Juror Selection: A Comparison of Two Methods In Several Criminal Cases1

Ethical and constitutional issues have been raised by critics concerning the intervention of social science methods in the voir dire, pretrial, screening of prospective jurors. An experiment was conducted to compare the effectiveness of conventional jury selection methods utilized by attorneys (past experience, intuition, folklore) vs. systematic social science methods (systematic identification of predictive relationships among personality, demographic, and attitudinal variables). The comparison was made over four separate criminal cases. The data indicated that in cases in which the predictive relationships used by the systematic social science methods were relatively strong, this method is superior to the conventional method in predicting favorable jurors' responses. The more intuitive conventional niethod was superior when the critical predictive relationships were weak or absent. Overall, the systematic social science method was not superior to the conventional method. Issues of ecological validity and pretrial discovery rules were discussed.     

Voluntary eyeblinks disrupt iconic memory

In the present research, we investigated whether eyeblinks interfere with cognitive processing. In Experiment 1, the participants performed a partial-report iconic memory task in which a letter array was presented for 106 msec, followed 50, 150, or 750 msec later by a tone that cued recall of onerow of the array. At a cue delay of 50 msec between array offset and cue onset, letter report accuracy was lower when the participants blinked following array presentation than under no-blink conditions; the participants made more mislocation errors under blink conditions. This result suggests that blinking interferes with the binding of object identity and object position in iconic memory. Experiment 2 demonstrated that interference due to blinks was not due merely to changes in light intensity. Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated that other motor responses did not interfere with iconic memory. We propose a new phenomenon, cognitive blink suppression, in which blinking inhibits cognitive processing. This phenomenon may be due to neural interference. Blinks reduce activation in area V1, which may interfere with the representation of information in iconic memory.     

Is depression best viewed as a continuum or discrete category? A taxometric analysis of childhood and adolescent depression in a population-based sample

The authors examined the latent structure of depression in a population-based sample of children and adolescents. Youth's self-reports and parents' reports of the youth's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.; DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) major depressive symptoms were assessed via a structured clinical interview. The authors used Meehl's (1995) taxometric procedures to discern whether youth depression is dimensional or categorical. Taxometric analyses that explicitly took into account the skewness of depressive symptoms suggested that depression is a dimensional, not categorical, construct. The dimensional structure of depression was obtained for all of the DSM-IV major depressive symptoms as well as for different domains of depression (emotional distress symptoms and vegetative, involuntary defeat symptoms), youth and parent reports, and different subsamples (i.e., boys vs. girls and younger vs. older youth).     

Developing Effective Prevention Services for the Real World: A Prevention Service Development Model

A Prevention Service Development Model (PSDM) is presented as an approach to develop prevention programs that are both effective and that are readily adopted for implementation in community settings. The model is an integration of concepts and methods from two fields, prevention research and marketing research as applied to new service development. Questions that are posed at each stage of the PSDM are described. Studies from the development of two preventive interventions are presented to illustrate research at several of the stages of the model.     

The association of paternal mood and infant temperament: A pilot study

Maternal depression is associated with adverse child development, but little is known about the effects of paternal depression. This pilot study estimated the prevalence of paternal depression and mood state, and assessed the relationship between paternal mood and infant temperament. The participants in the study were 98 fathers of newborn babies. Fathers were initially screened for depressed mood (Hospital anxiety and depression scale, and Edinburgh postnatal depression scale), and at 6 months parental mood, infant temperament, couple relationship quality, alcohol use, adverse life events, parenting, and demographics were recorded. Infant fussiness was analysed in relation to paternal mood and other contextual factors using multiple regression. Of the 98 fathers, 48 (49%) completed depression-screening measures. Of these 48 fathers, 4 (8%) reported depressive symptoms above the cut-off for case definition. A total of 48% (N=19) completed measures at follow-up. In the adjusted model, higher paternal depression scores, more traditional attitudes towards fathering, and increased recent life events were related to higher infant fussiness scores; and better couple relationship quality was related to lower fussiness scores. This study showed that 1 in 12 fathers had depressed mood, and lower mood was associated with negative infant temperament. Since the findings of this feasibility study were based on a small sample size the association of paternal mood and child development merits further study using a larger sample of fathers.     

Relating social skills and social media use to consumer behavior: An investigation across the autism spectrum

In this study, we focus on the role of social functioning on consumer behavior, exploring social media use as a mediating factor. In order to facilitate our identification of social functioning competence as a factor, we increased the range by including a subgroup of respondents who identified themselves as being on the autism spectrum. Indeed, this group stood out as having difficulties in getting along with persons they interact with at school, at work and at home. We used these measures to define an individual differences index of social functioning that we call Quality of Social Functioning (QoSF). In a preliminary report, we showed that this index was predictive of social media use and its influence, with those scoring higher reacting more favorably and utilizing more of its features. In the main study, we focused on the content of social media posts by providing photos of posts that depicted either group activities or individual activities. Those scoring lower on our index gave lower ratings of posts in general, but especially for those posts depicting group activities. Results are discussed in terms of the important role of social functioning in the use of social media and its content as a vehicle for informing consumer behavior. We describe how the results of our study and related studies can be used by marketers to improve the lives of especially vulnerable consumers.     

Self-regulation as a moderator of the relation between coping and symptomatology in children of divorce

Investigated the effects of self-regulation as a moderator of the relations between coping efforts and psychological symptoms of children of divorce. The interactions of two dimensions of self-regulation (task orientation and approach-flexibility) and two dimensions of coping (active and avoidant) predicting children's postdivorce symptoms were tested using a sample of 199 divorced mothers and their children, ages 8 to 12. The approach-flexibility dimension moderated the relations of both active and avoidant coping with children's self-report of anxiety. At higher levels of approach-flexibility, active coping was negatively related to anxiety, while at lower levels of approach-flexibility, active coping was unrelated to anxiety. Avoidant coping was un-related to anxiety at higher levels of approach-flexibility, whereas at lower levels of approach-flexibility, avoidant coping was positively related to anxiety. The task orientation dimension did not interact with coping, but had direct, independent effects on children's self-report of conduct problems, depression, and parent-report of internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. The implications for understanding children's coping with divorce and future directions for research are discussed.Support for this research was provided by NIMH Grants P50-MH39246 to support a Preventive Intervention Research Center at Arizona State University and 5-T32-MH18387 for Post- and Pre-doctoral Training in Prevention Research at Arizona State University. The authors thank Leona Aiken, Jane Bernzweig, and Wendy Kliewer for their contributions to this project.     

Narrative competence and constructive developmental theory: A proposal for rewriting theBildungsroman in the postmodern world

Some of the chief characteristics of the narrative psychology of Bruner, Polkinghorne, Sarbin, Freeman, Howard, and White and Epston are outlined with implications for therapy discussed. Narrative psychology is then related to some current models of adult development, including those of Kegan, Perry, Belenky, Labouvie-Vief, Levinson, Basseches, and Pascual-Leone. Types of narrative competence are discussed and an argument is made that developmental readiness for narrative must be considered if narrative approaches are going to be applied. Different types of narrative approaches are shown to be indicative of particular developmental stages. The social relativism of narrative psychology is addressed and it is argued that developmental models provide a scheme for assessing the maturity of alternative narrative constructions.