Anatomically detailed dolls do not facilitate preschoolers' reports of a pediatric examination involving genital touching.

Anatomically detailed dolls' influence on the accuracy of 3-year-old children's reports of a routine medical exam was assessed. During the exam, half of the children received a genital examination and half did not. Immediately after the exam, the children were asked to demonstrate various events on an anatomically correct doll and on their own bodies. In 2 studies, children's accuracy in reporting certain events was the same in the doll condition and in the body condition. Children were inaccurate in reporting genital touching, regardless of how they were questioned and regardless of whether they had received a genital examination. The dolls increased inaccurate reporting because some children falsely showed that the doctor had inserted a finger into the anal or genital cavity. The results indicate that anatomically detailed dolls should not be used in forensic or therapeutic interviews with 3-year-old children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The institutional review board as a mirror of scientific and ethical standards

Decisions by institutional review boards (IRBs) are presumed to reflect the norms and standards of the scientific community. Such criteria have shifted as changes have occurred in experimental interventions and protocols, codes of federal regulatory agencies, norms among investigators, and expectations of participants. The tension created by shifting norms and standards raises two questions: (a) Should IRBs evaluate the scientific (e.g., design) features of the proposed research, and (b) should consistent standards be expected even in areas that are in constant flux (e.g., AIDS research)? We discuss these questions and propose a mechanism to keep IRBs abreast of emergent issues and sensitized not only to the costs of doing research but also to the costs of not doing it.     

Semi-supervised classification trees

In many real-life problems, obtaining labelled data can be a very expensive and laborious task, while unlabeled data can be abundant. The availability of labeled data can seriously limit the performance of supervised learning methods. Here, we propose a semi-supervised classification tree induction algorithm that can exploit both the labelled and unlabeled data, while preserving all of the appealing characteristics of standard supervised decision trees: being non-parametric, efficient, having good predictive performance and producing readily interpretable models. Moreover, we further improve their predictive performance by using them as base predictive models in random forests. We performed an extensive empirical evaluation on 12 binary and 12 multi-class classification datasets. The results showed that the proposed methods improve the predictive performance of their supervised counterparts. Moreover, we show that, in cases with limited availability of labeled data, the semi-supervised decision trees often yield models that are smaller and easier to interpret than supervised decision trees.     

Developmental reversals in false memory: A review of data and theory.

Can susceptibility to false memory and suggestion increase dramatically with age? The authors review the theoretical and empirical literatures on this counterintuitive possibility. Until recently, the well-documented pattern was that susceptibility to memory distortion had been found to decline between early childhood and young adulthood. That pattern is the centerpiece of much expert testimony in legal cases involving child witnesses and victims. During the past 5 years, however, several experiments have been published that test fuzzy-trace theory's prediction that some of the most powerful forms of false memory in adults will be greatly attenuated in children. Those experiments show that in some common domains of experience, in which false memories are rooted in meaning connections among events, age increases in false memory are the rule and are sometimes accompanied by net declines in the accuracy of memory. As these experiments are strongly theory-driven, they have established that developmental improvements in the formation of meaning connections are necessary and sufficient to produce age increases in false memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Women's underrepresentation in science: Sociocultural and biological considerations.

The underrepresentation of women at the top of math-intensive fields is controversial, with competing claims of biological and sociocultural causation. The authors develop a framework to delineate possible causal pathways and evaluate evidence for each. Biological evidence is contradictory and inconclusive. Although cross-cultural and cross-cohort differences suggest a powerful effect of sociocultural context, evidence for specific factors is inconsistent and contradictory. Factors unique to underrepresentation in math-intensive fields include the following: (a) Math-proficient women disproportionately prefer careers in non–math-intensive fields and are more likely to leave math-intensive careers as they advance; (b) more men than women score in the extreme math-proficient range on gatekeeper tests, such as the SAT Mathematics and the Graduate Record Examinations Quantitative Reasoning sections; (c) women with high math competence are disproportionately more likely to have high verbal competence, allowing greater choice of professions; and (d) in some math-intensive fields, women with children are penalized in promotion rates. The evidence indicates that women's preferences, potentially representing both free and constrained choices, constitute the most powerful explanatory factor; a secondary factor is performance on gatekeeper tests, most likely resulting from sociocultural rather than biological causes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Characterization of Monovarietal Argentinian Olive Oils from New Productive Zones

Quality characteristics (acidity, peroxide value, K ₂₃₂, K ₂₇₀, ΔK, oxidative stability index) and chemical data (antioxidant compound, fatty-acid, sterol, erythrodiol-uvaol, and wax compositions) were studied in monovarietal virgin-olive oil samples (2004–2005 harvests) from different regions of Argentina. The data obtained according to standard methods were compared with international quality and purity criteria. The total-polyphenol content ranged from 25 to 263 mg/kg, showing the highest values for Coratina and Arauco oils. The α-tocopherol content varied between 160 and 428 mg/kg; these values are generally stated to belong to good quality oils. Most of the samples from the new productive zones failed at least one purity criterion. Arbequina samples presented the highest deviations from the International Olive Oil Council criteria in fatty acids, waxes, and sterol percentages, indicating a poor adaptation of this cultivar to the agronomic medium and its sensibility to adverse climatic conditions. Principal component analysis revealed that the harvest-year influence was attributable to environmental factors.     

Nature-nuture reconceptualized in developmental perspective: A bioecological model.

In response to A. Anastasi's (1958) long-standing challenge, the authors propose an empirically testable theoretical model that (1) goes beyond and qualifies the established behavioral genetics paradigm by allowing for nonadditive synergistic effects, direct measures of the environment, and mechanisms of organism–environment interaction, called proximal processes, through which genotypes are transformed into phenotypes; (2) hypothesizes that estimates of heritability (e.g., h–2) increase markedly with the magnitude of proximal processes; (3) demonstrates that heritability measures the proportion of variation in individual differences attributable only to actualized genetic potential, with the degree of nonactualized potential remaining unknown; and (4) proposes that, by enhancing proximal processes and environments, it is possible to increase the extent of actualized genetic potentials for developmental competence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)