Department of Psychology

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https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14078/12

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A comparative profile of intimate partner sexual violence
(2021) Jung, Sandy; Faitakis, Martina; Cheema, Harleen
Sexual violence is prevalent in abusive relationships and yet, has received substantially less attention than physical violence in relationships or sexual violence, in general. The present study compared intimate partner sexual violence (IPSV) with non-sexual intimate partner violence (IPV) and sexual violence against other non-intimate partner victims on demographic data of perpetrators and victims, offence and police reporting features, and the perpetrators’ criminal history and recidivism. Sexual and violent assaults reported to local law enforcement that led to an arrest were randomly selected. Analyses revealed that IPSV occurrences took longer to report compared to the other violent occurrences. However, IPSV was similar to IPV occurrences in that weapons were rarely involved, occurrences were more likely outside of the downtown area, and perpetrators were younger. These findings contribute to our limited knowledge about IPSV perpetration and highlight avenues for future exploration in the literature.
A comparison of Canadian and American offender stereotypes
(2013) Allison, Meredith; Sweeney, Laura; Jung, Sandy
Offender stereotypes of Canadians and Americans were compared via an inductive, open-ended method. Participants were asked to write down the race, gender, and age for eleven types of offenders. There was agreement between the two countries in terms of race (White for eight offender types), gender (male for eight offenders), and age (similar estimation of age for six offenders). However, Americans were more likely to state that the Armed Robber was Black. Participants in both countries indicated that the Drug Trafficker was Black, although, a third of Americans also indicated this offender type was Hispanic. The findings are discussed in relation to the demographic makeup of the general, and offender populations of each country.
A comparison of memory for homicide, non-homicidal violence, and positive life experiences
(2009) Woodworth, Michael; Porter, Stephen; Brinke, Leanne ten; Doucette, Naomi; Peace, Kristine; Campbell, Mary Ann
Defendants commonly claim amnesia for their criminal actions especially in cases involving extreme violence. While some claims are malingered or result from physiological factors, other cases may represent genuine partial or complete amnesia resulting from the psychological distress and/or extreme emotion associated with the perpetration of the crime. Fifty Canadian homicide offenders described their memories of their homicide, a non-homicide violent offense, and their most positive adulthood life experience. Self-reported and objective measures of memories for these events revealed that homicides were recalled with the greatest level of detail and sensory information. Although dissociative tendencies were associated with a self-reported memory loss, objective measures of memory quality did not reflect this perceived impairment, suggesting a failure of meta-memory. Recollections of positive life events were superior to those of non-homicidal violence, possibly due to greater impact and meaning attached to such experiences. Findings suggest that memory for homicide typically is enhanced by the powerful emotion associated with its perpetration.
A deeper inquiry into the association between lucid dreams and video game play
(2014) Gackenbach, Jayne; Hunt, H.
After summarizing the previous research on the association between video game play, meditative absorption, and dream lucidity, three types of considerations of lucidity and gaming were explored in this chapter: the association of lucidity in gamers with metacognition, dream bizarreness, and nonlucid dream content. In terms of specific forms of metacognition in dreams, it appears that gaming adds a dimension to the lucid dreams of gamers such that their full potential for focused problem solving is expressed, very much like with the strategies of video gaming. Some research indicated gamers’ dream included an enhanced bizarreness, but lucidity was not found to mitigate that relationship. Finally, comparing the lucid and nonlucid dreams of gamers, it was concluded that lucidity in gamers’ dreams emphasized the already generally positive dream experience of being lucid in sleep, including enhanced aggression that facilitated the sense of empowerment (also typical of video game playing). Not only is there some indication of more lucidity in gamers’ dreams, but that lucidity seems to be further enhanced by the gaming experience.
A discussion between Charles Tart and Lucidity Letter editor, Jayne Gackenbach, examining similarities between dream lucidity, witnessing and self-remembering
(1988) Tart, Charles; Gackenbach, Jayne
Gackenbach: In a recent review of your book Waking Up, John Wren-Lewis said it was very relevant to those interested in lucid dreaming. Tart: I was very honored that he would say that it is must reading for people who are into lucid dreams since lucid dreaming is mentioned only once in the book. You see, lucid waking is the topic of greatest interest to me nowadays. Some spiritual traditions use an analogy that we live in a dream. In many dreams, you get pushed around by events. You’re not very smart. You don’t re-member important, relevant knowledge. You’re inconsistent. You don’t call on all your resources. You get in these terrible situations, but then you wake up! Not only does the dream problem disappear, but you’re so much smarter by comparison. Smarter from the point of view of the waking state, right?
A dream and a painting marking Raven Woman’s death: synchronicities and a Jungian analysis
(2016) Gackenbach, Jayne
Years ago I brought a dream worker, of Central Alberta Cree heritage, to a couple of IASD conferences. Sylvia, Raven Woman, was thrilled to come and talk about her experiences with dreams as ‘dreamer’ for her reserve near Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. I recall at a conference in Santa Cruz, she asked me why some of the people she was meeting were talking heads. At first I was puzzled and asked her what she meant, she said that what she saw was heads that were talking but no bodies. I laughed and realized that she was ‘seeing’ me and my scientist colleagues in terms of our intellects but that there was no body to us. I recall thinking how accurate was her ‘vision’. But I kept grinding numbers and began shortly after that to examine dreams of video game players.
A longitudinal investigation of the reliability of memories for trauma and other emotional experiences
(2004) Peace, Kristine; Porter, Stephen
This study examined the relative consistency and characteristics of memories for trauma and other non-traumatic emotional experiences over time. A community sample of 52 participants who reported a recent traumatic event were asked to recall both the traumatic and a positive emotional experience in two interviews separated by approximately three months (M = 105.39 days). The recollections were elicited with either a free narrative, cognitive interview, guided imagery, or written narrative approach. Results indicated that traumatic experiences were recalled more reliably over time than other emotional experiences. Traumatic memory imagery tended to persist in memory (with no apparent impairment), whereas features of positive memories were subject to considerable distortion, regardless of interview style. The findings contribute to the understanding of the impact of trauma on memory with the passage of time.
A novel method of drug administration to multiple zebrafish (Danio rerio) and the quantification of withdrawal
(2014) Holcombe, Adam; Schalomon, Melike; Hamilton, Trevor
Anxiety testing in zebrafish is often studied in combination with the application of pharmacological substances. In these studies, fish are routinely netted and transported between home aquaria and dosing tanks. In order to enhance the ease of compound administration, a novel method for transferring fish between tanks for drug administration was developed. Inserts that are designed for spawning were used to transfer groups of fish into the drug solution, allowing accurate dosing of all fish in the group. This increases the precision and efficiency of dosing, which becomes very important in long schedules of repeated drug administration. We implemented this procedure for use in a study examining the behavior of zebrafish in the light/dark test after administering ethanol with differing 21 day schedules. In fish exposed to daily-moderate amounts of alcohol there was a significant difference in location preference after 2 days of withdrawal when compared to the control group. However, a significant difference in location preference in a group exposed to weekly-binge administration was not observed. This protocol can be generalized for use with all types of compounds that are water-soluble and may be used in any situation when the behavior of fish during or after long schedules of drug administration is being examined. The light/dark test is also a valuable method of assessing withdrawal-induced changes in anxiety.
A rift in reality: exploring the Oculus Rift’s effect on dream and waking realities
(2016) Gackenbach, Jayne; Anson, Mike; Mosley, Eric; Sinyard, Ann; Snyder, Teace
A rift is about to occur. Not simply the release of the Oculus Rift in early 2016 or other affordable VR headsets like it. But rather a rift in our very perception of reality and our understanding of what consciousness is. With the widespread release of VR interfaces of the public, for the first time in history people's ability to frequently toggle their vintage point of reality - be it by slipping into dreams, engaging in their waking life, or by playing the video games they like to play - will have profound effect on their ability to distinguish each nuance of those perceived realities from one another. And this phenomenon of carrying some aspects of playing a game into real life, previously documented simply as the 'game transference effect', has game developers and researchers alike scrambling to fully understand and appreciate the depths to which virtual reality might help to challenge or bolster the average person's vantage point of reality.
A walk on the wild side: the impact of music on risk-taking likelihood
(2017) Enstroem, Rickard; Schmaltz, Rodney
From a marketing perspective, there has been substantial interest in on the role of risk perception on consumer behavior. Specific ‘problem music’ like rap and heavy metal has long been associated with delinquent behavior, including violence, drug use, and promiscuous sex. Although individuals’ risk preferences have been investigated across a range of decision-making situations, there has been little empirical work demonstrating the direct role music may have on the likelihood of engaging in risky activities. In the exploratory study reported here, we assessed the impact of listening to different styles of music while assessing risk-taking likelihood through a psychometric scale. Risk-taking likelihood was measured across ethical, financial, health and safety, recreational and social domains. Through the means of a canonical correlation analysis, the multivariate relationship between different music styles and individual risk-taking likelihood across the different domains is discussed. Our results indicate that listening to different types of music does influence risk-taking likelihood, though not in areas of health and safety.
Absolute pitch in boreal chickadees and humans: exceptions that test a phylogenetic rule
(2010) Weisman, R. G.; Balkwill, Laura-Lee; Hoeschele, M.; Moscicki, Michele; Bloomfield, L. L.; Sturdy, C. B.
This research examined generality of the phylogenetic rule that birds discriminate frequency ranges more accurately than mammals. Human absolute pitch chroma possessors accurately tracked transitions between frequency ranges. Independent tests showed that they used note naming (pitch chroma) to remap the tones into ranges; neither possessors nor nonpossessors were accurate at octave (pitch height) naming. Boreal chickadees discriminated frequency ranges less accurately than other birds; they tracked reward across several lower frequency ranges but failed at frequencies over 4000 Hz. The results revealed the error of describing species differences solely in terms of their discrimination of frequency ranges. Exceptions to the rule disappear when the rule is restated in terms of underlying mechanism: birds are superior to mammals in the ability to use absolute pitch height perception to discriminate pitches and ranges of pitches.
Abuse histories and attributions of sexual offenders
(2011) Jung, Sandy; Carlson, Elizabeth; Jung, Sandy
The current study is an exploratory study examining the relationship between the abuse histories of 89 sexual offenders and the constructs of locus of control, sexual attitudes, general empathy, and denial. Of the 89 offenders, 14.6% were sexually abused, 13.5% physically abused, and 9% both sexually and physically abused, with 61.5% having no abuse history. Analyses indicated that motivation to change was higher for abused versus non‐abused offenders, and that those who were sexually abused had significantly more cognitive distortions about children than those who experienced physical abuse. Although no differences emerged in locus of control scores, our findings indicated that physically abused offenders were more able to take on the perspective of others than those who have not experienced physical abuse. The findings provide several avenues to pursue in examining the longstanding effects of abuse in the thinking and cognitions of sexual offenders.
Academic procrastination: the pattern and correlates of behavioural postponement
(2006) Powell, Russell A.; Howell, A. J.; Watson, David; Buro, Karen
Using a series of computer-based assignments, we examined whether students’ submission patterns revealed a hyperbolic pattern of temporal discounting, such that few assignments are submitted far ahead of the deadline and submission of assignments accelerates at an increasing rate as the deadline becomes imminent. We further examined whether variables related to self-regulation – namely, self-reported procrastination, implementation intentions, say-do correspondence, and perceived academic control – correlated with behavioural postponement. Results revealed strong behavioural evidence of temporal discounting, especially among those who identified themselves as procrastinators. Among the self-regulation measures, only say-do correspondence consistently correlated with procrastination.
Acute fluoxetine exposure alters crab anxiety-like behaviour, but not aggressiveness
(2016) Hamilton, Trevor; Kwan, Garfield; Gallup, Joshua; Tresguerres, Martin
Aggression and responsiveness to noxious stimuli are adaptable traits that are ubiquitous throughout the animal kingdom. Like vertebrate animals, some invertebrates have been shown to exhibit anxiety-like behaviour and altered levels of aggression that are modulated by the neurotransmitter serotonin. To investigate whether this influence of serotonin is conserved in crabs and whether these behaviours are sensitive to human antidepressant drugs; the striped shore crab, Pachygrapsus crassipes, was studied using anxiety (light/dark test) and aggression (mirror test) paradigms. Crabs were individually exposed to acute doses of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, fluoxetine (5 or 25 mg/L), commonly known as Prozac®, followed by behavioural testing. The high dose of fluoxetine significantly decreased anxiety-like behaviour but had no impact on mobility or aggression. These results suggest that anxiety-like behaviour is more sensitive to modulation of serotonin than is aggressiveness in the shore crab.
Affective blindsight in the absence of input from face processing regions in occipital-temporal cortex
(2017) Striemer, Christopher; Whitwell, Robert; Goodale, Melvyn
Previous research suggests that the implicit recognition of emotional expressions may be carried out by pathways that bypass primary visual cortex (V1) and project to the amygdala. Some of the strongest evidence supporting this claim comes from case studies of “affective blindsight” in which patients with V1 damage can correctly guess whether an unseen face was depicting a fearful or happy expression. In the current study, we report a new case of affective blindsight in patient MC who is cortically blind following extensive bilateral lesions to V1, as well as face and object processing regions in her ventral visual stream. Despite her large lesions, MC has preserved motion perception which is related to sparing of the motion sensitive region MT+ in both hemispheres.
Alexithymia, dissociation, and social desirability: investigating individual differences in the narrative content of false allegations of trauma
(2008) Peace, Kristine; Bouvier, Kristen
This study examined the potential influence of alexithymia, dissociation, and social desirability on the narrative features associated with truthful and fabricated traumatic events. Participants (N = 291) wrote narratives describing both genuine and fabricated traumas and completed scales measuring individual differences. Alexithymia was associated with less plausible reports (independent of veracity) and differential reporting of emotional details between narratives. Higher levels of dissociation were related to less coherent and plausible reports, and less contextual detail in fabricated reports. Further, coherence and plausibility ratings fluctuated between low, moderate, and high social desirability groups. These results suggest that individual difference factors are important considerations in the forensic assessment of the veracity of trauma reports.
An estimate of lucid dreaming incidence
(1984) Gackenbach, Jayne
Prevalence, how many people have ever had at least one lucid dream; and frequency, how often does an individual experience these dreams are two ways of conceptualizing lucid dreaming incidence. Seven surveys have attempted to ascertain the prevalence of lucid dreaming in both student (Palmer, 1979; LaBerge, in press; Gackenbach, Rokes, Sachau & Synder, 1984) and adult (Palmer, 1979; Kohr, 1980; Blackmore, in press; Gackenbach, 1978; Gackenbach, Curren, LaBerge, Davidson & Maxwell, 1983) samples. Among the latter estimates of having had at least one lucid dream range from 100% (Gackenbach et al., 1983) to 47% (Blackmore, in press). Both sample characteristic considerations and understanding of the concept clarify the picture. Kohr (1980), Gackenbach (1978) and Gackenbach et al. (1983) were all dealing with highly motivated adult samples. That is, people who have an unusually high interest in dreaming and/or lucid dreaming. Thus their estimates tend to run high (Kohr, 70%; Gackenbach, 76%; Gackenbach et al., 100%). In the Palmer (1979) and Blackmore (in press) surveys, adults were randomly chosen from the telephone directory in the case of the former and from the electoral register in the case of the latter. Consequently, their estimates are considerably more conservative: Palmer, 55% and Blackmore, 47%. However, there is no indication that they attempted to verify that their respondents understood the concept.
An evaluation of the reliability, construct validity, and factor structure of the static-2002R
(2015) Jung, Sandy; Ennis, Liam; Hermann, Chantal; Pham, Anna; Choy, Alberto; Corabian, Gabriela; Hook, Tarah; Jung, Sandy
The fundamental psychometric properties of the subscales found in the Static-2002R, an actuarial measure of sexual recidivism risk, were evaluated in the current study. Namely, the reliability, concurrent and construct validity, and factor structure of the Static-2002R subscales were examined with a sample of 372 adult male sex offenders. In addition to using validated measures of sexual violence risk to examine concurrent validity, construct-related measures taken from extant risk measures and psychometric tests were correlated with three of the subscales to assess overall construct validity. Moderate support was found for the reliability of the Static-2002R. The concurrent and construct validity of the General Criminality, Persistence of Sexual Offending, and Deviant Sexual Interest subscales were supported. Generally, these findings further support the Static-2002R as a valid sex offender risk appraisal instrument that encompasses multiple distinct, clinically relevant, risk domains.
An examination of convergent constructs among Level of Service measures and other measures
(2012) Jung, Sandy; Daniels, Melissa; Friesen, Michael; Ledi, Denise; Jung, Sandy
The Level of Service Inventory-Revised and its successor, the Level of Service/Case Management Inventory are theoretically based risk assessment measures derived from what are known as the “Central Eight” risk factors. These Level of Service instruments have been empirically demonstrated to predict recidivism; however, given the importance of using the these instruments to assess the central eight risk factors, it is also important to ensure that the measures’ subscales are actually assessing the intended constructs. In the present study, files of 219 offenders were coded to investigate the concurrent and discriminant validity by correlating seven of the Level of Service subscales with construct-relevant scales of the Personality Assessment Inventory, Cormier-Lang Criminal History Score, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Assessment-2, and intelligence measures. The results provide preliminary support for the construct validity of the domains measured by the Level of Service instruments, with the exception of the Emotional/Personal subscale.
An examination of judicial sentencing decisions in child pornography and child molestation cases in Canada
(2012) Jung, Sandy; Stein, Shayla; Jung, Sandy
Purpose Accessing and distributing child pornography is an emerging problem. This paper aims to examine the judicial sentencing decisions of child pornography cases and whether they differ from decisions of child molestation cases. Design/methodology/approach Using a legal database of Canadian court judgments, the study examined sentencing decisions of 50 child pornography and 50 child molestation cases, identifying variables that were present in the judges' reasons for their decision. Findings The results revealed a disparity in sentencing that favours incarceration rather than community sentences for child molesters over child pornography cases. Despite what appears to be lighter sentences for child pornography offenders, judges were more likely to sanction treatment and recommend restrictions in cases of child pornography than child molestation. In light of the absence of literature exploring sentencing disparity among child sexual offences, further directions and suggestions for practice are discussed. Practical implications The examination of the disparity of sentencing decisions for child molesters and child pornography offenders and the identified variables that may contribute to these decisions suggests that the judiciary views child pornography and child molestation offenders differently and are more punitive toward contact offenders. Such disparity has implications for the criminal justice system. Originality/value This study offers the first exploration of sentencing disparity and decisions on child pornography and child molestation cases in Canada.

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