Pictures from the past.

[rivka]

I never got around to presenting my dissertation data at the primary conference in my field - mostly because by the time I finished the damn thing, the research I was doing was completely separate from my dissertation topic. I always had HIV stuff to present at the Society of Behavioral Medicine. Besides, it's not a conference that tends to bring in many people with either child/developmental interests, or disability interests, so my dissertation topic was off the beaten track for the meeting.

But this year I thought, what the hell. I submitted an abstract based on my dissertation research, and it was accepted for presentation as a poster. (I knew I wasn't going to be offered an oral presentation, given the off-the-beaten-trackness.) Now I'm putting the poster together, which means, among other things, that I pulled out the photos of misbehaving children which I used for our analog measure of abuse potential.

There's a lot more information about the analog task at that link, but essentially, we showed parents slides of various child behaviors and asked them how they would respond. Some of the photos are normal kid stuff, and some of them are really not. There's a mix of normal behaviors, rule violations, destructive behaviors, and dangerous behaviors.

[photos removed]

I thought people might be interested in seeing the photos, so I uploaded about a dozen of them to my Flickr account. You can see the whole set here. (Photos have been taken down.)

Because they're research items, I'm only going to leave them up for a few days - so look now, if you're curious.

Comments

[verymelm.livejournal.com]

I wasn't meaning to imply that any of the commenters here were gun-phobic and I apologize if I came across that way. It just seems to be a very common reaction among many adults I've interacted with, many of whom are from more urban areas where guns are more directly associated with crime and not with "sports" or hunting.

I also wasn't meaning to seem combative about parent's views of what is dangerous for their children. I was simply providing another viewpoint as a non-parent who apparently was raised in quite a different setting. I again apologize if I offended you; it was not my intent.

With respect to loading the gun at the kitchen table, as I mentioned, I was raised in in household with guns and was taught proper gun safety and control; my father taught gun safety for well over 25 years and both his daughter were raised with a healthy respect for firearms.

However, in a rural household during hunting season, loading a weapon while at home before heading out to hunt was not that uncommon in my experience. And yes, my father often included a handgun in our group when hunting, as a precaution or protection in case we ran across an unnaturally aggressive or diseased animal; in closer quarters, for instance if a hunting party startled an unnaturally aggressive animal, a handgun may be more easily aimed and controlled than a hunting rifle and allows for the possibility of multiple shots without reloading if needed.