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Reasoning and Rehabilitation is a cognitive-behavioual training programme for offenders, accredited by the Home Office for use with offenders in prison and on custodial sentences in England and Wales. Evidence the programme achieves significant reductions in offending is questionable. A matched control study is reported which used both offending and psychometric outcome measures. Findings for reconviction are mixed. Offenders whose attitudes changed pro-socially were more likely to be reconvicted than were offenders whose attitudes did not change positively. This casts doubt on whether reconviction is reduced because of attitudinal change, and on the use of measures of attitudinal change in evaluation.

SummaryOperational characteristics have been determined for fused silica capillary column (FSCC) GC/MS as applied to "extractable" priority pollutants. Chromatographic data show excellent relative retention time (RRT) intralaboratory precision and interlaboratory accuracy when multiple internal standards are employed. Potential chromatographic problems, such as column overload and "double peaking", are addressed. Response factor relative standard deviations (RSD) at 50 ng for most of the extractable priority pollutants over the long term indicated precise determination (i.e. RSD generally < l0"/0). Linearity was demonstrated over two orders of magnitude for FSCC GC/MS analysis of compounds with relatively low and highRF(response factor) values. Potential quantitative problems, such as saturation, are discussed. For certain aromatic priority pollutants interlaboratory RF agreement was obsewed. This was noted as perhaps the most important property of FSCC GC/MS analysis when the multiple internal standard approtach is utilized. Determinations of extractable priority pollutants are directly compared for packed column GUMS and FSCC GC/MS analysis of separate and composited extracts. For !six extracts analyzed in triplicate, the latter configuration was shown to produce more consistent results. In view of the superior analysis logistics of composite extract FSCC GC/MS analysis, this approach was established as the preferred method for the analysis of priority pollutants classified as extractable.

Summary. Tests of reading and mathematical understanding were administered to 210 children from three socio‐economic backgrounds who had been tested 12 months earlier during their first year at school. When first seen, the children were given 28 cognitive tests, the results of which have been discussed in a previous paper (Lunzer, et al., 1976). Measures of operativity were found to be superior to measures of language in predicting progress in mathematics for all socio‐economic groups. Operativity was also superior for socio‐economic Groups 1 and 3 in predicting success in reading of unrelated words, and was comparable with language in the case of Group 2. Operativity and language were found to have similar powers in the prediction of reading comprehension. Short‐term memory for the presentation of a visual sequence proved to be a highly significant and independent predictor for success in word recognition and, to a lesser degree, in mathematical understanding.

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