Actuarial Criminology: Meeting Current Challenges in Southern Africa

South African prisons were overcrowded by more than sixty-three percent in 2005. Overcrowding and poor prison conditions have enormous implications for rehabilitation efforts made by the South African Department of Correctional Services. The South African White Paper on Corrections (2005) commits the Department of Correctional Services to provide needs-based rehabilitation processes and a framework of continuous evaluation to measure the impact and success of such processes. It also acknowledges that monitoring the rates of recidivism is a critical indicator of the success, the effectiveness of needs-based rehabilitation, and improved service. A reliable system for monitoring recidivism will have to be developed and put in place. In this respect, actuarial criminology can make a vital contribution. This article poses a strategic alternative to the correctional industry in Southern Africa that can be used for the realization of correctional ideals, especially where retribution and overcrowding are still the main features of correctional institutions.     

Logic Games are Complete for Game Logics

Game logics describe general games through powers of players for forcing outcomes. In particular, they encode an algebra of sequential game operations such as choice, dual and composition. Logic games are special games for specific purposes such as proof or semantical evaluation for first-order or modal languages. We show that the general algebra of game operations coincides with that over just logical evaluation games, whence the latter are quite general after all. The main tool in proving this is a representation of arbitrary games as modal or first-order evaluation games. We probe how far our analysis extends to product operations on games. We also discuss some more general consequences of this new perspective for standard logic.     

Self‐perceived competence,learning conceptions and preferred learning situations in the domain of communication

Background: An important purpose of education in the field of social work is the development of social‐communicative competence and students' individual learning theories (ILTs) concerning this domain. Aims: Our first aim was to develop diagnostic instruments for ILT assessment and to understand the relationships between ILT variables. Our second purpose was to study the differences in ILT variables between students of three study years. Samples: A total of 396 full‐time social work students participated in this study: 176 first‐year, 147 second‐year and 73 fourth‐year students (92% women and 8% men). Method: Based on a theoretical framework, three questionnaires have been constructed, covering three ILT variables: self‐perceived competence, learning conceptions and preferred learning situations. For scale construction, principal component analyses and reliability analyses were conducted. ANOVAs and post hoc comparisons of means were used to investigate cross‐sectional differences regarding ILT variables. Pearson correlations and regression analyses were performed to gain more insight into the relationships between ILT variables. Results: Five aspects of self‐perceived competence, four learning conceptions and five preferred learning situations were found. Learning conceptions and self‐perceived competencies were found to be predictors of students' preferred learning situations. Many differences were found between the three groups of students, especially between the first‐year students and the others. Conclusions: When studying the acquisition of social‐communicative competence, it is important to take students' individual learning theories into account. Increased insight into the role ILTs play can be of help in improving social work education.     

Inconsistencies in extensive games

In certain finite extensive games with perfect information, Cristina Bicchieri (1989) derives a logical contradiction from the assumptions that players are rational and that they have common knowledge of the theory of the game. She argues that this may account for play outside the Nash equilibrium. She also claims that no inconsistency arises if the players have the minimal beliefs necessary to perform backward induction. We here show that another contradiction can be derived even with minimal beliefs, so there is no paradox of common knowledge specifically. These inconsistencies do not make play outside Nash equilibrium plausible, but rather indicate that the epistemic specification must incorporate a system for belief revision. Whether rationality is common knowledge is not the issue.     

Confounding of Big Five Personality Assessments in Emotional Disorders by Comorbidity and Current Disorder

Foremost cross‐sectional studies of personality in common mental disorders show similar Big Five trait profiles [i.e. high neuroticism (N), low conscientiousness (C) and low extraversion (E)]. It remains undecided whether this lack of distinct personality profiles is partly due to comorbidity among disorders or contamination by current state. Using data from the Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety, we investigated 1046 participants with panic disorder (PD), social anxiety disorder (SAD) and/or major depressive disorder (MDD) and 474 healthy controls. Personality traits at baseline and two‐year follow‐up were assessed with the NEO‐Five Factor Inventory. The Composite International Diagnostic Interview was used to determine the presence of emotional disorders at baseline and at two‐year follow‐up; the Life Chart Interview determined symptom severity in the month prior to baseline and during follow‐up. By analysing pure cases and investigating the effects in remitted cases, PD participants were found to be higher in N, but not lower in E and C than controls. Pure PD participants were also lower in N and higher in E than SAD and MDD participants. Both SAD and MDD participants were characterized by high levels of N and low levels of E, irrespective of comorbidity or current disorder state. Future studies should be more attentive to confounding of personality profiles by comorbidity and state effects. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Investigating reasoning in maternity-care scheduling

How do expert schedulers reason? One view states that experts generally reason by applying rules; another, that their reasoning is mainly based on cases. This paper constitutes the first results of an ongoing project designed to analyze the acquisition and representation of the knowledge of expert and novice schedulers in the context of these two views. It is concluded that the reasoning of the analyzed maternity-care scheduling experts can best be described as based on rules, and that the reasoning of novices in maternity-care scheduling is primarily case based.     

Immunizing Strategies and Epistemic Defense Mechanisms

An immunizing strategy is an argument brought forward in support of a belief system, though independent from that belief system, which makes it more or less invulnerable to rational argumentation and/or empirical evidence. By contrast, an epistemic defense mechanism is defined as a structural feature of a belief system which has the same effect of deflecting arguments and evidence. We discuss the remarkable recurrence of certain patterns of immunizing strategies and defense mechanisms in pseudoscience and other belief systems. Five different types will be distinguished and analyzed, with examples drawn from widely different domains. The difference between immunizing strategies and defense mechanisms is analyzed, and their epistemological status is discussed. Our classification sheds new light on the various ways in which belief systems may achieve invulnerability against empirical evidence and rational criticism, and we propose our analysis as part of an explanation of these belief systems’ enduring appeal and tenacity.     

When love is not blind: rumination impairs implicit affect regulation in response to romantic relationship threat

The present research examined how rumination influences implicit affect regulation in response to romantic relationship threat. In three studies, the disposition to ruminate impaired the ability to maintain positive feelings about the romantic partner in the face of explicit or implicit reminders of relationship threatening events. In Study 1, a high disposition to ruminate was correlated with impaired down-regulation of negative feelings toward the partner in response to a hurtful relationship incident. Two follow-up studies manipulated relationship threat explicitly through an experiential recall procedure (Study 2) or implicitly through a subliminal evaluative-conditioning procedure (Study 3). In both studies only individuals with low disposition to ruminate were able to ward off negative feelings and maintain positive feelings toward the partner. These findings illuminate the role of implicit affect regulation in the context of relationship threat-and how it is inextricably connected with the processes underlying rumination.