What Happens to Mental Health Court Noncompleters?

Mental health court (MHC) research consistently finds that defendants who successfully complete and graduate from the court are less likely to recidivate than those who do not. However, research has not assessed what happens to these noncompleters once they are sent back to traditional court. Using follow-up data on six years of noncompleters from pre-adjudication MHC, we examine what happens to these defendants in traditional court. Findings suggest that 63.7% of defendants' charges were dismissed, 21.0% received probation, and 15.3% were sentenced to incarceration. We examine the time to disposition and differences in defendant characteristics and disposition outcome as well as the relationship between disposition and subsequent recidivism. Results suggest that more severe punishments in traditional court are associated with recidivism. Logistic regression analysis shows that defendants whose charges were dismissed in traditional court were less likely to recidivate than those who were sentenced to probation or incarceration. Our findings highlight the need for future MHC evaluations to consider traditional court outcomes and support trends towards post-adjudication courts. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Participant recruitment methods and statistical reasoning performance

Optimal Bayesian reasoning performance has reportedly been elusive, and a variety of explanations have been suggested for this situation. In a series of experiments, it is demonstrated that these difficulties with replication can be accounted for by differences in participant-sampling methodologies. Specifically, the best performances are obtained with students from top-tier, national universities who were paid for their participation. Performance drops significantly as these conditions are altered regarding inducements (e.g., using unpaid participants) or participant source (e.g., using participants from a second-tier, regional university). Honours-programme undergraduates do better than regular undergraduates within the same university, paid participation creates superior performance, and top-tier university students do better than students from lower ranked universities. Pictorial representations (supplementing problem text) usually have a slight facilitative effect across these participant manipulations. These results indicate that studies should take account of these methodological details and focus more on relative levels of performance rather than absolute performance.     

Pseudoneglect: evidence for both perceptual and attentional factors

When neurologically normal individuals bisect a horizontal line as accurately as possible, they reliably show a slight leftward error. This leftward inaccuracy is called pseudoneglect because errors made by neurologically normal individuals are directionally opposite to those made by persons with visuospatial neglect (Jewell & McCourt, 2000). In the current study, normal right-handed observers bisected horizontal lines that were altered to bias line length judgments either toward the right or the left side of the line. Non-target dots were placed on or near the line stimuli using principles derived from a theory of visual illusions of length called centroid extraction (Morgan, Hole, & Glennerster, 1990). This theory argues that the position of a visual target is calculated as the mean position of all stimuli in close proximity to the target stimulus. We predicted that perceptual alterations that shifted the direction of centroid extraction would also shift the direction of line bisection errors. Our findings confirmed this prediction and support the idea that both perceptual and attentional factors contribute to the pseudoneglect effect.     

Shared representations in body perception

The ability to understand events that happen to other people is a characteristic feature of the human mind. Here, we investigate whether the links between mental representation of one's own body and the bodies of other people could form the basis of human social representations. We studied interpersonal body representation (IBR) in a series of behavioural cueing experiments. Subjects responded to tactile events on their own body after a visual event was presented in either the corresponding anatomical location on a model's body, or in a non-corresponding location. We found that reactions were faster when the visual cue was in register with the tactile stimulation. This effect was absent when identical visual events were presented on a non-body control stimulus, suggesting a body specific mechanism for interpersonal registration of purely sensory events. Similar interpersonal systems have been demonstrated previously for the coding of action and emotion, but we believe that our results provide the first behavioural evidence for interpersonal body representation at the purely sensory level. We show that a sensory processing mechanism specific for bodies is automatically activated when viewing another person. Interpersonal body representation may be an important precursor to empathy and theory of mind. In our social world, we understand the percepts of others by registering them against the representations used to perceive our own body, and this mechanism involves an interpersonal somatotopic map.     

Taxometric Investigation of PTSD: data from two nationally representative samples

Current psychiatric nosology depicts posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a discrete diagnostic category. However, only one study has examined the latent structure of PTSD, and this study suggested that PTSD may be more accurately conceptualized as an extreme reaction to traumatic life events rather than a discrete clinical syndrome. To build on the existing literature base, the present research examined the latent structure of posttraumatic stress reactions by applying three taxometric procedures (MAXEIG, MAMBAC, and L-Mode) to data collected from large nationally representative samples of women (ns = 2684 and 3033) and adolescents (n = 3775). Results consistently provided evidence for a dimensional PTSD solution across samples and statistical procedures. These findings have important implications for the theory, assessment, and investigation of posttraumatic stress reactions.     

Enhancing the transfer of computer-assisted training proficiency in geographically distributed teams

The authors examined factors that determine whether knowledge gained from computer-assisted (i.e., technology-based) team training in a geographically distributed team (GDT) context transfers to organizational results. They examined the moderating effects of team trust, technology support, and leader experience on the relation between teams' average individual training proficiency on a computer-assisted (i.e., CD-ROM-based) training program and team performance as assessed by team customer satisfaction ratings. Using data collected from 40 GDTs in a high-technology company, the authors found that the relation between teams' average training proficiency and team performance was complex and moderated by several factors. In particular, teams' average training proficiency had a positive association with customer satisfaction when GDTs were higher, rather than lower, in both trust and technology support and when team leaders had longer, rather than shorter, levels of tenure with their specific team.