Respiratory effects of spinal immobilization.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effect of whole-body spinal immobilization on respiration. METHODS: This was a randomized, crossover laboratory study with 39 human volunteer subjects (20 males; 19 females) ranging in age from 7 to 85 years. Respiratory function was measured three times: at baseline (seated or lying), immobilized with a Philadelphia collar on a hard wooden backboard, and on a Scandinavian vacuum mattress with a vacuum collar. The comfort levels of each of the two methods were assessed on a forced Likert scale. RESULTS: Both immobilization methods restricted respiration, 15% on the average. The effects were similar under the two immobilization conditions, although the FEV1 was lower on the vacuum mattress. Respiratory restriction was more pronounced at the extremes of age. The vacuum mattress was significantly more comfortable. CONCLUSION: This study confirmed the previously reported respiratory restriction caused by spinal immobilization. Vacuum mattresses are more comfortable than wooden backboards.

Spanking by parents and subsequent antisocial behavior of children.

OBJECTIVE: To deal with the causal relationship between corporal punishment and antisocial behavior (ASB) by considering the level of ASB of the child at the start of the study. METHODS: Data from interviews with a national sample of 807 mothers of children aged 6 to 9 years in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-Child Supplement. Analysis of variance was used to test the hypothesis that when parents use corporal punishment to correct ASB, it increases subsequent ASB. The analysis controlled for the level of ASB at the start of the study, family socio-economic status, sex of the child, and the extent to which the home provided emotional support and cognitive stimulation. RESULTS: Forty-four percent of the mothers reported spanking their children during the week prior to the study and they spanked them an average of 2.1 times that week. The more spanking at the start of the period, the higher the level of ASB 2 years later. The change is unlikely to be owing to the child's tendency toward ASB or to confounding with demographic characteristics or with parental deficiency in other key aspects of socialization because those variables were statistically controlled. CONCLUSIONS: When parents use corporal punishment to reduce ASB, the long-term effect tends to be the opposite. The findings suggest that if parents replace corporal punishment by nonviolent modes of discipline, it could reduce the risk of ASB among children and reduce the level of violence in American society.

Impact of expert testimony on the believability of repressed memories.

Research suggests that people question the believability of trial testimony based on an alleged victim's previously repressed memories. Participants read one of six scenarios depicting the trial of a man accused of sexually assaulting a young girl. The alleged victim either reported the assault immediately (child witness) or waited 20 years to report it (adult witness). In the adult witness condition, the woman's memory for the event had either been repressed until recently or had always been available, and expert testimony was offered on behalf of the defense, the prosecution, both, or neither. Regression analyses revealed that women perceived the accuser's testimony as more believable and the defendant's testimony as less believable than men did. Similarly, the belief in the accuser's testimony decreased and the belief in the defendant's testimony increased when the accuser was an adult in contrast to a child, and when the defense offered expert testimony in contrast to its absence. In addition, guilty verdicts were associated with higher levels of accuser believability, lower levels of defendant believability and testimony based on repressed memories in contrast to testimony based on memories that were never repressed.

Agreement and accuracy in children's interpersonal perceptions: a social relations analysis.

Agreement and accuracy in children's interpersonal perceptions during middle childhood were studied in the school environment. Sociocultural and ecological theories led to the prediction that, in middle childhood, peers' interpersonal perceptions would show high levels of agreement with those of teachers and would be accurate. A social relations analysis of data from a 3-year, cross-sequential study revealed that throughout middle childhood, peer perceptions of cognitive ability, observable behavior and characteristics, popularity, and affect correlated reliably with teacher perceptions. In addition, peer and teacher perceptions of targets' cognitive ability correlated with standardized test scores. Self-other agreement lagged behind teacher-peer agreement. The conceptual and statistical advantages of the social relations analysis of children's interpersonal perceptions were also considered.

Risk marker analysis of the cessation and persistence of wife assault.

This study evaluated the utility of specific risk markers of wife assault in understanding the cessation and persistence of violence against women over a 3-year period. Longitudinal data were used to identify violent men who ceased the violence for 2 years and violent men who persisted in using violence. A group of nonviolent men was used for comparison. Factor analysis indicated that marital conflict, socioeconomic status (SES), and witnessing violence in the family of origin were the most powerful discriminators of these groups. Moreover, it was found that high levels of marital conflict and low SES were associated not only with the occurrence of violence but also with the continuity of wife assaults over time.

Neonatal euthanasia: attributions of students and nurses.

An attributional analysis of neonatal euthanasia was undertaken in two studies to compare the responsibility attributions of nursing and non-nursing students (Study 1) and nurses (Study 2) toward a physician for a critically ill neonate's death. In both studies, vignettes about a newborn's death differed with respect to the physician's treatment of the critically ill newborn. In the student study, the physician was attributed the least responsibility for the newborn's death when cardiopulmonary resuscitation was attempted but failed, followed by the physician's issuance of either a "Do Not Resuscitate" order or an order to turn off the infant's respirator. Greatest responsibility was attributed to the physician when he ordered the infant's nutritional and hydration support to be terminated. In addition, the student's major (nursing vs. non-nursing) and the nursing student's educational cohort impacted the level of physician responsibility attributed. In contrast, the nurses' study found that the termination of nutritional and hydrational support was viewed as different from the physician's other three actions.

Euthanasia and long-term care: values of the long-term care professional.

Nursing home administrators and other long-term care professionals appear positively predisposed toward respecting the autonomy of residents in decisions involving euthanasia and assisted-suicide.

An analysis of risk markers in husband to wife violence: the current state of knowledge.

The present review involves the evaluation of 97 potential risk markers of husband to wife violence. Using 52 case-comparison studies as the source of data, markers were divided into four categories: consistent risk, inconsistent risk, consistent nonrisk, and risk markers with insufficient data. Based on this classification, it appears that a number of widely held hypotheses about husband to wife violence have little empirical support. Only witnessing violence in the wife's family of origin was consistently associated with being victimized by violence. Furthermore, it seems that characteristics associated with either the husband-offender or the couple have greater utility for assessing the risk of husband to wife violence than characteristics of the wife-victim. Findings are discussed in terms of the methodological and theoretical implications of current research on this form of adult domestic violence.

Origin and solution attributions of responsibility for wife abuse: effects of outcome severity, prior history, and sex of subject.

The purpose of the present study was to determine the effect of sex differences and seriousness of the abuse situation on observers' attributions of responsibility for origin and solution to both partners in a couple. Male and female undergraduate students (N = 354) read a vignette about a wife abuse incident. The results supported the victim activation hypothesis, with wives being held more responsible for the solution than for the origin of the problem. In contrast, husbands were held more responsible for the origin than for the solution to the problem. Overall, there were sex differences for attributions of responsibility to the husband but not for those to the wife. Women were more likely than men to attribute origin and solution responsibility to the husband. There was no clear support for the effects of the seriousness of the abuse situation. Husbands were attributed more control over the problem's solution than were wives.