Cognitive mediation of childhood maltreatment and adult depression in recent crime victims

Childhood maltreatment has been linked to adult depressive disorders. However, few studies have examined mechanisms through which childhood maltreatment may contribute to adult depression. Thus, we examined the role of one potential mechanism of this relationship, maladaptive cognitions, in a recently traumatized sample. Participants were adult women who had been recently raped (n = 133) or physically assaulted (n = 73). We examined whether maladaptive self-and other-cognitions mediated relationships between childhood sexual, physical, and emotional abuse and current depression. Relationships between childhood sexual abuse and both current depression symptoms and diagnosis were mediated by maladaptive cognitions about self. Relationships between both childhood sexual abuse and childhood physical abuse and adult depressive symptoms were mediated by maladaptive cognitions about others.     

Back to the Real: Efficacy and Perception of a Modified Cognitive Interview in the Field

Since the Cognitive Interview (CI) was developed, many experiments have been published, but only two have investigated its efficacy in real criminal cases. Here, a Modified CI (MCI) is tested with real interviews in an inquisitor justice system. Several moderators and the interviewers' attitudes towards the CI/MCI are also examined. Eighty‐one witnesses were interviewed by 27 French military police officers, with a Standard Police Interview, a Structured Interview (SI), or an MCI. The MCI produced the most forensically relevant information, especially for victims. Trainees judged the SI and the MCI useful, usable, and acceptable, and felt efficient in using them, beliefs that increased after 1 year of practice. The self‐efficacy was linked with the declared use of the techniques. In all, this study confirmed the efficacy of the CI/MCI as a tool to be used in the field, with some cautions to be underlined, notably because of the small sample size considered. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mental time travel ability and the Mental Reinstatement of Context for crime witnesses

Mental time travel ability marks how well the phenomenological aspects of events are mentally re-experienced during recall. The Cognitive Interview (CI) elicits eyewitness information. One of its techniques, Mental Reinstatement of Context (MRC), asks eyewitnesses to reinstate the incident’s context mentally before recall. Fifty-six participants watched a simulated crime video. Self-report measures were then taken to estimate general mental time travel ability. Participants were questioned subsequently about the video. Eyewitness performance under MRC was compared with the CI’s Report Everything (RE) technique, wherein eyewitnesses recall everything they can but with no invitation to mentally reinstate the context. There was no effect of interview condition on accuracy of recall; however, general mental time travel ability was positively associated with the amount of correct and incorrect information produced under MRC, but not RE, conditions. This is the first empirical demonstration that MRC instructions engage the mental time travel capacities they purport to.     

Social support and victims of crime: Matching event,support, and outcome

Investigated the buffering properties of six types of social support (three perceived, three received) with regard to four psychological consequences (depression, anxiety, fear of crime, hostility) of criminal victimization (violent crime, property crime). These relationships were examined using longitudinal data collected from a sample composed of representative subsamples of victims and nonvictims. Effects of the perceived support measures (perceived appraisal support, perceived tangible support, self-esteem) were more pervasive than those of the received support measures (received informational support, received tangible support, received emotional support). Perceived support consistently exhibited buffering effects, protecting both violent and property crime victims against various symptoms they would have otherwise experienced. The stress-buffering capabilities of received support were limited to informational and tangible help protecting victims of violence from experiencing excessive fear. These findings are discussed in the context of recent theoretical developments concerning the stress-support matching hypothesis.     

Recognition memory and the hippocampus: A test of the hippocampal contribution to recollection and familiarity

It has been suggested that the hippocampus selectively supports recollection and that adjacent cortex in the medial temporal lobe can support familiarity. Alternatively, it has been suggested that the hippocampus supports both recollection and familiarity. We tested these suggestions by assessing the performance of patients with hippocampal lesions on recognition memory tests that differ in the extent to which recollection and familiarity contribute to the recognition decision. When targets and foils are highly similar, prior evidence suggests that, on a forced-choice test in which targets are presented together with highly similar, corresponding foils (the FC-C format), performance is supported primarily by familiarity. By contrast, when targets are presented together with foils that are similar to other targets (the FC-NC format) or when memory is tested in a yes/no (Y/N) format, performance is based much more strongly on recollection. Accordingly, a finding that hippocampal damage impaired both Y/N recognition and FC-NC recognition but spared FC-C recognition would suggest that the hippocampus selectively supports recollection. We administered Y/N, FC-C, and FC-NC tests to five memory-impaired patients with circumscribed hippocampal lesions and 14 controls. The patients were impaired on all three types of recognition test, and there was no indication that the patients were disproportionately benefited or disproportionately impaired on any test. This pattern of performance suggests that the hippocampus supports both recollection and familiarity.The medial temporal lobe (the hippocampus plus the entorhinal, perirhinal, and parahippocampal cortices) is essential for the recognition of past experience. The capacity for recognition is widely thought to depend on two distinct processes, recollection and familiarity (Mandler 1980; Yonelinas et al. 2002; Wixted 2007). Recollection involves remembering specific details about the episode in which an item was encountered. Familiarity involves simply knowing that an item was presented, even when no additional information can be retrieved about the learning episode itself. This distinction has been prominent in recent discussions about memory, particularly in relation to its possible anatomical basis. One proposal is that recollection depends on the hippocampus and that familiarity depends on the adjacent medial temporal lobe cortex (Brown and Aggleton 2001; Mayes et al. 2002; Yonelinas et al. 2002). Alternatively, it has been suggested that the hippocampus is important for both recollection and familiarity and that the distinction between these two processes does not illuminate the functional differences between the hippocampus and adjacent cortex (Rutishauser et al. 2006; Wais et al. 2006; Squire et al. 2007; Wixted 2007).To clarify the role of the hippocampus in recognition memory, the performance of memory-impaired patients with hippocampal damage has often been compared to that of controls on tests that differ in the extent to which recollection and familiarity contribute to the recognition memory decision. One such approach involves the use of highly similar targets and foils tested using a yes/no (Y/N) format and a forced-choice corresponding (FC-C) format (Holdstock et al. 2002; Westerberg et al. 2006; Bayley et al. 2008). In the case of the Y/N format, participants see a list of targets intermixed with foils (each similar to one of the targets) and are asked to respond “yes” to the targets and “no” to the foils. In the FC-C format, participants see a target presented together with its corresponding, similar foil and are asked to identify the target. According to an idea advanced by Norman and O''Reilly (2003), familiarity can support FC-C recognition because one can make effective use of small but consistent differences between the familiarity signals triggered by the target and foil items. That is, when targets and foils are highly similar and are presented together in the FC-C format, familiarity for the target is likely to slightly and reliably exceed that of the similar foil, allowing the target to be correctly chosen on the basis of familiarity. By contrast, in the Y/N format, slight differences between the familiarity signals of target items and their corresponding foils no longer provide useful information, because the targets and their corresponding foils are not presented together at test. Accordingly, good performance with the Y/N format is more dependent on recollection than with the FC-C format.The same explanation may account for why performance on FC-C tests sometimes exceeds performance on forced-choice noncorresponding (FC-NC) tests (e.g., Hintzman 1988). In the FC-NC format, target items are presented together with a noncorresponding foil that is similar to another target item from the study list (Fig. 1). Thus, the FC-C and FC-NC tests differ only in that the similar targets and foils are presented together in the former but not in the latter. When the corresponding targets and foils are presented together (in the FC-C format), participants can make effective use of consistent differences in familiarity values (as discussed above). When the corresponding targets and foils are not presented together, participants cannot make use of the small differences that they might detect through a side-by-side comparison.Open in a separate windowFigure 1.Test format and materials for the three kinds of recognition test. For each test, 12 images, either objects (A) or silhouettes (B), were presented at study, and memory was tested in one of three ways. For the forced-choice corresponding test (FC-C), each target (a studied item) was presented together with a highly similar foil (a new item). For the forced-choice noncorresponding test (FC-NC), each target was presented together with a foil that was highly similar to a different target from the study list. Participants were asked to point to exactly the same image they had seen during study. For the yes/no test (Y/N), the 12 targets and the 12 foils (each similar to one of the targets) were intermixed and presented one at a time. Participants were asked to respond “yes” if they had seen exactly the same image before and “no” if they had not. Asterisks identify the target items.A recent study (Migo et al. 2009) provides empirical support for the suggestion that familiarity primarily contributes to the recognition decision in the FC-C format, whereas recollection contributes more strongly in the Y/N format and in the FC-NC format. In the Migo et al. (2009) study, healthy participants received FC-C, FC-NC, and Y/N tests after receiving either standard instructions to make their decisions based on familiarity or recollection or modified instructions to base their decisions on familiarity only. On the FC-NC test and on the Y/N test, performance using familiarity alone was significantly worse than under standard instructions. On the FC-C test, performance using familiarity alone was nearly as good as under standard instructions. This result supports the earlier suggestion that FC-C is primarily supported by familiarity, whereas recollection plays a larger role in FC-NC and Y/N recognition (Norman and O''Reilly 2003).If the hippocampus is critical for recollection but not for familiarity, and if good performance on the FC-C format can be achieved using familiarity alone, then patients with focal hippocampal lesions should be differentially impaired on the Y/N and FC-NC recognition test formats compared with the FC-C format. Three recent studies investigated this issue by assessing the effects of hippocampal damage (or presumed hippocampal damage) on Y/N and FC-C tests that used highly similar targets and foils (the FC-NC format was not used in these earlier studies). All three studies used black-and-white silhouette images of objects, and the FC-C test involved the target item and three similar foils (i.e., multiple-choice with four alternatives). In one study, a single patient with bilateral hippocampal damage (patient Y.R.) was impaired on the test of Y/N recognition but was unimpaired on the test of FC-C recognition (Holdstock et al. 2002). A similar result was reported in patients with a diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) (Westerberg et al. 2006). These findings have been taken to support the suggestion that the hippocampus selectively supports recollection. However, the study by Holdstock and colleagues (2002) involved a single patient (Y.R.), and findings from a single patient need not agree with findings obtained from a group of patients (see Discussion). In addition, the Westerberg et al. (2006) study involved individuals with a diagnosis of MCI for whom anatomical data were not available. It is therefore not clear what the status of the hippocampus was in these patients. Moreover, a standard Y/N procedure involving 12 study items and 24 test items (as opposed to the 12 study test items and 60 test items used in previous studies [Holdstock et al. 2002; Westerberg et al. 2006; Bayley et al. 2008]) might be better suited to address the question of whether Y/N recognition is selectively impaired in hippocampal patients. Bayley et al. (2008) tested five patients with circumscribed hippocampal damage using the same test materials and procedure as in Holdstock et al. (2002). When all 60 test items of the Y/N test were scored, the patients were found to be more impaired on the Y/N test than on the FC-C test. However, when only the first 24 test items of the Y/N test were scored (according to the standard Y/N procedure), the patients were found to be impaired on both the Y/N and FC-C tests to a similar degree.The earlier studies (Holdstock et al. 2002; Westerberg et al. 2006; Bayley et al. 2008) compared Y/N recognition to four-alternative FC-C recognition in which each target was presented along with three corresponding foils. None of the earlier studies investigated how patients with hippocampal lesions performed on FC-NC recognition. As Migo et al. (2009) point out, FC-C and FC-NC tests are better matched than the FC-C and Y/N tests because they are both forced-choice tests, and both use the same number of test trials. As such, they argue, it would be more useful to compare FC-C recognition performance to FC-NC recognition performance to determine whether patients with hippocampal lesions are intact or impaired on familiarity-based tests.The present study assessed Y/N, two-alternative FC-C, and two-alternative FC-NC recognition, using highly similar targets and foils. The tests were given to five patients with circumscribed hippocampal damage and 14 matched controls. The Y/N test involved an equal number of targets and foils (unlike the design used in the prior studies), and a two-alternative format was used for the forced-choice tests to make them comparable to the Y/N test (i.e., all three tests involved the same number of targets and foils). The FC-C and FC-NC tests were identical except with respect to how the targets and their corresponding foils were paired on the recognition test.To extend our findings beyond the stimuli used in prior studies, we also used color photographs of objects in addition to black-and-white silhouettes. Using these three test formats, we asked the following questions: (1) Does hippocampal damage impair Y/N recognition memory but spare, or disproportionately benefit, FC-C recognition (as suggested by the view that the hippocampus supports recollection and not familiarity)? Or does hippocampal damage impair Y/N and FC-C recognition similarly (as suggested by the view that the hippocampus supports both recollection and familiarity)? (2) Does hippocampal damage disproportionately benefit FC-C recognition relative to FC-NC recognition, or does hippocampal damage impair FC-C and FC-NC recognition similarly?     

Improving the Enhanced Cognitive Interview With a New Interview Strategy: Category Clustering Recall

Increasing recall is crucial for investigative interviews. The enhanced cognitive interview (ECI) has been widely used for this purpose and found to be generally effective. We focused on further increasing recall with a new interview strategy, category clustering recall (CCR). Participants watched a mock robbery video and were interviewed 48 hours later with either the (i) ECI; (ii) revised enhanced cognitive interview 1 (RECI1) — with CCR instead of the change order mnemonic during the second recall; or (iii) revised enhanced cognitive interview 2 (RECI2) — also with CCR but conjunctly used with ‘eye closure’ and additional open‐ended follow up questions. Participants interviewed with CCR (RECI1 and RECI2) produced more information without compromising accuracy; thus, CCR was effective. Eye closure and additional open‐ended follow up questions did not further influence recall when using CCR. Major implications for real‐life investigations are discussed.Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Imagined and actual limb selection: a test of preference

Imagined and actual motor performance were compared to determine what factor(s) drive limb selection for programming movements in contralateral hemispace. Forty right-handed blindfolded subjects were asked to 'reach' via auditory stimulus for a small object placed at multiple locations in hemispace. Two conditions were included: arms uncrossed and arms crossed. With the uncrossed condition, responses were similar. With arms crossed, subjects had the choice of keeping the limbs crossed, reacting to proximity, or uncrossing the arms to reach ipsilaterally. In this condition subjects 'imagined' that they would maintain the crossedposition and reach with the hand closest to the stimulus in both right and left hemispace. However, during 'actual' reaching, responses differed. For left-field stimuli, participants kept the arms crossed, but in response to right-field stimuli, subjects preferred to uncross the limbs in order to reach with the dominant hand. These findings suggest that while motor dominance is the primary factor in limb choice for action in ipsilateral hemispace, it appears that object proximity drives limb selection for reaching in contralateral hemispace.     

Cognitive Ability Tests and the Situational Interview: A Test of Incremental Validity

This study investigated the validity and incremental validity of a situational interview beyond that of a composite measure of cognitive ability. Forty-seven factory service technicians underwent an interview and took four cognitive ability tests. Supervisors rated the performance of these subjects in a concurrent validation study. The interview was found to be a valid predictor of a supervisor rating of performance (r = 0.32, p < 0.05 uncorrected), however, was unable to show incremental validity over ability tests (Incremental R²= 0.05, n.s.). Limitations of the present study and directions for future research are discussed.     

Screening for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: an evaluation of two self-report scales among crime victims

The validity of the Impact of Events Scale (IES) and the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Symptom Scale, Self-Report version (PSS-SR) was examined among crime victims. Both instruments performed well as screeners for PTSD. For the IES, sensitivity ranged between .93 and 1.00; for the PSS-SR, sensitivity ranged between .80 and .90. Specificity for the IES ranged between .78 and .84 and for the PSS-SR ranged between .84 and .88. Some individual items from the 2 scales performed just as well as the total scales. The authors conclude that either of these short self-report instruments or their individual items are suitable as screeners for PTSD, specifically in settings where mental health professionals are unavailable. Cross-validation of these results is necessary because of the small sample size in this study.     

Predicting PTSD symptoms in victims of violent crime: the role of shame, anger, and childhood abuse

To examine the role of cognitive-affective appraisals and childhood abuse as predictors of crime-related posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, 157 victims of violent crime were interviewed within 1 month post-crime and 6 months later. Measures within 1 month post-crime included previous physical and sexual abuse in childhood and responses to the current crime, including shame and anger with self and others. When all variables were considered together, shame and anger with others were the only independent predictors of PTSD symptoms at 1 month, and shame was the only independent predictor of PTSD symptoms at 6 months when 1-month symptoms were controlled. The results suggest that both shame and anger play an important role in the phenomenology of crime-related PTSD and that shame makes a contribution to the subsequent course of symptoms. The findings are also consistent with previous evidence for the role of shame as a mediator between childhood abuse and adult psychopathology.     

Women as victims of corporate crime: A call for research on a neglected topic

Criminologists have paid less attention to white‐collar than to street crime, to victims than to offenders, and to women than to men, either as victims or as offenders. In fact, we have been unable to locate even a single study that focuses specifically on women as victims of corporate crime. We present several case studies that indicate that women are indeed often victimized by corporate activities. We argue that research on this topic is both necessary and timely. Feminist analysis may explain why little attention has been paid to this issue so far and also provides a theoretical framework for future research.     

ABCs of the Interview: The Role of Affective,Behavioral, and Cognitive Responses by Applicants in the Employment Interview

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of a job applicant's verbal statements on interviewer ratings of an applicant's interpersonal characteristics. Applicant verbal statements were coded as containing affective, behavioral, and cognitive components. Verbal statements were analyzed using regression analysis and findings indicated that behavioral and cognitive speech components significantly impacted interviewer ratings of an applicant's self-confidence. In turn, interpersonal characteristics of enthusiasm, self-confidence and effectiveness had a significant influence on an interviewer's rating of an applicant's overall quality and the ultimate hiring decision.     

The Influence of Videoconference Technology and Interview Structure on the Recruiting Function of the Employment Interview: A Field Experiment

This field experiment examined whether interview medium and interview structure affects the attractiveness of organizations, interviewer friendliness and performance. Attractiveness ratings of 25 organizations were provided by 92 real job applicants, assigned to either a face–to–face (FTF) or a videoconference (VC) interview. An interview medium X structure interaction showed FTF applicants were attracted most to organizations who conducted their interviews with less structure, while VC applicants were more attracted to organizations using structured interviews. Interview structure had no effect on applicants’ perception of the interviewer’s performance; however, interviewers’ performance was rated higher for FTF than VC interviews. Applicants were more satisfied with their FTF performance in less structured interviews and more satisfied with their VC performance in highly structured interviews.     

Knowledge of the Crime Context: Improving the Understanding of Why the Cognitive Interview Works

Since the Cognitive Interview (CI) was devised under laboratory conditions (Geiselman, Fisher, MacKinnon, & Holland, 1985), researchers have performed many experiments where a variety of variables and conditions have been reported. Nevertheless, few studies have attempted to delve into the theoretical aspects on which the CI is based. A variable that might help us to improve our understanding of why the CI works is prior knowledge of the crime context. Some studies have included familar contexts and others unfamiliar ones, but no study has been performed to test the effect of the familiarity of the crime context as an independent variable. The aim of this research is to study the effect of prior knowledge on subjects' memory when they are interviewed by means of the CI in contrast to a Spanish Standard Interview (SSI). A significant effect of prior knowledge that subjects had of the context where the crime took place was expected, especially for those subjects who were interviewed by means of the CI. Results confirmed this hypothesis.     

Cognitive difficulties and posttraumatic stress disorder in female victims of intimate partner violence

Subjective cognitive complaints of women exposed to intimate partner violence (IPV) and nonabused women were examined using the Cognitive Difficulties Scale (CDS). Cognitive complaints were compared among victims of IPV with a lifetime diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (PTSD+; n=20), victims of IPV without lifetime PTSD (PTSD-; n=21), and a nonabused comparison group (n=22). The results indicated that both the PTSD+ and PTSD- groups had significantly higher levels of self-perceived cognitive difficulties than nonabused women. Furthermore, PTSD symptom severity was found to be positively correlated with self-perceived cognitive difficulties (r=.47). Further research is needed to determine whether cognitive complaints are associated with exposure to IPV, with the subsequent development of PTSD, or with other not yet understood factors. Furthermore, additional work is needed to resolve whether cognitive complaints are accompanied by objective evidence of cognitive dysfunction in victims of IPV.