This research studies the problems of defining the concept of motive of crime in terms of the psychological concept of motives of human behavior. The purpose of this research is to define the motive of crime (which is yet undefined in spite of the longstanding existence of criminology) and to improve existing scientific theories regarding the…

The author considers the application of transactional analysis (TA) in the field of education. Initially, the focus is on the use of TA in reducing conflict in the classroom and staffroom before offering observations about its broader relevance to contemporary UK schooling. Concepts covered include the egostate model of personality, functional…

Historically, researchers have never quite been able to agree as to the role of emotions, if any, when behavior is selected by its consequences. A brief review of findings from several fields suggests that in contingency-shaped behavior, motivating events, often unconscious, seem needed for reinforcement to select behavior. In rule-governed…

A 5 year, ten wave longitudinal study of 338 adolescents assessed the association between two forms of cognitive vulnerability (intolerance of uncertainty and fear of anxiety) and worry. Multilevel mediational analyses revealed a bidirectional and reciprocal relation between intolerance of uncertainty and worry in which change in one variable…

The article provides a brief review of theory and research on the roles of guilt, shame, and sympathy in predicting moral behaviors. Two models are presented and contrasted. The guilt-based model proposes that guilt and shame jointly predict prosocial and aggressive behaviors. In contrast, the sympathy-based model suggests that perspective taking…

In the Winter 2013 issue of "Independent School," Richard Barbieri considered some of the distressing news about humanity being discovered by various physical and social scientists. Barbieri asserts in this issue that there are countervailing views and discoveries about our minds and our mores, enough for us to hope for the frequent, if…

The purpose of this literature review is to provide an overview of the research on sleep problems in autism spectrum disorder. Topics explored are the prevalence of sleep problems, the importance of studying sleep problems, as well as the objective and subjective measures used to measure sleep. Research on the relationships between sleep problems…

If judiciously applied, cognitive terminology can encourage further examination of phenomena in useful ways that may not otherwise be studied. I give examples of 3 phenomena, the study of which have benefitted from a cognitive perspective. For the first, transitive inference behavior, it appears that non-cognitive accounts cannot satisfactorily…

This descriptive pilot study examined the cultural differences in the dimensions of self-reported anger in Indigenous and non-Indigenous (Caucasian) students aged 10-13 years in Far North Queensland, Australia. The Multidimensional School Anger Inventory-Revised (MSAI-R) (Boman, Curtis, Furlong, & Smith, 2006) was used to measure affective,…

Worry has been shown to predict a variety of health behaviors, such as cancer screening, yet there are few studies linking worry and nutrition. This study used nationally representative data from National Cancer Institute's Food Attitudes and Behavior Survey ("n" = 3,397) to examine the association between health-related worry and a variety of…

Pigeon and human subjects were given repeated choices between variable and adjusting delays to token reinforcement that titrated in relation to a subject's recent choice patterns. Indifference curves were generated under two different procedures: "immediate exchange," in which a token earned during each trial was exchanged immediately for access…

Objective: Rage attacks have been documented in youth with varied psychiatric disorders, but few data have been reported on the clinical characteristics and correlates of rage attacks among children with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Method: Participants were 86 children (ages 6-16 years) with a primary diagnosis of OCD. Patients and their…

The current article provides a review of adoption research since its inception as a field of study. Three historical trends in adoption research are identified: the first focusing on risk in adoption and identifying adoptee-nonadoptee differences in adjustment; the second examining the capacity of adopted children to recover from early adversity;…

Following G. T. Fechner (1966), thresholds have been conceptualized as the amount of intensity needed to transition between mental states, such as between a states of unconsciousness and consciousness. With the advent of the theory of signal detection, however, discrete-state theory and the corresponding notion of threshold have been discounted.…

There is evidence suggesting aggression may be a positive reinforcer in many species. However, only a few studies have examined the characteristics of aggression as a positive reinforcer in mice. Four types of reinforcement schedules were examined in the current experiment using male Swiss CFW albino mice in a resident-intruder model of aggression…