Mother-infant attachment: the importance of the mother's visual field.

The purpose of this study was to answer 2 questions: (1) how important to 2-year-old children is fact-to-face contact with the mother, and (2) do attachment behaviors, such as looking at, talking to, and being close to mothers, interact in a compensatory fashion? 24 male and female children, 18 to 30 months, were observed with their mothers for 15 minutes in 3 conditions: (1) mother facing tethered toys, (2) mother facing away from toys, and (3) mother behind a partition and not visible from toys. Observations were made by time-lapse photography techniques. Results indicated that the potential for face-to-face contact was important: children spent 94% of their time in mother's visual field when she faced the toys and 50% of their time in her visual field when she either faced away or was behind the partition. Overall, they established face-to-face contact about 12% of the time. Some compensation was observed: talking and physical proximity increased as visual contact decreased.

Saliva testosterone and criminal violence in young adult prison inmates.

Free testosterone was measured in the saliva of 89 male prison inmates. Inmates with higher testosterone concentrations had more often been convicted of violent crimes. The relationship was most striking at the extremes of the testosterone distribution, where 9 out of 11 inmates with the lowest testosterone concentrations had committed nonviolent crimes, and 10 out of 11 inmates with the highest testosterone concentrations had committed violent crimes. Among the inmates convicted of nonviolent crimes, those higher in testosterone received longer times to serve before parole and longer punishments for disciplinary infractions in prison. In the housing unit where peer ratings were most reliable, inmates rated as tougher by their peers were higher in testosterone.