Adult Recidivism in United States: A Meta-Analysis 1994–2015

In 2014, adult correctional systems supervised an estimated 6.8 million individuals in the United States with 1 in 36 adults (or 2.8%) being under some form of correctional supervision. Unfortunately, not only are the number of individuals connected to the correctional system and the outlined disparities based on minority status worrisome, there is also the persistent concern of repeat offending. Given the fact that the most recent comprehensive meta-analysis examining predictors of adult offender was published in 1996, a current systematic review and meta-analysis focusing on United States samples of all types of re-offense is necessary for identifying current predictors of adult recidivism with U.S. studies from 1994 through 2015. Specifically, the questions addressed in this meta-analysis include (a) which attributes predict general, sexual, and violent recidivism for adults in the American justice system, and (b) are some characteristics more influential than others? We determined the following domains are statistically significant predictors of recidivism: age (r?=?.02), antisocial personality scales (r?=?.13), criminogenic needs (r?=?.10), distress (r?=?.06), family criminality (r?=?.18), family rearing (r?=?.16), gender (r?=?.19), history of antisocial behavior (r?=?.12), risk scales (r?=?.17), social achievement (r?=?.05), and substance abuse (r?=?.07). Implications are provided.     

Evaluation of the Effects of Prescribing Gait Complexity Using Several Fluctuating Timing Imperatives

Abstract

Variability in the temporal structure of gait patterns, measured by “Fractal Index” (FI), is thought to represent abundancy of movement patterns facilitating adaptive control of walking. However we do not know how FI changes according to different walking rhythms or if this is repeatable, as needed to exploit the paradigm for rehabilitation. Fourteen healthy young adults synchronised heel contact to an auditory metronome twice each in four conditions (uncued, white noise, pink noise, and red noise) and three sessions. FI differed based on the walking condition while no effect of session was revealed. The results of this study suggest gait fractality changes systematically with different stimuli and can be consistently prescribed in a desired direction within a group of healthy young individuals.     

Hemisphere differences in the mood state-dependent effect for recognition of emotional faces

Forty subjects viewed 10 pictures of facial expressions of emotion while they experienced a happy mood and 10 pictures while they experienced a sad mood. Later, while re-experiencing either a happy or sad mood, they were tested for recognition of these 20 target pictures intermixed with 20 distractors. Recognition of the 10 pictures seen earlier in a disparate mood was impaired significantly when they were presented at testing to the right hemisphere, but not when presented to the left. The right hemisphere appears to store the subject's mood as an integral part of a memory representation for an emotionally expressive face. When that face is presented at testing to the right hemisphere, recognition depends on whether the subject's test mood matches the mood stored in the representation. In contrast, the left hemisphere appears to store the subject's mood separately from encoded visual information about a face, and so recognition of a face presented at testing to the left hemisphere is unaffected by changes in mood.