Understanding pretrial publicity: predecisional distortion of evidence by mock jurors

Prejudicial pretrial publicity (PTP) constitutes a serious source of juror bias. The current study examined differences in predecisional distortion for mock jurors exposed to negative PTP (N-PTP) versus nonexposed control participants. According to work by K. A. Carlson and J. E. Russo (2001), predecisional distortion occurs when jurors bias new evidence in favor of their current leading party (prosecution or defense) rather than evaluating this information for its actual probative properties. Jury-eligible university students (N=116) acted as jurors in a mock trial. Elevated rates of guilty verdicts were observed in the N-PTP condition. Predecisional distortion scores were significantly higher in the N-PTP condition and reflected a proprosecution bias. The effect of prejudicial PTP on verdict outcomes was mediated by predecisional distortion in the evaluation of testimony. Results are discussed in relation to motivated decision making and confirmation biases.     

Visual estimation of spatial requirements for locomotion in novice wheelchair users

Locomotion using a wheelchair requires a wider space than does walking. Two experiments were conducted to test the ability of nonhandicapped adults to estimate the spatial requirements for wheelchair use. Participants judged from a distance whether doorlike apertures of various widths were passable or not passable. Experiment 1 showed that participants underestimated the spatial requirements for wheelchair use but overestimated the spatial requirements for walking. Experiment 2 showed that their underestimation improved but was not completely eliminated after 8 days of practice passing through apertures. Analyses of wheelchair performance in the practice condition showed that the underestimation may have arisen from misperception of the positions of the hands when the participants were grasping the wheelchair hand-rims. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Comorbidity in compulsive hoarding: a case report

A 56-year-old male presented with compulsive hoarding along with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and schizotypal personality disorder. Hoarding has been described as difficult to treat both pharmacologically and behaviorally, and this patient's comorbid conditions also contributed to his overall impairment. The patient's treatment regimen of fluvoxamine, amphetamine salts, and risperidone, along with behavioral therapy, has helped with hoarding behaviors, motivation, procrastination, and increased socialization. Hoarding may be a unique subtype of obsessive-compulsive disorder with poorer prognosis and distinct neuroanatomic dysfunction. Augmentation with stimulants may provide benefits in aspects of hoarding such as procrastination, especially in patients with comorbid attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.     

Government initiatives in autism clinical trials

Randomized clinical trials remain the most valid method of testing the efficacy and safety of treatments. While efforts to elucidate the genetic and neurodevelopmental bases of autism are underway, clinicians and families are in need of scientifically valid information on how to best treat patients with autism. The effectiveness of many interventions currently used in communities has not been adequately tested. Given the high public health relevance of autism treatment research and the low interest of the pharmaceutical industry in autism, the role of the National Institutes of Health in supporting this research is paramount. Among recently launched initiatives in autism clinical trials, there are the Research Units on Pediatric Psychopharmacology Autism Network and the network of centers for Studies to Advance Autism Research and Treatment. These and other government activities in the area of autism clinical trials are here briefly reviewed.     

Impact of recent findings on study design of future autism clinical trials

There are specific challenges to studying the design of pharmacologic trials in child/adolescent and adult autism, such as subject stratification and parallel versus crossover designs. This article describes how optimal study design is influenced by subject selection and outcome measures chosen. Lessons learned in study design from the Research Units on Pediatric Psychopharmacology Autism Network trial with risperidone, Seaver Center trials with fluoxetine and valproate, Dartmouth trials with amantadine, and National Institutes of Health secretin trials are highlighted. The Internet System for Assessing Autistic Children system for managing multicenter clinical trials in autism and statistical issues in autism research are also described.     

Accurate referential communication and its relation with private and social speech in a naturalistic context

Research into human communication has been grouped under two traditions: referential and sociolinguistic. The study of a communication behavior simultaneously from both paradigms appears to be absent. Basically, this paper analyzes the use of private and social speech, through both a referential task (Word Pairs) and a naturalistic dyadic setting (Lego-set) administered to a sample of 64 children from grades 3 and 5. All children, of 8 and 10 years of age, used speech that was not adapted to the decoder, and thus ineffective for interpersonal communication, in both referential and sociolinguistic communication. Pairs of high-skill referential encoders used significantly more task-relevant social speech, that is, cognitively more complex, than did low-skill dyads in the naturalistic context. High-skill referential encoder dyads showed a trend to produce more inaudible private speech than did low-skill ones during spontaneous communication. Gender did not affect the results.     

Auditory-oral matching behavior in newborns

Twenty-five newborn infants were tested for auditory-oral matching behavior when presented with the consonant sound /m/ and the vowel sound /a/ - a precursor behavior to vocal imitation. Auditory-oral matching behavior by the infant was operationally defined as showing the mouth movement appropriate for producing the model sound just heard (mouth opening for /a/ and mouth clutching for /m/), even when the infant produced no sound herself. With this new dependent measure, the current study is the first to show matching behavior to consonant sounds in newborns: infants showed significantly more instances of mouth opening after /a/ models than after /m/ models, and more instances of mouth clutching after /m/ models than after /a/ models. The results are discussed in the context of theories of active intermodal mapping and innate releasing mechanisms.