VOICE ALTERATIONS

The experience of divorce is difficult for everyone involved. To best help with the legal experience, we need to understand gender differences that affect the process. This article adds to the understanding of that difference by addressing women's development and the female "voice." Women have not been acculturated to the subtle rules of litigation, which are in the male "voice." The authors offer an alternative scenario to add balance to the traditional experience of divorce for women and men and to the divorce process itself.     

Muslims in Space: Observing Religious Rites in a New Environment

The first men to fly into space precipitated comments about religion and God, but for most of the history of human spaceflight these comments related to Christianity. As International Space Station partners recruit spacefarers from Islamic countries, they face new religious challenges. Islam is distinct from other large monotheistic religions by virtue of the fact that Muslim worship practices require routine attention to Earth geography and astronomy. It is a vantage point that changes in low Earth orbit. Recent Muslim astronauts and cosmonauts have led the way in adapting religious practices to their position above the Earth.     

MAKING IT WORK

With the prevalence of divorce in our country, there is a serious need of services for divorcing families to be readily available and offered in a manner to increase the use of the services. Early intervention with the divorcing family is critical to help alleviate levels of parental conflict and decrease potential litigation. This article is an evaluation of the first year of court-mandated parenting psychoeducational workshops. The results demonstrate the positive effects of the workshops for most divorcing parents in terms of levels of ongoing conflict between parents, children's adjustment as observed by the parents, parents' adjustment, and parents' ability to settle the legal issues of the divorce and keep the children out of the middle of the conflict.     

Linguistic and socioemotional influences on the accuracy of children's reports

A basic but largely neglected issue in research on the reliability of children's testimony is the impact of certain questioning tactics (e.g., use of legalese and socioemotional intimidation) on the accuracy of children's reports. In the present study, 5- to 7-year-old children were interviewed about a standardized play event with free-recall cues and detailed questions that were specific or misleading. Linguistic complexity of questions (complex or simple) and socioemotional context of interview (supportive or intimidating) were varied between subjects. Results indicated that children were significantly less accurate in reporting the event when questioned with complex, developmentally inappropriate questions rather than simple questions, yet children rarely voiced their comprehension failures. In addition, children interviewed by a warm, supportive interviewer were more resistant to misleading questions about the event than were children interviewed in an intimidating manner. Theoretical interpretations and implications for investigative interviewing and policy are discussed.     

The European public sphere and the debate about humanitarian military interventions

Studies on the democratic control and legitimacy of Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) have thus far mostly focused on formal institutions. However, a comprehensive analysis requires including the ‘sociocultural infrastructure’ in which such formal institutions are embedded. Students of democracy have argued that the public sphere is a crucial dimension, if not a precondition for all mechanisms of democratic control in general. This paper investigates whether and in which ways Europeans participated in transnational European communication on humanitarian military interventions (1990–2005/2006). The paper analyzes a full sample of 108,677 newspaper articles published in leading newspapers of six EU member states, and the US as a comparative case. It demonstrates that the ‘national’ arenas of political communication are intertwined and allow ordinary citizens to make up their minds about common European issues in the highly controversial and normatively sensitive realm of humanitarian military interventions.