Stimulus properties, attentional limitations, and young children's face recognition

The present research explored 3-, 7-, and 10-yr.-old children's face recognition in a "paraphernalia-to-fool" paradigm in which angular size of the stimuli was manipulated. It was proposed that, given the attentional limitations of the two youngest age groups, facial information and irrelevant paraphernalia would be perceived as an undifferentiated whole in stimuli of small visual angles, resulting in decreased recognition. However, increasing angular size should enable the 7-yr.-olds to differentiate the two types of stimulus information more easily. Therefore, it was hypothesized that the influence of paraphernalia on 7-yr.-olds' performance would be moderated by the spatial size of the stimulus. The effect of angular size was also expected to interact with age group. As predicted, 10-yr.-olds were unaffected by the size manipulation, 7-yr.-olds' performance was moderated by angular size, and, although 3-yr.-olds' recognition improved with large stimuli, the increase was not significant. Results are discussed in relation to the influence of stimulus properties and age-related attentional limitations.

Asymmetries in infants' attention to the presence or absence of features

Three experiments were performed to test whether infants show a bias for detecting the presence of a feature in a stimulus rather than its absence. In the 1st experiment, 24 16-week-old infants were given 3 paired-comparison problems, each of which included a 25-s familiarization phase followed by 2 test trials. Infants were familiarized to 1 member of a set of capital alphabetical letters (E-F; Q-O; B-R). Then they were given a paired-comparison recognition test under 1 of 2 conditions. In the feature-present condition, the familiar letter (e.g., F) was paired with a novel letter containing the addition of a distinguishing element (e.g., E). In the feature-absent condition, infants were presented with a familiar letter (e.g., E) paired with a novel letter in which 1 element was removed (e.g., F). Infants showed a novelty preference to the letter in which the distinguishing feature was present, but there was no preference for novelty in the feature-absent condition. The 2nd experiment showed that infants' fixation to the letter containing the presence of the feature was not due to a simple preference for the letter with the greater number of elements. Finally, to test whether infants' failure to discriminate the absence was due to insufficient encoding time, 36 infants were tested in a 3rd experiment in which familiarization time was varied. After 20 s of familiarization, no evidence of discrimination was observed in either the feature-present or feature-absent condition. After 30 s, however, infants could discriminate the novel letter in the feature-present condition but not in the feature-absent condition. The significance of these results is discussed in terms of theoretical explanations for the development of the feature-presence bias.

A matched cohort comparison of a criminal justice system's response to child sexual abuse: a profile of perpetrators

OBJECTIVE

This study was undertaken to examine whether alleged child sexual abuse perpetrators are handled differently by the courts than other alleged felony perpetrators. Comparisons were made from the time of prosecutorial case acceptance through prosecution to sentencing, with emphasis on judicial and prosecutorial decision-making and plea-bargaining.

METHOD

Data were retrospectively abstracted on the entire defendant population of cases of sexual abuse of children and adolescents (ages 2-17) over a 5-year period. Using a case-flow analysis, comparisons were made between a child sexual abuse cohort and a cohort of matched felony cases from a single jurisdiction.

RESULTS

Three important findings emerged. First, compared to other felons, abuse perpetrators were employed, had been married, were mostly European American, and were older than 30 years of age. Second, in the abuse cohort, as many as 14% had a previous sexual or violent record compared to 2% in the comparison group. Third, similar percentages of perpetrators in both groups were released on their own recognizance, had the charges against them dropped, and were found guilty. As well, no differences between groups were found in the proportion of individuals sentenced to jail, probation, counseling, or work release.

CONCLUSIONS

Although the treatment of perpetrators of child sexual abuse was similar to the treatment of perpetrators of other felonies, the profile of the child abuse perpetrator was quite different. Knowledge about this profile may impact prosecution or treatment and recidivism rates, to the extent that recidivism is related to characteristics of the abuse perpetrator.

Expectancies and memory for spatiotemporal events in 5-month-old infants

Five-month-old infants were trained to fixate four event locations, and recall was assessed following training in three experiments. Memory for four events was demonstrated in the first two studies, and memory for these events was also found to be robust following a 6- to 7-day delay. Infants demonstrated that they can anticipate upcoming events during training: they increased anticipatory behaviors during latter training trials, and they appeared to form expectancies of future events during periods of both stimulus onset and stimulus offset. Results are interpreted as consistent with a script representational view of memory for spatiotemporal events.

Infant response to facelike patterns under fixed-trial and infant-control procedures

10-week-old infants were shown 4 facelike patterns that differed along 2 dimensions: number of elements and the extent to which the elements were organized to resemble the human face. The purpose was to determine whether the stimulus dimension to which infants respond is different with fixed-trial than with infant-control methodologies. Each infant was tested under 1 of 3 experimental conditions: fixed trials (trials and intervals of fixed, predetermined durations), offset control (trial termination controlled by the behavior of the infant), or onset-offset control (trial initiation and termination both controlled by the infant's behavior). Although the relationship was linear with fixed trials and offset control but was curvilinear with onset-offset control, infants responded to number, rather than organization, of elements in all 3 conditions. Furthermore, no specific methodological advantages were demonstrated for infant-control procedures.