Describes how, in the past three months, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has put more bite into penalties imposed on colleges that violate rules. Explores what is behind the pattern. (EV)

In schools and residential programs across the country, individuals with disabilities are victims of "aversive interventions" which are used to control challenging behaviors. This means that painful or dehumanizing procedures are used in response to behaviors that are judged to be unacceptable. Aversive procedures include the use of electric…

A question and answer session on whether Lavoisier made an agreement with the French mathematician, Comte Joseph-Louis Lagrange shortly before being beheaded that he would blink his eyes if he retained consciousness after being beheaded and that he was executed because of his revolutionary scientific views is described. The circumstances…

Objective:: The purpose of this study was to determine teachers' self-reported knowledge of the signs and symptoms of child maltreatment, reporting procedures, legal issues surrounding child abuse and their attitudes toward corporal punishment. In addition, a factor analysis was performed on the Educators and Child Abuse Questionnaire (ECAQ)…

Objective:: The objective was to examine the roles of cognition and affect in maternal use of physical punishment. Method:: Through a review of the literature, distal and proximal predictors (cognitive and affective) of physical punishment use were identified. One hundred and ten mothers of 3-year-old children were interviewed regarding two…

Charlop, Burgio, Iwata, and Ivancic [J. Appl. Behav. Anal. 21 (1988) 89] demonstrated that varied punishment procedures produced greater or more consistent reductions of problem behavior than a constant punishment procedure. More recently, Fisher and colleagues [Res. Dev. Disabil. 15 (1994) 133; J. Appl. Behav. Anal. 27 (1994) 447] developed a…

We investigate maternal attitudes toward corporal punishment and the attribution of blame to the child on the basis of data gathered from a population survey of a representative sample of mothers and mother figures. A total of 3,148 women living at least half of the time with a child participated in a telephone survey. The independent variables…

The present study sought to evaluate (a) the effectiveness of an intervention in developing adolescents' argument skills regarding a decision on a topic of high potential personal relevance (teen pregnancy) or one of general social relevance (capital punishment), and (b) differential effects of the two topics in promoting the generalization of…

This study identifies predictors of favorable attitudes toward spanking. Analyses were performed with survey data collected from a representative sample of 1,000 adults from Quebec, Canada. According to this survey, a majority of respondents endorsed spanking, despite their recognition of potential harm associated with corporal punishment (CP) of…

Sex offender registries (SORs) are a societal response to serious and presumably dangerous criminal offenders. Existing research on registries has focused on demographic overviews of registrants, assessments of registrants' recidivism, accuracy and completeness of listed information, and collateral consequences for registrants. The present…

In 1994, about 60 to 70% of Americans supported parental spanking. This paper examines student misbehavior, school discipline, prevention, treatment, and punishment in U.S. society Currently, 23 states still allow paddling in schools, and most states do not allow the spanking of foster children. As of 1994, all but a few of the national…

This monograph aims to assist parents in dealing with behavior problems of children with disabilities. It begins with a case history of an 8-year-old girl with learning disabilities, emotional problems, and behavior problems and her parents' advocacy efforts to obtain an appropriate educational environment for her. Aversive interventions are…

Corporal punishment, the act of disciplining students by inflicting physical pain (usually paddling the child's backside), has recently come under fire due to the public's growing concern over child abuse. Opponents of corporal punishment assert that there is little hard evidence showing that physical punishment promotes character development or…

This report presents the findings and recommendations of a follow-up to a 1981 survey of school discipline policies in 144 public school systems in North Carolina. Much progress since 1982 is reported, but the districts need to review and revise their policies and practices. The six central sections of the report focus on these topics: student…

A study examined the effect of attitude toward capital punishment on the evaluation of evidence and the determination of guilt. Subjects were 224 undergraduate students who read a description of a murder. They then received two, four, or six items of evidence relevant to the defendant's guilt. Subjects were asked to determine a verdict and…