Increased realism in eyewitness confidence judgements: the effect of dyadic collaboration

This study investigated to what extent, and under what circumstances, pair collaboration influences the realism in eyewitness confidence in event memory. The participants first saw a short film clip and then confidence rated their answers to questions on its content. A condition (the Individual–Pair condition) where individual effort preceded pair collaboration showed better calibration compared with a condition (the Simple Pair condition) where no individual effort took place. Furthermore, within the Individual–Pair condition, better calibration, and lower overconfidence, were found in the pair phase compared with the individual phase. The eyewitnesses in the Individual–Pair condition made more realistic judgements of the total number of questions answered correctly. In a control experiment no effect on realism in confidence was found when individuals performed the same task twice. The improved realism in the Individual–Pair condition may partly be explained in terms of the increased accuracy and lowered confidence found for such items where the pair members' had given different answers in the individual phase, and by a risky shift effect for such items where they had given the same answer. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Role of Emotional Strategies in Destructive Behavior

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

Smoking on School Property as a Risk Factor for Substance Use Among Adolescent Smokers

The purpose of the current study was to determine if smoking on high-school property was associated with increased risk for other substance use among U.S. adolescents. Secondary analyses were carried out with data from the 2011 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS, N = 15,503). Only adolescents who reported smoking at least one cigarette in the last 30 days were selected for analyses (n = 2531, 44% female). Alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine use was assessed among participants. Binary logistic regression analysis was carried out to examine the relationship between smoking on school property (yes versus no) with each of the substance use variables. Adolescent smokers who reported smoking on school property were significantly more likely to report substance use across all substances examined compared to smokers who did not smoke on campus. For example, campus smokers were 3.91 times more likely to use marijuana in their lifetime and 3.85 times more likely to have used crack or cocaine in their lifetime compared to smokers who did not smoke on campus. Health care providers who provide services to adolescents should screen for smoking on school property to help identify adolescents at increased risk for substance use.     

Examining Cognitive Functioning Following TASER Exposure: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Individuals who experience electrical injury suffer significant, sometimes long‐term deficits in neuropsychological functioning. The TASER, an electrical device used by thousands of police departments, generates a high‐voltage (up to 50 000 V), low‐amperage (2.1 mA) current of electricity that is designed to disable a resistive criminal suspect. Questions have emerged regarding the potential for TASER exposure to cause impairment in cognitive functioning. In the current study, healthy human volunteers were randomly assigned to four groups, two of which received a TASER exposure. Participants completed a battery of cognitive tests before and after receiving their assigned treatment. Participants who received a TASER exposure experienced statistically meaningful declines in measures of verbal learning and memory, although deficits lasted less than 1 hour. After TASER exposure, participants also self‐reported significant difficulties with concentration, anxiety, and feeling overwhelmed. Other dimensions of cognitive functioning were not affected. Our findings show that the effects of TASER exposure on brain functioning are not well understood. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Maximum Marginal Likelihood Estimation of a Monotonic Polynomial Generalized Partial Credit Model with Applications to Multiple Group Analysis

We present a semi-parametric approach to estimating item response functions (IRF) useful when the true IRF does not strictly follow commonly used functions. Our approach replaces the linear predictor of the generalized partial credit model with a monotonic polynomial. The model includes the regular generalized partial credit model at the lowest order polynomial. Our approach extends Liang’s (A semi-parametric approach to estimate IRFs, Unpublished doctoral dissertation, 2007) method for dichotomous item responses to the case of polytomous data. Furthermore, item parameter estimation is implemented with maximum marginal likelihood using the Bock–Aitkin EM algorithm, thereby facilitating multiple group analyses useful in operational settings. Our approach is demonstrated on both educational and psychological data. We present simulation results comparing our approach to more standard IRF estimation approaches and other non-parametric and semi-parametric alternatives.     

Reasons Explanation: Further Defense of a Non-causal Account

If moral responsibility requires uncaused action, as I believe, and if a reasons explanation of an action must be a causal explanation, as many philosophers of action suppose, then it follows that our responsible actions are ones we do for no reason, which is preposterous. In previous work I have argued against the second premise of this deduction, claiming that the statement that a person did A in order to satisfy their desire D will be true if the person, while doing A, intended of that action that it contribute to satisfying their desire D, a condition that does not entail any causal connection between the explaining desire and the explained action. This claim has received trenchant criticism from Randolph Clarke. The main part of the present paper responds to Clarke’s latest objections. The rest of the paper addresses another worry about my account (not raised by Clarke): does my non-causal sufficient condition hold as widely as it needs to if responsible, uncaused actions are as widespread as we would like to think?     

Stability in the metamemory realism of eyewitness confidence judgments

The stability of eyewitness confidence judgments over time in regard to their reported memory and accuracy of these judgments is of interest in forensic contexts because witnesses are often interviewed many times. The present study investigated the stability of the confidence judgments of memory reports of a witnessed event and of the accuracy of these judgments over three occasions, each separated by 1 week. Three age groups were studied: younger children (8–9 years), older children (10–11 years), and adults (19–31 years). A total of 93 participants viewed a short film clip and were asked to answer directed two-alternative forced-choice questions about the film clip and to confidence judge each answer. Different questions about details in the film clip were used on each of the three test occasions. Confidence as such did not exhibit stability over time on an individual basis. However, the difference between confidence and proportion correct did exhibit stability across time, in terms of both over/underconfidence and calibration. With respect to age, the adults and older children exhibited more stability than the younger children for calibration. Furthermore, some support for instability was found with respect to the difference between the average confidence level for correct and incorrect answers (slope). Unexpectedly, however, the younger children’s slope was found to be more stable than the adults. Compared to the previous research, the present study’s use of more advanced statistical methods provides a more nuanced understanding of the stability of confidence judgments in the eyewitness reports of children and adults.