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This article reports experiments assessing how general threats to social order and severity of a crime can influence punitiveness. Results consistently showed that when participants feel that the social order is threatened, they behave more punitively toward a crime perpetrator, but only when severity associated with a crime was relatively moderate. Evidence is presented to suggest that people can correct-at least to a degree-for the "biasing" influence of these inductions. Finally, threats to social order appear to increase punitiveness by arousing a retributive desire to see individuals pay for what they have done, as opposed to a purely utilitarian desire to deter future wrongdoing. The authors suggest that individuals sometimes act as intuitive prosecutors when ascribing punishment to an individual transgressor based on their perception of general societal control efficacy.

Videofluoroscopic assessment of swallowing is widely used in clinical settings. The interpretation of such assessments depends on subjective visual judgments but the reliability of these judgments has been poorly researched. This study measured interrater reliability of judgments, made by speech pathologists, of videofluoroscopic images of subjects swallowing liquid and semisolid boluses. A 5-point rating scale was used in three conditions: individually after careful reading; together with other speech pathologists in group discussion; and individually after the group discussion. Analysis of the ratings for the three conditions revealed that the level of agreement among raters was generally higher for semisolid swallows than for liquid swallows. The highest levels of agreement occurred for ratings made after group discussions. The levels of agreement were lowest when raters worked alone, relying only on reading the scale. Individual rating after group discussion resulted in higher levels of agreement than sole reliance on reading the scale. Factors influencing the levels of interrater agreement, including the timing of observations, bolus consistency, the quality of the image, and the complexity of the task, are discussed.

This article examines a teaching package that was designed to cover the progression of skills agreed to by clinicians and educators as being pertinent to interpreting Videofluoroscopy Swallowing Studies (VFSSs). Sessions taught included knowledge of anatomy and physiology of swallowing, examination and identification of structures and landmarks from radiographs, and the use of an assessment scale such as the Bethlehem Assessment Scale (BAS) to interpret VFSSs. The ability to interpret eight VFSSs using the BAS was used as the final assessment. ANOVA for repeated measures and post hoc tests using Tukey's HSD statistic revealed that there was a statistically significant correlation between students' knowledge of anatomy and physiology and their knowledge of radiographic anatomy. There was a statistically significant correlation between their knowledge of radiographic anatomy and their ability to interpret videofluoroscopic examinations, as assessed using the BAS. There was also a statistically significant correlation between their knowledge of anatomy and physiology and their ability to interpret videofluoroscopic examinations using the BAS.

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