa to longer postcoital intervals (PCIs). Eighteen individuals provided 174 oral cavity samples. Successful recovery of spermatozoa was assessed with respect to the collection method and reported activity in the oral cavity during the PCI. Samples were subjected to a differential extraction procedure prior to microscopic evaluation of the extracted pellet. The results indicate that swabbing is more effective than flossing when the PCI falls within 1.5–12 h. However, spermatozoa were recovered from seven floss samples where the corresponding swabs gave negative results. When combining the results from the two collection methods, the percentage of subjects from whom spermatozoa are recovered increases for each PCI beyond the 0‐h interval.     

Spatial patterning of vulture scavenged human remains

This article presents the results of a pilot study on the effects of vulture modification to human remains. A donated body from the Willed Body Donation Program was placed at the Forensic Anthropology Research Facility (FARF), an outdoor human decomposition laboratory located at Texas State University-San Marcos. The effects of vulture scavenging on the timing and sequence, and the rate of skeletonization, disarticulation, and dispersal were observed via a motion sensing camera and direct observation. Using GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and GPS (Global Positioning System) technologies and spatial analytical methods, the transport of skeletal elements was mapped in order to analyze dispersal and terrain-influenced patterns of active vulture scavenging. Results showed that the initial scavenging took place 37 days after placement at FARF. This delay in scavenging differs from previous research. After the initial appearance of the vultures, the body was reduced from a fully-fleshed individual to a skeleton within only 5h. This underscores the potential for errors in postmortem interval estimations made at vulture scavenged scenes. Additionally, spatial analysis showed that skeletal elements were dispersed by vultures to lower elevations, and that the disarticulation and dispersal of the skeletal elements occurs early in the scavenging sequence.     

Does Inequity Aversion Motivate Punishment? Cleaner Fish as a Model System

In human social interactions, punishment is often directed at cheating individuals. Subjective reports and neuro-imaging studies indicate that the experience of interacting with a cheat produces negative emotions and that the act of punishing a cheat assuages these feelings. However, while negative emotions may elicit punishment, the precise source of these emotions remains obscure. Specifically, it is often very difficult to tease apart whether punishing individuals are inequity averse (upset because cheating partner receives more than they should) or, more simply, whether they might be loss averse (upset because their payoffs did not meet their expectations). We compare results on punishment and inequity aversion in humans with results from a non-human model system, the cleaning mutualism between bluestreak cleaner wrasse (Labroides dimidiatus) and its reef-fish ??clients??. Male cleaner fish are known to punish females that cheat during joint client inspections, but a recent study failed to demonstrate evidence for inequity aversion in this species. We suggest that punishment in cleaner fish may be motivated by loss aversion rather than inequity aversion. Punishment in humans might also often be motivated by loss aversion??and empirical studies that disentangle the two competing motives for punishment are a clear research priority.     

THE COLLABORATIVE DIVORCE PROJECT: A Court-Based Intervention for Separating Parents with Young Children

The role the legal process of separation and divorce plays in affecting outcomes for young children and their families was examined in the Collaborative Divorce Project (CDP), an intervention designed to assist the parents of children six years old or younger as they begin the separation/divorce process (married and unmarried couples). Evaluation and outcome data were collected from 161 couples, their attorneys, teachers, and court records. In addition to positive evaluations from both parents, intervention families benefited through lower conflict, greater father involvement, and better outcomes for children than the control group. Attorneys and court records indicate that intervention families were more cooperative and were less likely to need custody evaluations and other costly services. The CDP illustrates how prevention programs can be located within the courts, can be systematically evaluated, and can aid in helping the legal system function optimally for families with young children.     

The Family of the Juvenile Delinquent

Juvenile delinquency has historically been responded to by “de-familization” of the young offender; that is, removal to a training school or other institutional setting. The trend over the past two decades toward deinstitutionalization has meant that delinquent youngsters, who are now remaining in the context of their own communities and families, have been “re-familized.” This poses a major challenge for the juvenile justice system and community, who are stuck with the family but are not sure what to do about it. Little objective and systematic information is available concerning families of delinquents, either as an aggregate group or in individual cases. It is hypothesized that the families are as heterogeneous as are delinquent youngsters, but the juvenile justice system tends to scapegoat families and assumes they are all necessarily dysfunctional. A 10-point continuum of family functioning is proposed. It is suggested that families of delinquent youngsters are found at various points on this continuum: from the extremely impaired or criminogenic family, through the family that has serious problems but has something to offer its youngster if it receives effective help with those problems, to the family of average functioning that can serve as a major rehabilitative resource for the youngster.