Crib Sheet Research Articles

Student Perspectives on the Utility of Crib Sheets for Learning

In response to the noticeable rise in anxiety with the return to in person, closed book exams, our department embraced an alternate testing method that permitted the use of a self-created note resource, also known as a crib sheet, in a third year Human Physiology course. Although anxiety reduction was certainly a reason for this change in evaluation methods, it was predicted that crib sheet exams would encourage a shift to deeper learning studying methods, rather than a reliance on rote memorization. Crib sheets have been shown to decrease test-taking anxiety (Ozer, 2021), and different crib sheet organizational strategies have been correlated with increased exam performance (Dickson & Bauer, 2008; Shaw & Almeida, 2018). However, there is a lack of understanding of the benefits and potential detriments beyond the effect of crib sheets on exam performance (Larwin et. al, 2013). Furthermore, what has not been established is if crib sheets promote more learning prior to the exam or if they are a source of dependency and therefore detract from learning. From the two hypotheses that were first suggested by Dorsel and Cundiff (1979), we expect that most students learn the material while they create their crib sheets, supporting the coding hypothesis rather than a reliance on the crib sheet, which would support the dependency hypothesis. For each of the three exams in this course, students were permitted to bring a 4x6 inch cue card with them containing any information they deemed important. After each exam, students completed an optional post-exam reflection, which was a combination of Likert scale responses to questions about their anxiety levels, questions about study methods, and about the utility of the crib sheet that they created for the exam. At the end of the academic year, data was deidentified for consenting participants for subsequent analyses. In total, of the 434 registrants in this third-year physiology course, 58 consented to have their data analyzed. Additionally, instructors involved in courses that used crib sheets, including this physiology course, were also invited to participate in the study for their perspectives of the use of crib sheets. Of the 14 total instructors who taught in these team-taught courses that used crib sheets, 6 agreed to participate in the interviews. Semi-structured interviews were conducted for instructors’ perspectives towards crib sheets. The transcripts from these interviews were analyzed by thematic analysis using NVivo. One of the compelling findings from the instructors’ interviews within our study cohort, show that although most were accepting of the use of crib sheets, they were also hesitant to embrace crib sheets as a pedagogical tool due to the lack of literature that would support these as a learning tool. However, early investigation of both Likert scale responses and open-ended text responses from the student participants shows that many students report learning while creating the crib sheets. Furthermore, student participants reported a change in study methods while preparing for crib sheet permitted exams, with a shift to incorporating more methods that promote less rote memorization, such as condensing notes and creating flow charts/mind maps. Therefore, early analyses of student data provide support for the coding hypothesis, which supports that learning does occur during crib sheet construction in a human physiology course. From these analyses, which combine student and instructor perspectives, we further recognize the importance of delineating the utility of crib sheets, based off of student reports. With our study, we aim to advise teaching and learning practices surrounding the use of crib sheets in higher education. REFERENCES Dickson KL, Bauer JJ. Do Students Learn Course Material During Crib Sheet Construction? Teach Psychol. 2008;35(2):117-120. doi:10.1080/00986280801978343 Dorsel TN, Cundiff GW. The Cheat-Sheet: Effcient Coding Device or Indispensable Crutch? J Exp Educ. 1979;48(1):39-42. doi:10.1080/00220973.1979.11011712 Larwin KH, Gorman J, Larwin DA. Assessing the Impact of Testing Aids on Post-Secondary Student Performance: A Meta-Analytic Investigation. Educ Psychol Rev. 2013;25(3):429-443. doi:10.1007/s10648-013-9227-1 Özer S. A Convergent Parallel Mixed-Method Research into the Use of the Cheat Sheet in Teacher Education: State Test Anxiety, Exam Scores and Opinions of Prospective Teachers. Turk Online J Educ Technol - TOJET. 2021;20(3):101-113. Shaw JA, Almeida MG. Does the Quality of Student Crib Cards Influence Anatomy and Physiology Exam Performance? HAPS Educ. 2018;22(1):50-54. doi:10.21692/haps.2018.005. This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2024 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.

88 Blood Cultures on a Cardiothoracic Surgery Ward- a Quality Improvement Project

Abstract Aim Blood cultures are an important practice when patients spike temperatures, allowing treatment to be targeted and rationalised. However, often it is missed or forgotten about when a patient is unwell. The aims of this project were: to look at the rate of blood cultures being taken after patient’s spiked temperatures and to try and improve on these rates with education. Method All patients on the ward had their observation charts examined. Any patient with a temperature of 38 degrees or more was noted down and seen whether blood cultures had been taken. Nurse led education then occurred between each cycle of data collection. Three cycles of data of 10 patients were collected. Results In the first cycle only 20% of patients had blood cultures taken. After nurse led education, this improved to 30% of patients. A crib sheet on when/why blood cultures should be taken was then distributed to nursing staff on the ward. The final cycle of results showed an improvement to 60% of patients having blood cultures taken. Conclusions Educating ward staff on when blood cultures should/shouldn’t be taken and why has led to a significant improvement on the proportion of pyrexic patients having blood cultures taken on the ward. However, there is still room for improvement and future work should be done to continue to improve compliance rates on the ward.

A dialogue on the ethics of science: Henri Poincaré and Pope Francis

To teach the ethics of science to science majors, I follow several teachers in the literature who recommend “persona” writing, or the student construction of dialogues between ethical thinkers of interest. To engage science majors in particular, and especially those new to academic philosophy, I recommend constructing persona dialogues from Henri Poincaré’s essay, “Ethics and Science” (1963/1913), and the non-theological third chapter of Pope Francis’s (2015) encyclical on the environment, Laudato si. This pairing of interlocutors offers two advantages. The first is that science students are likely to recognize both names, since Poincaré appears in undergraduate mathematics and physics textbooks, and because Francis is an environmentalist celebrity. Hence students (in my experience) show more interest in these figures than in other philosophers. The second advantage is that the third chapter of Laudato si reads like an implicit rebuttal of Poincaré’s essay in many respects, and so contriving a dialogue between those authors both facilitates classroom discussion, and deserves attention from professional ethicists in its own right. In this paper, I present my own contrived dialogue between Francis and Poincaré, not for assigning to students as a reading, but as a template for an effective assignment product, and as a crib sheet for educators to preview the richly antiparallel themes between the two works.

Antonia White and Manic-Depressive Illness by Patricia Moran

Reviewed by: Antonia White and Manic-Depressive Illness by Patricia Moran Lizzie Hutton (bio) Antonia White and Manic-Depressive Illness Patricia Moran Edinburgh UP, 2018, 289 pp. ISBN 9781474418218, $105.00 hardcover. The undeniably autobiographical fiction of British author Antonia White—a quartet of novels and a slender, fiery short story collection—makes a linked set of female Künstlerromans that are grievously underappreciated. Singular for their stylistic control and psychological incision, they delineate a young woman's faltering search for grace in a rigidly conventional middle-class world—or should I say, a devastatingly conventional middle-class world. White's work takes place in London and its outskirts in the 1910s and 20s, in which its heroine's labor of forging a genuine sense of self is continuously confounded by forces beyond her control. Yet this is not art of explicit protest or critique. Like the work of her contemporary Elizabeth Bowen, who was an admirer, White's novels are political without naming their politics as such, so thoroughly does their heroine seem to have internalized the power structures and social expectations against which she struggles. White's is literature tense with the exertions of working to articulate one's own truth in a world that cannot quite accommodate or recognize that truth as such. In contrast to her carefully crafted works of fiction, White left behind rafts of often fervid correspondences and journals, which were posthumously published in 1992, as edited by White's daughter Susan Chitty. It should be noted that in 1985 Chitty also published a memoir of life with her mother, a book whose tell-all glee—for this reader at least—casts some doubt on its usefulness as a reliable guide to White's life and work. Many critics have found the temptations of this biographical material too great to resist. Faced with this archive's abundance of suggestive detail—intimations of incest and rape, accounts of mental breakdowns and forced institutionalizations, records of her many failed marriages, incessant writer's block, and years of psychoanalytic treatment—scholars have come to focus much of their [End Page 504] analytical energies on the intricacies of White's messy life, instead of on the fictionalized life story White still managed to wrest from the apparent turmoil of her day-to-day. In many ways, this has done more to cement White's reputation as a train wreck of a struggling female writer than it has to illuminate her specific contributions as an author. From the title alone, Patricia Moran's new study of Antonia White appears to follow this critical pattern exactly. Moran persuasively takes issue with White's real-life diagnosis as a schizophrenic, only to retrospectively replace it with another diagnosis—bipolar disorder—a disease through which, Moran argues, White's life and thus her work might more accurately and fruitfully be read. In this, Moran hews to the well-established habits of biographical-psychoanalytic criticism, for which White's life, to be sure, offers an especially graphic case study. Moran uses both White's earlier misdiagnosis and this new diagnosis as a crib sheet for explaining the author's personal struggles, especially her difficulties coming into her own as an author. She compares White's disordered life to the (purportedly) more stable careers of Virginia Woolf and H. D., those fellow female modernists who suffered too from severe psychiatric disorders—but who, by Moran's telling at least, were fortunate to have a better understanding of and relative control over their own diseases. Through this lens of pathology, Moran also explicates some of the knottier nuances of White's fiction—reading, for example, White's religiosity (she was a Catholic convert twice over), as well as her emotional entanglements with her domineering father, as symptoms of her struggles with mental illness. From her diaries and letters, White appears to have been debilitatingly insecure, paralyzed in her artistic ambitions by near-constant waves of guilt and shame. She burned through affairs and marriages and bungled her maternal duties, and she chastised herself endlessly for these perceived failures. For Moran, manic depression offers an explanation for these erratic emotions and behaviors also described in her...

Do crib sheets improve student performance on tests? Evidence from principles of economics

This study uses individual-level data to examine whether the use of a crib sheet can boost the test performance of students in principles of economics. We find that crib sheets have the potential to significantly improve student performance, an outcome that is largely attributable to performance in principles of macroeconomics. Based on our findings, there is no clear indication that cooperative crib sheets, as implemented in this experiment, are more effective than individual crib sheets. In fact, we find that the collaborative process may hinder performance. We find that female students do worse on tests generally and that students with a higher academic classification and more academic talent tend to do better. However, we don’t find that crib sheets heterogeneously impact performance within these groups.

An audit of chronic oedema within the care home setting.

This articles outlines the important issue of chronic oedema, its definition and the physiology of the three main categories. The care delivered in the care home (nursing) sector was the subject of a printed questionnaire and the results are presented here. They are discussed and the implications for practice and an evidenced-based approach to care delivery are considered. Several conclusions can be drawn from this study but would be strengthened by a larger study. Care for patients with chronic oedema could be enhanced and this would improve clinical outcomes; significantly fewer patients would need to be referred for GP management if an appropriate and timely first-line treatment was agreed and provided by nursing staff. An educational resource should be developed, including: a resource folder; e-learning, patient information, and a patient leg exercise regime; a crib sheet and myth buster information; and clinical competencies. A further study would be required to confirm whether fewer patients experienced falls or presented with chronic oedema when lower leg swelling was managed.

Family Integrated Care: Delivery of family integrated care on the neonatal unit. The introduction of parent-led ward rounds

This article explores the introduction of parent-led ward rounds on a neonatal unit as an influential part of Family Integrated Care (FIC). As a growing independent population, parents want to be more involved in the care of their babies and this is happening with great speed on neonatal units worldwide. This article discusses the barriers to parent-led ward rounds as well as the benefits and reflections of the practice. An example crib sheet is offered as well as a toolkit to begin implementation in other units.

First evidence for "The backup plan paradox".

This research is a first test of the backup plan paradox. We hypothesized that investing in a backup plan may facilitate the conditions that it was developed to address: Plan A's insufficiency. Five studies provide initial, primarily correlative support for the undermining effect of investing in a backup plan. Study 1 (n= 160) demonstrated that the more participants perceived they had invested in developing a backup plan (preparing a "crib sheet"), the more likely they were to use it, although greater investments were unrelated to backup plan utility. Studies 2-4 used a simulated negotiation task. Study 2 (n = 247) demonstrated that when goal-relevant resources are limited, investing in developing backup plans and perceiving them as highly instrumental can decrease goal performance through the indirect effect of increased means replacing. Study 3 (n = 248) replicated this effect when goal-relevant resources were plentiful. Study 4 (n = 204) used an experimental variant of the simulated negotiation task and demonstrated that simply having a backup plan is not detrimental, but perceiving backup plans to be highly instrumental decreased goal performance, again through the indirect effect of increased means replacing. Study 5 (n = 160) replicated findings from Studies 1-4 using a lab-based motor task (throwing a ball). Together, these results provide first evidence that backup plans can introduce costs that may jeopardize goal performance. (PsycINFO Database Record

Directed Crib Sheet Development as a Preparation and Review Tool: Identifying the Effectiveness of Incentives on Student Learning Outcomes in Principles of Economics

This study uses individual-level data to examine the effect of a crib sheet as a learning incentive on the academic performance of students in various sections of economics classes. We find that crib sheet development as a preparation and review tool has a positive and significant impact on student performance. Using crib sheets corresponds to an approximately 2% improvement in test performance. The effects are evident among females, sophomores and music-business majors. The results are robust to a host of variables that can influence learning outcomes including study habits and individual learning styles.

Crib sheets and exam performance in a data structures course

In this paper, we study the relationship between the use of “crib sheets” or “cheat sheets” and performance on in-class exams. Our extensive survey of the existing literature shows that it is not decisive on the questions of when or whether crib sheets actually help students to either perform better on an exam or better learn the material. We report on our own detailed analysis for a body of crib sheets created for the final exam in a junior-level Data Structures and Algorithms course. We wanted to determine whether there is any feature of the crib sheets that correlates to good exam scores. Exam performance was compared against a number of potential indicators for quality in a crib sheet. We have found that students performed significantly better on questions at the comprehension level of Bloom’s taxonomy when their crib sheet contained good information on the topic, while performance on questions at higher levels of the taxonomy did not show correlation to crib sheet contents. We have also seen that students at certain levels of performance on the final exam (specifically, medium-to-high performance) did relatively better on certain questions than other students at that performance level when they had good coverage of that question’s topic on their crib sheet.

Minor injuries… major implications: Watching out for sentinel injuries.

An otherwise healthy two-month-old boy presented to his general paediatrician for follow-up of gastroesophageal reflux disease. His mother reported that since starting ranitidine two weeks earlier, his discomfort following feeds and previously reported excessive crying had both improved. She had no new concerns about the child’s health but reported that she had observed a small amount of blood on the infant’s crib sheet in the past week, which she could not explain. On examination, he appeared alert with normal vital signs and had adequate weight gain since his last visit. Cardiovascular, respiratory, abdominal and neurological examinations were within normal limits. The paediatrician made note of a solitary, bluegreen bruise on the baby’s left anterior thigh, which measured approximately 2 cm in diameter. He inquired about its origin; however, the child’s mother stated that she had not noticed it and was unsure of the causal mechanism. There were no other skin findings, bruises or petechiae noted. Examination of the oral cavity was unremarkable. The paediatrician prescribed a three-month supply of ranitidine and recommended routine follow-up with the family physician for well-baby care and immunizations. One month later, the child was brought to the local emergency department by ambulance after his mother found him unresponsive in his crib, with jerking of his arms and legs. There was no history of recent illness or trauma. On examination, he was pale and lethargic. His heart rate was 118 beats/min and his blood pressure was 86/58 mmHg. He was afebrile, with shallow respirations and an oxygen saturation of 96% on room air. He exhibited tonicclonic movement of his right upper and lower extremities. His pupils were equal and reactive; however, intermittent nystagmus was noted. An area of soft tissue swelling was palpable at the base of the skull and there were two green bruises on the left cheek. The child was admitted to the paediatric medical unit. Computed tomography of the head revealed bilateral areas of subdural haemorrhage. His coagulation profile, complete blood count and electrolytes were all normal. Ophthalmological examination demonstrated bilateral extensive and multilayered retinal haemorrhages. Three posterior rib fractures with callous formation were present on skeletal survey. A report was made to the local child welfare authority because of suspected physical abuse and nonaccidental head injury.

Formaldehyde in textiles–what dermatologists need to know about the relationship to contact dermatitis: A review of the US Government Accountability Office's Report to Congressional Committees

does not contain recommendations. 1 However, pertinent information can be gleaned for dermatologists caring for patients with contact dermatitis that may be related to formaldehyde resins found in many types of textiles. The GAO report tested 180 items for formaldehyde release, using two different tests that have been developed and used by the textile industry. The most frequently used is the Japanese Industrial Standard L 1041 Test, which was developed to measure the amount of formaldehyde that may be released by clothing and other textiles that come into contact with the skin. The American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists 112 Test, which was developed to measure the amount of formaldehyde that may be released from clothing and other textiles during extended storage or hot and humid conditions, 2 is also used in 5 of the 14 studies analyzed in the GAO report. The United States does not have regulations on detectable limits for textiles made in this country, but the majority of items tested would have met the American Apparel and Footwear Association’s most stringent regulations in other countries. 3 Of the 180 items tested, 10 exceeded the acceptable limits defined as less than 75 ppm for products that come into direct contact with the skin, as minimum elicitation thresholds may be as low as 30 ppm in some individuals. Of these, half indicated ‘‘easy care’’ characteristics such as: wrinkle free, stain resistant, and no iron. As expected, all were either 100% cotton or a cotton/polyester or cotton/nylon blend. The most problematic items were adult pillowcases (3/12 released excessive formaldehyde), and men’s and boy’s dress shirts (3/15). Additional itemstestingpositiveincludedapairofmen’skhakis, a child’s hat, a crib sheet, and a pair of US military combat pants. A total of 25 additional items released formaldehyde at a level that was below the lowest acceptable limit, and 145 items released no detectable formaldehyde.

Do Students Learn Course Material During Crib Sheet Construction?

We experimentally investigated the effect of crib sheet construction and use on student learning and exam performance. Students expected to use their prepared crib sheets during testing; however, unexpectedly they first completed a pretest without their crib sheets. Students scored significantly better on the same questions with crib sheets compared to their performance without their sheets, signifying that constructing crib sheets did not enhance learning, but use enhanced performance. Students who expect to use crib sheets during testing rely on the sheet for information, suggesting that students do not learn the course material as well when they expect to use a crib sheet.

Do Students Learn Course Material during Crib Sheet Construction?

Do Students Learn Course Material during Crib Sheet Construction?

Syria under the Spotlight: Television satire that is revolutionary in form, reformist in content

Picture the scene. We are inside Syria’s monolithic Education Ministry witnessing a highly charged committee meeting, convened to tackle one of the country’s most entrenched problems: overcrowding at state universities. All too willing to apply an absurdly cold logic in the matter, a logic that is likely familiar to Syrian viewers at home, the committee plans to make university tests so difficult that hardly any students are able to pass. The committee members are enthusiastic as they review their options but tension arises as they compete for the approval of the minister, who chairs the session. A female bureaucrat who offers her proposals on how to wage psychological war against the students giggles and squirms like someone receiving physical or sexual pleasure from the idea of failing so many young people. Meanwhile, the committee members exhibit other subtle nervous tics and expressions that add a garish unease to the proceedings. The sketch cuts quickly to examination day, and the proctors are Nazi-like characters who terrorize the students into abject fear and fainting spells. A male student is caught cheating after a miles-long crib sheet inside his clothing is discovered; a female student screams at her oppressor: “If you’re really a teacher, then YOU answer these questions!!”

Zen and the Art of Postmodern Philosophy: Two Paths of Liberation from the Representational Mode of Thinking (review)

Reviewed by: Zen and the Art of Postmodern Philosophy: Two Paths of Liberation from the Representational Mode of Thinking Robert Magliola Zen and the Art of Postmodern Philosophy: Two Paths of Liberation from the Representational Mode of Thinking. By Carl Olson. New York: State University of New York Press, 2000. 309 pp. Carl Olson's Zen and the Art of Postmodern Philosophy compares two paths of liberation from the representational mode of thinking, namely, Zen Buddhism and postmodern philosophy. Olson is to be commended for encouraging this dialogue, especially since professors of religious studies usually marginalize Gallic postmodern thought. He is also to be appreciated for the enormous effort that must have been required to describe so much material. Olson treats Bataille, Baudrillard, Deleuze, Derrida, Guattari, Foucault, Kristeva, Lacan, Levinas, and Lyotard on the postmodern side; and Dogen, Hakuin, Nishitani, many Chinese Ch'anists, and some Indian Buddhists on the Buddhist side. His method is to arrange the chapters according to topoi such as "Language, Disruption, and Play," "Ways of Thinking," "The Body," and so on, and to treat the pertaining ideas of the individual Buddhist and postmodern authors insofar as applicable. Because Olson's book assembles between two covers the names, selected works, and—at least in a general sense—the "key" ideas of the postmodern movement and their grosso modo similarities/dissimilarities via-à-vis Zen Buddhism, I think it serves an undergraduate readership well enough. The problem is that the book too often performs like a crib sheet in the CliffsNotes manner, reducing so-called "key" ideas to misleading clichés. The book is at its best when it gives an author some length of attention, as it does with Dogen. Rather than reduce my review to a series of sound bites (print bites?) corresponding to Olson's, I shall resort to what hermeneuts call an Auerbachian decoupage, that is, a close analysis of several passages that can be taken as indicative of an author's mode in general. I'll address three interpretations from Olson's book, one of Derrida, one of a Chinese kung-an (koan), and one of Lacan. Within his comparison of Derrida/language/Buddhism, Olson cites (p. 46) a sentence from Derrida's Writing and Difference: "Speech is stolen: since it is stolen [End Page 295] from language it is, thus, stolen from itself, that is, from the thief who has always already lost speech as property and initiative." Olson glosses as follows: "Derrida claims that a speaking subject, representing an irreducible secondary status, is no longer the person who speaks because his/her origin is elusive in an already established field of speech." Because of glosses like this, Derrida is all too often subjected to the ridicule of nonspecialists, who exclaim, "Derrida denies that a person can use speech instrumentally? Aren't his lectures the instruments of his own ideas?" Actually in the section Olson quotes, Derrida is appropriating Lacanian thought and mutating it for Derridean purposes. For Derrida, all life is stretched out in time and diced-out in space in such a way that phenomenological self-identity is an illusion. Physical writing is the best metaphor for this, in that written words (even Chinese ideograms) cannot, in the scientific sense, be perceived in one absolute moment: it "takes time" and it "takes space" to recognize a word, that is, "build" a word-meaning. Derrida calls life a "text" or "writing" because life is like writing: life on the phenomenological level appears holistic (much as a word-meaning appears self-identical, i.e., arising all at once), but life is actually a time/space "drift."1 In the sentence Olson quotes, what Derrida means has the following gist: Speech (spoken words) is stolen from language in that it belongs to language as writing and is really writing; and insofar as it is really writing, it is stolen from itself; speech has "always already" been lost to language in that the instrumentality of speech is always undercut by language's nature as writing. Speech is always undercut by an inevitable drift that subverts intentionality and foils our attempts to make speech our absolute "property." This does not mean most of the intention...

The Theater of Tony Kushner: Living Past Hope. By James Fisher. New York: Routledge, 2001; pp. 274 + illus. $85 hardcover

An avalanche of single-author studies has appeared as a result of the expansion of the American university system since the 1960s, the growth of the “theory” industry, the triumph of the specialist and decline of the generalist, the proliferation of small academic presses, and the increasing pressure on professors (even in many small colleges) to publish. These monographs function, as a rule, as part teaching aid, part research tool, and part undergraduate crib sheet. The best-known series of these monographs is probably the Twayne (U.S., English, World) Authors Series, which started in the late 1950s and now includes over 150 authors deemed securely canonical. Routledge's Studies in Modern Drama is a more modest effort (the front matter of James Fisher's The Theater of Tony Kushner lists only ten other titles, mostly monographs). Fisher's comprehensive volume is very much in the Twayne tradition, providing a brief biography of the author, a dash of historical background, a study of the author's works, a production history, and an extensive bibliography, all rendered in a style accessible to specialist and nonspecialist alike.

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HOORWITZ, Aaron Noah, THE CLINICAL DETECTIVE: Techniques in the Evaluation of Sexual Abuse

Hoorwitz, Aaron Noah, The Clinical Detective: Techniques in the Evaluation of Sexual Abuse. New York, N.Y.: W.W. Norton & Co., Ltd., 1992, 303pp., $34.95 hardcover.Hoorwitz' s purpose is to provide the reader with a step by step approach to the process of evaluating sexual abuse allegations and formulating conclusions and recommendations. He argues that competent evaluation of sexual abuse is important for therapists treating problems related to sexual abuse as well as for clinicians providing recommendations to the courts, police, and social service agencies. This work is the result of the author's clinical practice and academic research. Although suggested readings on child abuse are provided, the book forgoes an academic treatment of the subject in favor of practical clinical treatment of identifying sexual abuse. Much of the text, rather than being didactic, informs the reader through clinical dialogues and student-teacher dialogues.This book has three parts, Stages of the Interview Process, Interview Techniques, and Evaluation. In part I, chapter I, Hoorwitz discusses the feelings of disgust many people (including clinicians) have about sexual abuse and how these feelings may color their perceptions and behaviors. He suggests that the first key to improved detection of sexual abuse is empathy. Chapter 2 focuses on whom to inerview first, second, etc. Chapters 3 and 4 describe the interview with the child in terms of a stage-wise process. The first stage should establish the purpose of the interview, followed by discussing the lack of confidentiality with children old enough to understand the concept. The third stage is to teach the child how to answer questions so that a mutual understanding and common language exist between interviewer and child. Next, the interviewer establishes rapport with the child. In stage five, the interviewer assesses the mental status, development, and current functioning of the child. A sample crib sheet covers areas in the child's life to ask about and examples of questions to use. In stage six, the attempt is made to elicit a description of the abuse, e.g., where touched, where did it happen. In stage seven, the clinician assesses the effects of the abuse and other events following its disclosure, followed by the eighth stage of inquiry into reasons for any inconsistent or false statements. The last stage is the debriefing process.Part II, Interview Technique, begins with a description and discussion of common errors in interviewing, such as interrogation, indirectness, and patronizing the child. Chapter 6 examines how the clinician establishes mutual understanding, including confronting the client about discrepancies and inconsistent statements. Hoorwitz gives examples of effective confrontations. The next chapter details techniques for eliciting descriptions of abuse. A technique to obtain a detailed statement is oriented toward enabling the interviewer to see the abuse incident as in a movie. Other tools are dolls, drawings, toys and writing. The final chapter in part II presents techniques for amplifying a story's strengths and weaknesses so they are more evident to a third person. These techniques include eliciting confirmable and unconfirmable statements, having the child repeat parts of the story, and asking leading questions to test for consistency. Hoorwitz emphasizes, however, that inconsistent statements do not necessarily indicate the child is lying and that it is important to elicit the reasons for seemingly inconsistent statements, such as a desire to please or cognitive limitations.In part III, Evaluation, chapter 9 examines how the clinician differentiates true allegations and recantations from false ones by considering such variables as the presence of typical trauma symptoms from abuse, consistency between statements, abundance of confirmable statements, and invariant sequences of details. …

Tick Sweep: Modification of the Tick Drag-Flag Method for Sampling Nymphs of the Deer Tick (Acari: Ixodidae)

We describe a version of the standard tick drag-flag modified for use in close-growing and tangled vegetation, as well as under ornamental shrubbery and fallen branches. Two major features of the sweep are: (1) it allows the user to remain upright with the flag parallel to the ground, thus sampling effectively beneath low and fallen branches and around shrubs, as well as capturing host-seeking ticks in advance of the operator; and (2) the use of a flannel rubberized-laminate fabric (crib sheet) for the flag that is snag-proof and highly durable in dense and thorny vegetation. In simultaneous 100-m samples, the sweep was as effective as the 1-m standard tick drag for capturing nymphs of the deer tick, Ixodes dammini Spielman, Clifford, Piesman & Corwin, where understory vegetation was sparse, but was twice as effective in dense vegetation, capturing significantly more I. dammini nymphs. The sweep also captured nymphs of the American dog tick, Dermacentor variabilis (Say); rabbit tick, Haemaphysalis leporispalustris (Packard); and lone star tick, Amblyomma americanum (L.).