Information Integration in Juror Decision Making

Research applying information integration theory to jury decision making has long assumed that people average informational scale values when making legal judgments. Although often consistent with research results, this hypothesis has never been tested in a legal context against a more general additive rule. The present paper describes two studies conducted as a critical test between these two models. Incriminating evidence and eyewitness confidence were varied in a full-factorial, within-subjects design involving a total of 131 subjects acting as mock jurors. Subject responses included eyewitness accuracy and defendant-guilt probability estimates, as well as final verdict decisions. Results strongly support an averaging model of legal decision making. Additional results concerning the influence of initial attitudes and the interrelationships between the variables considered are reported and their implications are discussed.     

A Review on the Study of Creativity in Singapore

This paper reviews the study of creativity in Singapore. Three questions are asked. What is the current status of the study of creativity in Singapore? What kinds of creativity studies have been conducted? What are the future directions of Singaporean creativity research? PsycLIT and Eric databases, as well as resources in Singapore libraries such as journals, proceedings, and books are searched. The study of creativity is grouped into five categories, namely conceptual framework, conceptions of creativity (empirical), creative competence (empirical), creativity programs, and creative pedagogy. This review intends to contribute to the literature of creativity and the understanding of human creativity. Future directions of Singapore's creativity research should address several issues including theories or models, methods and instruments, the sample, research agenda, and research network.     

A meta-analytic approach to growth curve analysis

A meta-analytic approach to growth curve analysis is described and illustrated by applying it to the evaluation of the Arizona Pilot Project, an experimental project for financing the treatment of the severely mentally ill. In this approach to longitudinal data analysis, each individual subject for which repeated measures are obtained is initially treated as a separate case study for analysis. This approach has at least two distinct advantages. First, it does not assume a balanced design (equal numbers of repeated observations) across all subjects; to accommodate a variable number of observations for each subject, individual growth curve parameters are differentially weighted by the number of repeated measures on which they are based. Second, it does not assume homogeneity of treatment effects (equal slopes) across all subjects. Individual differences in growth curve parameters representing potentially unequal developmental rates through time are explicitly modeled. A meta-analytic approach to growth curve analysis may be the optimal analytical strategy for longitudinal studies where either (1) a balanced design is not feasible or (2) an assumption of homogeneity of treatment effects across all individuals is theoretically indefensible. In our evaluation of the Arizona Pilot Project, individual growth curve parameters were obtained for each of the 13 rationally derived subscales of the New York Functional Assessment Survey, over time, by linear regression analysis. The slopes, intercepts, and residuals obtained for each individual were then subjected to meta-analytic causal modeling. Using factor analytic models and then general linear models for the latent constructs, the growth curve parameters of all individuals were systematically related to each other via common factors and predicted based on hypothesized exogenous causal factors. The same two highly correlated common factors were found for all three growth curve parameters analyzed, a general psychological factor and a general functional factor. The factor patterns were found to be nearly identical across the separate analyses of individual intercepts, slopes, and residuals. Direct effects on the unique factors of each subscale of the New York Functional Assessment Survey were tested for each growth curve parameter by including the common factors as hierarchically prior predictors in the structural model for each of the indicator variables, thus statistically controlling for any indirect effect produced on the indicator through the common factors. The exogenous predictors modeled were theoretically specified orthogonal contrasts for Method of Payment (comparing Arizona Pilot Project treatment or "capitation" to traditional or "fee-for-service" care as a control), Treatment Administration Site (comparing various locations within treatment or control groups), Pretreatment Assessment (comparing general functional level at intake as assigned by an Outside Assessment Team), and various interactions among these main effects. The intercepts, representing the initial status of individual subjects on both the two common factors and the 13 unique factors of the subscales of the New York Functional Assessment Survey, were found to vary significantly across many of the various different treatment conditions, treatment administration sites, and pretreatment functional levels. This indicated a severe threat to the validity of the originally intended design of the Arizona Pilot Project as a randomized experiment. When the systematic variations were statistically controlled by including intercepts as hierarchically prior predictors in the structural models for slopes, recasting the experiment as a nonequivalent groups design, the effects of the intercepts on the slopes were found to be both statistically significant and substantial in magnitude. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED)     

The correlation of feature identification and category judgments in diagnostic radiology

Expert and novice radiologists were given films accompanied by clinical histories that supported a diagnosis either of bronchiolitis or of normal. To provide a plausible task context, some films were radiologically unambiguous and were accompanied by histories consistent with them. For a set of radiologically difficult films from confirmed normal or bronchiolitis patients, fictitious normal or abnormal histories were counterbalanced with the films. The clinical histories affected ratings both of diagnosis and of features present on the difficult films. Thus, uncertainty about individual features evidently was affected by history, and features did not act as an independent source of information. The dependence of feature calls on an overall judgment was also suggested by intra-observer agreement in another study in which an explicit diagnosis was not requested. It is unclear whether the history increased discrimination between normal and abnormal films, or indiscriminately added evidence for or against the disease. Factors are discussed that make it appropriate for feature identification to be partially dependent on category identification.     

Family history in ovarian cancer referral population

In order to determine the incidence of familial and hereditary ovarian cancer in a referral patient population, we conducted a retrospective study of 44 patients from a consecutive set of 62 patients treated for ovarian carcinoma at the Gynecologic Oncology Clinic at the Richland Memorial Hospital Center for Cancer Treatment and Research between January 1, 1993 and December 31, 1993. In our study of the referred patients, only two (4.55%) reported a history of at least one first-degree relative also being affected with ovarian cancer. However, 13 patients (29.55%) reported a family history consistent with one of the hereditary ovarian cancer syndromes. In addition to having a suggestive family history, these 13 families demonstrated several cardinal features of hereditary cancer syndromes including early onset, bilaterality, multiple primary tumors, and transmission. Race was the only significantly different demographic factor between the hereditary and sporadic ovarian cancer groups. All 13 patients who appeared to have a hereditary form of cancer were Caucasian.     

An extension of the conflict between visualization and reading

An experiment is reported which suggests that reading about a series of spatial relations and visualizing them are activities which interfere with one another. Subjects were given sentences which described a set of spatial relations. After the spatial layout described by a given sentence had been deduced, the subjects either read or listened to a final presentation of this same sentence. It was found that the modality of this final presentation influenced the speed with which the subjects performed a subsequent mental transformation of the spatial relations; the transformation was completed more slowly immediately after reading the sentence than after listening to it. This result confirms the subjects' reports that their visualization of the spatial relations was interrupted by reading the sentence, but not by listening to it. The relation between the visual and the analogical aspects of visualization is briefly discussed.