This booklet describes the development of a program in Boston designed to address the needs of minority rape victims. A history of the program is given which includes the community need for this service, community attitudes toward rape victims and racial minorities, staff training, and the development of the program as a consultation and community…

A model of the effects of physical abuse on child peer social status was tested in an ongoing empirical study of 8- to 12-year-old physically abused urban school children and matched control children selected from among their classmates. The model posited that family patterns of violent behavior predict general behavioral disturbance in the…

Systematic efforts at the Arizona State Child Study Laboratory were successful in replacing children's undesirable superhero play with other types of sociodramatic play. Teachers found superhero play undesirable because it was aggressive and noisy and was accompanied by an increase in random activity. Observations indicated that superhero play had…

Authors of childrearing texts suggest that punishment is a horrifying experience having no positive influence on human relations. Authors of psychology texts are not as opposed but indicate that punishment is not appropriate when one attempts to help children. While some researchers denounce the use of punishment, they also invite further…

This study attempted to determine whether simple, naturalistic procedures could be used to increase the rate of physically affectionate behaviors directed at stuffed toy animals and at peers in the play of 4- and 5-year-old children. Procedures were developed for scoring affection and aggression during group play. The context of reading a story…

The proceedings of this subcommittee of the House of Representatives Select Committee on Aging explore the incidence and causes of elder abuse and consider ways of dealing with the problem. Statements of victims of elder abuse and statements of social service personnel are included. Legal aspects of the problem and the possibility of government…

While the family has traditionally been the preferable alternative to nursing home care for the aged, recent research indicates that some elderly persons are subjected to neglect or abuse by their families. To investigate this problem, elderly abuse victims in Detroit completed questionnaires and interviews; their families and social service and…

Although self-concept has been linked with many behavioral variables, most studies do not deal with dependent variables which would provide an understanding of such clinically relevant behaviors as sociability, aggression, activity level, somatization, inhibition, and sleep disturbance. The relationship between self-esteem and clinically relevant…

Research strategies used to study human aggression include laboratory study, experimental simulation, field experiment, field study, judgment task, sample survey, and less empirical strategies such as computer simulations and formal theory. The context of these strategies can be classified as either contrived, natural, or irrelevant. Major issues…

The selective learning hypothesis holds that individuals' learning of prose passages will be affected in varying ways by the passages' threatening or unpleasant content. To test this hypothesis, 19 college students read six prose passages--three containing threatening material and three nonthreatening--and then completed a cloze test for each…

To test whether parental behavior has an important impact on a child's behavior in later life, records describing home atmosphere during childhood were linked with records of subsequent criminality gathered when subjects were middle aged. Discriminant function analysis based on six variables describing home atmosphere was highly successful in…

This book is designed to provide instructors and students in sport psychology courses with a learning instrument that combines the continuity of a textbook with the range of opinion, in-depth treatment of selected issues, and insight into research methods of a book of readings. The subject is divided into four topical categories. Under the heading…

The interpersonal conditions which may maintain a child's aggression in the family were investigated by observing immediate, ongoing interactions in families of normal and aggressive adolescent sons. Normal-son families (N=6) and aggressive-son families (N=6) were videotaped engaging in a 50-minute discussion of questionnaire items designed to…

Ninety-eight young children with learning or behavior problems participated in a 5-week summer program. The objective of the program was to provide (1) an activity-oriented group experience, (2) continuity of experience between June and September, and (3) a closer relationship with an adult than is possible during the school term. All Pacers, as…

Television programing has a high degree of credibility to the undiscriminating eyes of children. Programing on commercial television is composed of shows produced specifically for children and shows formerly made for adults but now shown as reruns. Observation and imitation of behavior viewed on television by children may be a link to aggressive…