Robert A. Haaf

Detection of gender-related categories by 10-month-old infants.

Abstract Thirty-two 10-month-olds completed an habituation procedure where a male or female face was paired with a specific object. Results reveal 10-month-olds can form categories based on correlations among attributes of social information. Basic processes involved in gender role formation are present in 10-month-olds.

A matched cohort comparison of a criminal justice system's response to child sexual abuse : A profile of perpetrators

OBJECTIVE This study was undertaken to examine whether alleged child sexual abuse perpetrators are handled differently by the courts than other alleged felony perpetrators. Comparisons were made from the time of prosecutorial case acceptance through prosecution to sentencing, with emphasis on judicial and prosecutorial decision-making and plea-bargaining. METHOD Data were retrospectively abstracted on the entire defendant population of cases of sexual abuse of children and adolescents (ages 2-17) over a 5-year period. Using a case-flow analysis, comparisons were made between a child sexual abuse cohort and a cohort of matched felony cases from a single jurisdiction. RESULTS Three important findings emerged. First, compared to other felons, abuse perpetrators were employed, had been married, were mostly European American, and were older than 30 years of age. Second, in the abuse cohort, as many as 14% had a previous sexual or violent record compared to 2% in the comparison group. Third, similar percentages of perpetrators in both groups were released on their own recognizance, had the charges against them dropped, and were found guilty. As well, no differences between groups were found in the proportion of individuals sentenced to jail, probation, counseling, or work release. CONCLUSIONS Although the treatment of perpetrators of child sexual abuse was similar to the treatment of perpetrators of other felonies, the profile of the child abuse perpetrator was quite different. Knowledge about this profile may impact prosecution or treatment and recidivism rates, to the extent that recidivism is related to characteristics of the abuse perpetrator.

Observer accuracy and observer agreement in the measurement of visual fixation with fixed-trial procedures

Abstract Forty-eight pairs of observers recorded fixations during three test sessions. In each session an adult subject executed a predetermined sequence of fixations for 15 20-s trials. Three factors were investigated: Viewing Condition (live vs. videotaped subject). Number of Stimulus Apertures (1, 2, 4) and Subject Eye Color (blue, brown). Results indicated that training procedures which focus on observer agreement generally lead to acceptable levels of accuracy. However, certain procedural variations affect observer accuracy and observer agreement in different ways. Likewise, certain experimental procedures are particularly demanding in terms of observer accuracy.

Complexity and facial resemblance as determinants of response to facelike stimuli by 5-and 10-week-old infants

Abstract The purpose of this experiment was to determine whether infants at 5 and at 10 weeks of age respond to facelike drawings on the basis of stimulus complexity or on the basis of degree of resemblance to the human face. Twenty-four Ss at each age were shown four patterns in which these two dimensions were varied orthogonally. Fixation time was recorded using the successive, single stimulus procedure. Results provided no evidence of response to the facial resemblance dimension at either age level. However, there was a significant complexity component in the responses of both groups. The 5-week-old infants preferred an intermediate level of stimulus complexity. Those at 10 weeks showed a linear preference for increasing levels of the complexity dimension.

Infant Response to Facelike Patterns under Fixed-Trial and Infant-Control Procedures.

10-week-old infants were shown 4 facelike patterns that differed along 2 dimensions: number of elements and the extent to which the elements were organized to resemble the human face. The purpose was to determine whether the stimulus dimension to which infants respond is different with fixed-trial than with infant-control methodologies. Each infant was tested under 1 of 3 experimental conditions: fixed trials (trials and intervals of fixed, predetermined durations), offset control (trial termination controlled by the behavior of the infant), or onset-offset control (trial initiation and termination both controlled by the infants behavior). Although the relationship was linear with fixed trials and offset control but was curvilinear with onset-offset control, infants responded to number, rather than organization, of elements in all 3 conditions. Furthermore, no specific methodological advantages were demonstrated for infant-control procedures.

Object Recognition and Attention to Object Components by Preschool Children and 4-Month-Old Infants.

The present research investigated attention to and recognition of components in compound stimuli by infants and preschool children. A preliminary experiment was conducted with adults to develop stimulus components and to validate their structure. An experiment using an oddity task with preschoolers (N = 32) and one using the familiarization/novelty-preference task with infants (N = 64) demonstrated successful discrimination among the stimulus components on the basis of edge property information. Separate experiments using a matching task with preschoolers (N = 32) and an habituation task with infants (N = 32) demonstrated that preschoolers and infants are also able to direct attention to and recognize components of compound stimuli. Implications for structural-description theories of object recognition are discussed.

Priority of processing components of visual stimuli by 6-month-old infants

Abstract The present experiment was designed to investigate the priority with which 6-month-olds attend to stimuli containing both contextual and target information. The procedure involved a familiarization phase to a stimulus that contained a central target cue and a surrounding context followed by paired comparison novelty tests. Results indicate that when infants monitor the environment, background context cues receive attentional priority over target cues.

Four-Month-Old Infants' Categorization of Animals: Does Any Body Part Hold Privileged Status?.

The influence of body parts on 4-month-olds’ categorization of cats and dogs was examined using a visual preference procedure. Infants were familiarized with pictures of exemplars from one of two categories, cat or dog. In test, looking time to an out-of-category exemplar was compared to looking time to a novel within-category exemplar with one changed body region (face, head, torso). Results demonstrate the importance of the torso region in infants’ categorization. Findings are discussed in terms of the relative influence of various body regions, depending on the conditions under which categorization occurs.

Expectancies and memory for spatiotemporal events in 5-month-old infants.

Five-month-old infants were trained to fixate four event locations, and recall was assessed following training in three experiments. Memory for four events was demonstrated in the first two studies, and memory for these events was also found to be robust following a 6- to 7-day delay. Infants demonstrated that they can anticipate upcoming events during training: they increased anticipatory behaviors during latter training trials, and they appeared to form expectancies of future events during periods of both stimulus onset and stimulus offset. Results are interpreted as consistent with a script representational view of memory for spatiotemporal events.

Do you hear what I hear? Auditory context, attention and recognition in six-month-old infants

Recognition of a visual stimulus was assessed under two same- and two different-context conditions. Results indicate: (a) following brief familiarization, recognition of a visual stimulus is context-sensitive regardless of whether contextual cues are visual or auditory, and (b) recognition failure under different-context conditions results from change in context rather than from unfamiliar-cue distraction.