Residential mental health assessment within Dutch criminal cases: a discussion

In Dutch criminal cases in which doubts arise about the defendant's mental health, a forensic assessment will be requested. This is provided either by the multidisciplinary staff of residential clinics who conduct forensic evaluations for the court, or by mental health professionals contracted on a part-time basis by district courts. This article discusses the procedures applied in such cases as well as the relevant legal provisions. It focuses particularly on the clinical observation, evaluation, and reporting that is carried out over a number of weeks in the residential setting of the Pieter Baan Centrum. Specific attention is paid to procedures applied in this clinic. It is suggested that Dutch procedures for the use of mental health expertise can best be characterized by three aspects: multidisciplinary observation and reporting, the use of a sliding scale for indicating degree of responsibility, and, finally, the involvement and payment of experts by the state as such, rather than by the prosecution and/or the defense. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Michael Novak on the existence of God

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion -     

When people fall from grace: reconsidering the role of envy in Schadenfreude

Previous research yielded conflicting results concerning the role of envy in predicting Schadenfreude (pleasure at another's misfortune). Some studies showed that envy predicts Schadenfreude, whereas others did not. Results of the present research reconcile these opposing findings, by showing that envy is a predictor of Schadenfreude when the target is similar to the observer in terms of gender. These results suggest that envy predicts Schadenfreude when people are confronted with the misfortune of a relevant social comparison other.     

The environment influences whether high-fat foods are associated with palatable or with unhealthy

This study investigated whether relatively automatic evaluations of food differ between situations and between obese people and lean controls. These evaluations were assessed in the affective priming paradigm (APP) -- a response latency based measure for associations. In Experiment 1, we either focused participants (33 obese and 26 lean controls) on the palatability (restaurant condition) or on the healthiness (health condition) of food, prior to the APP. Independent of weight-status, relatively automatic evaluations of food were based on palatability in the restaurant condition, and on health in the health condition. So, the current focus of attention can shape the way foods are evaluated relatively automatically. In Experiment 2, craving was induced in participants (27 obese and 29 lean controls). Unexpectedly, the craving induction did not achieve its goal of focusing on the palatability of food in general, but just for low-fat foods, possibly because of the health-emphasizing environment -- a hospital. Interestingly, obese people showed a stronger palatability priming effect with increasing levels of initial craving. For normal weight controls the effect was in the same direction, but missed significance. In our environment, palatability of food may be too salient, and health may not be salient enough, influencing automatic food-evaluations.     

Social development from infancy to adolescence: longitudinal and concurrent factors in an adoption sample

In the present longitudinal study, early adopted children (N = 160) were followed from infancy to adolescence to assess the influence of previous and concurrent factors on the children's social development. This study allowed for more conclusive evidence of the influence of early and concurrent rearing experiences and temperament on adolescents' social development, independent of shared genetic factors between children and parents. Results showed that social development and temperament were stable over time and that both previous and current parental sensitivity were important in predicting social development in adolescence. Quality of the early parent-child relationship was indirectly associated with social development in adolescence through the influence on social development in middle childhood. Maternal sensitivity in middle childhood and in adolescence partly buffered the negative effects of difficult temperament on social development in adolescence. Adaptation emerged as the product of both developmental history and current circumstances.     

Con-fusing contours & pieces of glass

We present a new illusory display in which illusory contours are misaligned with physical contours. In these displays, illusory Kanizsa squares, induced by the so-called pacmen, are positioned on top of a background grid of bars. The misalignment of the illusory contours with respect to physical contours of the grid of bars induces an overall 'restless' appearance and evokes the impression that parts of the grid within the illusory square are shifted. To test this impression, we created stimuli in which illusory squares were superimposed on a grid at different positions, where the grid could consist of either straight bars or indented bars. After briefly flashing these stimuli, observers reported indentations of the background grid for those cases in which physical and illusory contours were misaligned. In a control condition, the pacmen were replaced by crosses (not inducing an illusory square) at the same positions; as expected much less illusory shifts were reported in this condition. In a second experiment, we further tested the direction of the perceived shifts, revealing similar trends as in the first experiment and a consistent result with respect to the reported direction of the shifts. We explore and discuss possible underlying mechanisms with regard to our illusory display.     

Introduction to Michotte's heritage in perception and cognition research

Several decades after Michotte's work was published, it continues to inspire current research in perception, cognition, and beyond. In this special issue we pay tribute to this heritage with a collection of empirical and theoretical papers on amodal completion and the perception of causality, two areas of research within which Michotte's work and ideas have had a lasting influence. As a background to better understand the remaining papers, we briefly sketch Michotte's life and work and the scope (in breadth and in depth) of his impact. We then review Michotte's seminal contributions to the areas covered in this special issue, some of the major research discoveries and themes in the intervening decades, and the major open questions and challenges we are still facing. We also include a sneak preview of the papers in this special issue, noting how they relate to Michotte's work and to each other. This review shows both how much influence Michotte has had on contemporary perception and cognition research, and how much important work remains to be done. We hope that the papers in this special issue will serve both to celebrate Michotte's heritage in this respect, and to inspire other investigators to continue the projects he began.     

Associations between the developmental trajectories of visual scanning and disengagement of attention in infants

The relation between the developmental trajectories of visual scanning and disengagement of attention and gaze were examined throughout early infancy. A sample of 10 infants carried out a scanning and a disengagement task with the same visual stimuli six times between 6 and 26 weeks of age. Frequency and latency measures were analyzed using multivariate multilevel models and Monte Carlo analyses. The results suggest that the ability to scan a face or an abstract stimulus evolves slightly earlier than the ability to shift gaze to a newly appeared target in the periphery. This is consistent with the account that the parvocellular stream becomes functional slightly before the magnocellular stream. The study revealed no indications of a positive association between the development of scanning and disengagement on the level of the individual infant. Scanning and disengagement change scores contrasted more with one another than could be expected on the basis of chance. This implies that the magnocellular and the parvocellular stream develop rather independently up to the age of 26 weeks.     

New reflections on visual search: Interitem symmetry matters!

A 90 degrees rotation of a display can turn a relatively easy visual search into a more difficult one. A series of experiments examined the possible causes of this effect, including differences in overall item shape and response mapping (Experiment 1), the interpretation of scene lighting (Experiment 2), the axis of internal symmetry of the search items (Experiment 3), and the axes of interitem symmetry between target and distractor items (Experiment 4). Only the elimination of differences in interitem mirror symmetry resulted in equal search efficiency in the upright and rotated displays. This finding is strong support for the view that visual search is guided by an analysis that considers interitem relations.