The Effects Of Rapport-Building Style on Children’s Reports of a Staged Event

Three- to 9-year-old children (N = 144) interacted with a photographer and were interviewed about the event either a week or a month later. The informativeness and accuracy of information provided following either open-ended or direct rapport building were compared. Children in the open-ended rapport-building condition provided more accurate reports than children in the direct rapport-building condition after both short and long delays. Open-ended rapport-building led the 3- to 4-year-olds to report more errors in response to the first recall question about the event, but they went on to provide more accurate reports in the rest of the interview than counterparts in the direct rapport-building condition. These results suggest that forensic interviewers should attempt to establish rapport with children using an open-ended style

Neurobehavioral consequences of chronic intrauterine opioid exposure in infants and preschool children: a systematic review and meta-analysis

<b>Background</b><p></p> It is assumed within the accumulated literature that children born of pregnant opioid dependent mothers have impaired neurobehavioral function as a consequence of chronic intrauterine opioid use.<p></p> <b>Methods</b><p></p> Quantitative and systematic review of the literature on the consequences of chronic maternal opioid use during pregnancy on neurobehavioral function of children was conducted using the Meta-analysis of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (MOOSE) and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) guidelines. We searched Cinahl, EMBASE, PsychINFO and MEDLINE between the periods of January 1995 to January 2012.<p></p> <b>Results</b><p></p> There were only 5 studies out of the 200 identified that quantitatively reported on neurobehavioral function of children after maternal opioid use during pregnancy. All 5 were case control studies with the number of exposed subjects within the studies ranging from 33–143 and 45–85 for the controls. This meta-analysis showed no significant impairments, at a non-conservative significance level of p < 0.05, for cognitive, psychomotor or observed behavioural outcomes for chronic intra-uterine exposed infants and pre-school children compared to non-exposed infants and children. However, all domains suggested a trend to poor outcomes in infants/children of opioid using mothers. The magnitude of all possible effects was small according to Cohen’s benchmark criteria.<p></p> <b>Conclusions</b><p></p> Chronic intra-uterine opioid exposed infants and pre-school children experienced no significant impairment in neurobehavioral outcomes when compared to non-exposed peers, although in all domains there was a trend to poorer outcomes. The findings of this review are limited by the small number of studies analysed, the heterogenous populations and small numbers within the individual studies. Longitudinal studies are needed to determine if any neuropsychological impairments appear after the age of 5 years and to help investigate further the role of environmental risk factors on the effect of ‘core’ phenotypes

Downscaling reveals diverse effects of anthropogenic climate warming on the potential for local environments to support malaria transmission

The potential impact of climate warming on patterns of malaria transmission has been the subject of keen scientific and policy debate. Standard climate models (GCMs) characterize climate change at relatively coarse spatial and temporal scales. However, malaria parasites and the mosquito vectors respond to diurnal variations in conditions at very local scales. Here we bridge this gap by downscaling a series of GCMs to provide high-resolution temperature data for four different sites and show that although outputs from both the GCM and the downscaled models predict diverse but qualitatively similar effects of warming on the potential for adult mosquitoes to transmit malaria, the predicted magnitude of change differs markedly between the different model approaches. Raw GCM model outputs underestimate the effects of climate warming at both hot (3-fold) and cold (8-12 fold) extremes, and overestimate (3-fold) the change under intermediate conditions. Thus, downscaling could add important insights to the standard application of coarse-scale GCMs for biophysical processes driven strongly by local microclimatic conditions.</p

THE EFFECTS OF DIVORCE AND CUSTODY ARRANGEMENTS ON CHILDREN’S BEHAVIOR, DEVELOPMENT, AND ADJUSTMENT

This article summarizes the consensus among a group of experts from developmental and clinical psychology, sociology, social welfare, and law who sought to evaluate existing empirical evidence regarding the ways in which children are affected by divorce and the varying custody arrangements that follow it. Divorce and/or single parenthood tend to have adverse effects on children’s adjustment, with the magnitude of the effects varying depending on the psychological status of the two parents, the extent of conflict between them, and the financial circumstances, particularly after divorce. Children whose nonresidential parents continue to support them financially, those whose custodial parents are psychologically healthy, and those who have and maintain meaningful relationships with nonresidential parents tend to be affected less by the divorce, especially when there is no conflict between the parents. Interventions should thus be designed with these factors in mind

The memorandum of good practice: theory versus application

Objective: The goal of this study was to evaluate the quality of investigative interviews in England and Wales since implementation of the Memorandum of Good Practice (MOGP), which specified how forensic interviews of alleged child abuse victims should be conducted. Method: Transcripts of 119 videotaped interviews of alleged victims between the ages of 4 and 13 years were obtained from 13 collaborating police forces. Trained raters then classified the types of prompts used by the investigators to elicit substantive information from the children, and tabulated the number of forensically relevant details provided by the children in each response. Results: Like their counterparts in the United States, Israel, and Sweden, forensic interviewers in England and Wales relied heavily on option-posing prompts, seldom using open-ended utterances to elicit information from the children. Nearly 40% of the information obtained was elicited using option-posing and suggestive prompts, which are known to elicit less reliable information than open-ended prompts do. Conclusion: Despite the clarity and specificity of the MOGP, its implementation appears to have had less effect on the practices of forensic interviewers in the field than was hoped. Further work should focus on ways of training interviewers to implement the superior practices endorsed by the MOGP and similar professional guidelines