Although the merits of parents using corporal punishment to discipline children have been argued for decades, a thorough understanding of whether and how corporal punishment affects children has not been reached. Toward this end, the author first presents the results of meta-analyses of the association between parental corporal punishment and 11 child behaviors and experiences. Parental corporal punishment was associated with all child constructs, including higher levels of immediate compliance and aggression and lower levels of moral internalization and mental health. The author then presents a process– context model to explain how parental corporal punishment might cause particular child outcomes and considers alternative explanations. The article concludes by identifying 7 major remaining issues for future

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Corporal punishment by parents and associated child behaviors and experiences: A meta-analytic and theoretical review.

We present data on corporal punishment (CP) by a nationally representative sample of 991 American parents interviewed in 1995. Six types of CP were examined: slaps on the hand or leg, spanking on the buttocks, pinching, shaking, hitting on the buttocks with a belt or paddle, and slapping in the face. The overall prevalence rate (the percentage of parents using any of these types of CP during the previous year) was 35% for infants and reached a peak of 94% at ages 3 and 4. Despite rapid decline after age 5, just over half of American parents hit children at age 12, a third at age 14, and 13% at age 17. Analysis of chronicity found that parents who hit teenage children did so an average of about six times during the year. Severity, as measured by hitting the child with a belt or paddle, was greatest for children age 5-12 (28% of such children). CP was more prevalent among African American and low socioeconomic status parents, in the South, for boys, and by mothers. The pervasiveness of CP reported in this article, and the harmful side effects of CP shown by recent longitudinal research, indicates a need for psychology and sociology textbooks to reverse the current tendency to almost ignore CP and instead treat it as a major aspect of the socialization experience of American children; and for developmental psychologists to be cognizant of the likelihood that parents are using CP far more often than even advocates of CP recommend, and to inform parents about the risks involved.

Corporal punishment by American parents: national data on prevalence, chronicity, severity, and duration, in relation to child and family characteristics

A health monitoring and biofeedback system comprising a photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor, a processing device, and a Web site server for determining, displaying and analyzing various cardiovascular parameters. The PPG sensor is installed within a manually operated user input device such as a mouse or keyboard, measures a user's blood volume contour and transmits it to a processing device such as a personal computer or a personal digital assistant (PDA). The system determines a plurality of cardiovascular indices including mean blood pressure, heart rate, body temperature, respiratory rate, and arterial compliance on the basis of signal characteristics of the systolic wave pulse and the systolic reflected wave pulse present within the digital volume pulse derived from the PPG pulse contour. Signal characteristics of the systolic reflected wave pulse can be determined through various pulse analysis techniques including derivative analysis of the digital volume pulse signal, bandpass filtering or respiratory matrix frequency extraction techniques. By subtracting the systolic reflected wave pulse contour from the digital volume pulse contour, characteristics of the systolic wave pulse can also be identified. The system also provides for the accurate determination of systolic and diastolic blood pressure by using a non-invasive blood pressure monitor to calibrate the relationships between arterial or digital blood pressure and characteristics of the user's digital volume pulse contour. In this way, a wide variety of cardiovascular and respiratory data can be obtained. The system also facilitates the transmittal of such data to the system web site for further analysis, storage, and retrieval purposes.

Physiological signal monitoring system

Undergraduate statistics courses are perceived as challenging by both students and instructors. Students’ attitudes, motivation, math anxiety, and preparedness can negatively impact the student and instructor experience and have the potential to negatively impact student learning. This article describes an attempt to address some of these challenges through structural and procedural changes to an undergraduate statistics course that is required for social science majors. The traditional lecture/homework structure of the course was “flipped” so that the majority of basic knowledge acquisition moved out of the classroom, making room for interactive activities during class time. The described changes had a positive impact on students’ attitudes toward the class and instructor as well as on students’ performance in the class.

The Flipped Class A Method to Address the Challenges of an Undergraduate Statistics Course

Objective: To deal with the causal relationship between corporal punishment and antisocial behavior (ASB) by considering the level of ASB of the child at the start of the study. Methods: Data from interviews with a national sample of 807 mothers of children aged 6 to 9 years in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-Child Supplement. Analysis of variance was used to test the hypothesis that when parents use corporal punishment to correct ASB, it increases subsequent ASB. The analysis controlled for the level of ASB at the start of the study, family socioeconomic status, sex of the child, and the extent to which the home provided emotional support and cognitive stimulation. Results: Forty-four percent of the mothers reported spanking their children during the week prior to the study and they spanked them an average of 2.1 times that week. The more spanking at the start of the period, the higher the level of ASB 2 years later. The change is unlikely to be owing to the child's tendency toward ASB or to confounding with demographic characteristics or with parental deficiency in other key aspects of socialization because those variables were statistically controlled. Conclusions: When parents use corporal punishment to reduce ASB, the long-term effect tends to be the opposite. The findings suggest that if parents replace corporal punishment by nonviolent modes of discipline, it could reduce the risk of ASB among children and reduce the level of violence in American society. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 1997;151:761-767

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/PEDS/articlepdf/518458/archpedi_151_8_002.pdf

Spanking by Parents and Subsequent Antisocial Behavior of Children

Measures of formal operations and learning style predicted success in introductory statistics and computer science courses. Using a final course grade cutoffof80% or better as a criterion of success in the course, a discriminant analysis correctly classified 8 1 % of the statistics students and 72 % of the computer science students. Success was related to the presence of the ability to act as a formal operator and to the absence of a reliance on the concrete experiences learning style. These findings highlight the need to examine both cognitive maturity and learning style in studies of academic success at the college level.

Formal Operations and Learning Style Predict Success in Statistics and Computer Science Courses

Two experiments focused on two information variables relevant to changes in heart rate, field dependence and the ability to perceive one's own heart rate. In Exp. I, 14 field-independent and 17 fie...

Information variables in voluntary control and classical conditioning of heart rate: field dependence and heart-rate perception.

In a study undertaken to evaluate the clinical effectiveness of two behavioral treatments for essential hypertension (biofeedback on arterial pulse-wave velocity and progressive relaxation) 24 hypertensive subjects were randomly assigned to either a relaxation or biofeedback treatment group for 5 weekly sessions. In a second stage of the study 16 of the original subjects received both biofeedback and relaxation treatments during 5 additional weekly sessions. Results indicated that biofeedback and relaxation were equally effective in initial lowering of blood pressure in hypertensives. Although biofeedback training led to superior reductions at the 3-mo. follow-up point, after 1 yr. the blood pressures of both groups were not only equal but well below those presented at the beginning of the study.

Comparison of Biofeedback Pulse Wave Velocity and Progressive Relaxation in Essential Hypertensives

A review of the teaching evaluation literature indicates that numerous variables have been linked to effective teaching. Among these variables, several facets of teaching style, such as warmth and rapport, have been shown to be relevant. The present study considers teaching style in a somewhat broader context, drawing on the pedagogical theory of Broudy (Note 1). Broudy presented a perspective on teaching in which three contrasting styles or modes of teachers are characterized: didactic, heuristic, and philetic. The didactic is described as one who emphasizes memorization, drill, and testing of specifics. Although often humorless and tending to be regimented in presentation, good didactics receive praise from students whose later success on tests of achievement is attributed to the didactic emphasis. The classic heuristic, in contrast, emphasizes ideas and integration of material. The goal is more to teach the student to think rather than to memorize. Heuristics typically spend more time on discussion than on straight lecture. Students of heuristics often enjoy class, hence value the approach. The third mode, philetic (from Greek philos, love) is exemplified by the mentor tradition, in which the emphasis is on the studentteacher relationship. This teacher is warm, approachable, and interested in each student. The student's viewpoint and contribution are given great status in this mode. This quasiaffective dimension in teaching appears to be valued by many students. These three teaching styles are considered relatively distinct. Thus, although two or more may operate jointly at times, typically any given teacher is presumed dominant in one mode. Each of these types is considered "valid," but having different advantages. The didactic advantage is specificityboth teacher and student know the expectations and criteria for success. In contrast, the end-point is less clear in the heuristic mode, hence students are more uncertain about expectations and evaluation. Although popular with students, philetics may be thought of as "soft" among peers-especially didactics. This typology may provide some insight into the research findings on teacher evaluation. For example, a number of researchers have found that students who do well on achievement tests tend to evaluate teachers more positively (Centra, 1977; Cohen, 1982; Costin, 1978); hence an effective didactic approach may be related to positive evaluations by students. Implicating heuristic criteria, Sachdeva (1976) found that high-achieving students valued professors who guide them toward independent thinking. Numerous researchers have cited variables or dimensions that relate to the philetic mode. For example, Elmore and Pohlmann (1978) found a canonical function characterized by variables such as encouragementof students, interestin students, and instructor availability. Other researchers have found a consideration/concern/rapport factor to be important in teaching evaluation (e.g., Keaveny & McGann, 1978).

Teaching style and student ratings.

independent of how we know it. This aphorism is perhaps nowhere so true as in those fields where there is controversy over the methods involved in developing the knowledge. This is certainly the case in psychology. For this reason, I have always felt it important that the beginning student in psychology learn about the questions psychologists ask and how they attempt to answer them rather than merely memorize the current set of answers from an introductory text. One of the most effective ways of getting students to learn about the art of asking the right questions and the strategy of developing the best answers is to have them &dquo;play at&dquo; being psychologists. We have usually set out to do this by giving students &dquo;classical&dquo; experiments to re-do (I doubt that the term &dquo;replication&dquo; is appropriate for what happens in the usual introductory laboratory). However, we discover that some students resent collecting data to answer questions they do not feel are worth asking with information they could far more easily dig out of their textbooks. Other students discover shortcuts to a laboratory report, and certainly we often have the feeling that

David E. Anderson

Papers

Formal Operations and Learning Style Predict Success in Statistics and Computer Science Courses

Information variables in voluntary control and classical conditioning of heart rate: field dependence and heart-rate perception.

Comparison of Biofeedback Pulse Wave Velocity and Progressive Relaxation in Essential Hypertensives

Teaching style and student ratings.

Computer Simulations in the Psychology Laboratory.