Mosaic trisomy 20 and mitigation in capital crimes sentencing: A review and case report

Trisomy 20 is a genetic abnormality in which individuals have an extra copy of chromosome 20. Complete trisomy 20 is rare and believed to be incompatible with life. A mosaic form of trisomy 20, in which only some cells or tissues contain the extra chromosome, is a relatively commonly encountered chromosomal abnormality found during prenatal testing, and c. 90% result in a normal phenotype. However, despite the absence of a consistent phenotype, certain findings have been reported across multiple cases of mosaic trisomy 20. These include an array of morphological findings, developmental delays, and learning disabilities. Beyond physical manifestations, a wide range of developmental and learning delays have also been reported. In this work, we provide an overview of the trisomy 20 literature and a case report of a young adult male with mosaic trisomy 20 who committed homicide. His developmental and life history, eventual diagnosis of mosaic trisomy 20, similarities and differences in his condition compared with prior research findings, and potentially new phenotypic findings associated with trisomy 20 that he manifested (childhood visual hallucinations, self‐injury, polydactyly) are presented. Additionally, the potential role of this genetic diagnosis in his neuropsychiatric history and its successful application as a mitigating factor at his capital sentencing trial are described. We did not identify other similar cases during our search of major scientific and legal databases. As a backdrop, the use of genetics in criminal trials is on the rise, and courts are increasingly likely to accept behavioral genetics evidence; therefore, it is crucial that the legal system is well acquainted with the opportunities and limitations of these approaches.     

Manipulation of responsibility in non-clinical subjects: does expectation of failure exacerbate obsessive-compulsive behaviors?

An exaggerated sense of responsibility is currently considered as the ground for the obsessive-compulsive disorder. Obsessive-like behaviors, such as hesitations and checks, may be induced in non-clinical subjects by increasing perceived responsibility (i.e., perceived personal influence on negative outcomes). In line with Salkovskis' proposal [The cognitive approach to anxiety: threat beliefs, safety-seeking behavior, and the special case of health anxiety and obsessions, in: P.M. Salkovskis (Ed.), Frontiers of Cognitive Therapy, Guilford, New York], we tested the hypothesis that reduced coping abilities (i.e., an exaggerated expectation of failure) are another effectual factor contributing to obsessive-like behaviors. We examined 47 normal volunteers in a visuo-spatial memory task, and manipulated their perceived personal influence and expectation of failure by giving differential instructions and feedback about their performance. Increase of perceived personal influence induced slowness, hesitations and checks without enhancing performance. Expectation of failure exacerbated obsessive-like behaviors, again without affecting performance. These results confirm the role of responsibility in obsessive-like behavior and indicate that reduced coping abilities may contribute to worsen dysfunctional strategies.     

How to hit Scylla without avoiding Charybdis: comment on Perruchet, Tyler, Galland, and Peereman (2004)

M. Pe?a, L. L. Bonatti, M. Nespor, and J. Mehler argued that humans compute nonadjacent statistical relations among syllables in a continuous artificial speech stream to extract words, but they use other computations to determine the structural properties of words. Instead, when participants are familiarized with a segmented stream, structural generalizations about words are quickly established. P. Perruchet, M. D. Tyler, N. Galland, and R. Peereman criticized M. Pe?a et al.'s work and dismissed their results. In this article, the authors show that P. Perruchet et al.'s criticisms are groundless.     

Empirical indistinguishability: From the knowledge structure to the skills

Recent literature has pointed out that the basic local independence model (BLIM) when applied to some specific instances of knowledge structures presents identifiability issues. Furthermore, it has been shown that for such instances the model presents a stronger form of unidentifiability named empirical indistinguishability, which leads to the fact that the existence of certain knowledge states in such structures cannot be empirically tested. In this article the notion of indistinguishability is extended to skill maps and, more generally, to the competence-based knowledge space theory. Theoretical results are provided showing that skill maps can be empirically indistinguishable from one another. The most relevant consequence of this is that for some skills there is no empirical evidence to establish their existence. This result is strictly related to the type of probabilistic model investigated, which is essentially the BLIM. Alternative models may exist or can be developed in knowledge space theory for which this indistinguishability problem disappears.     

Down But Not Yet Out: Depression,Political Efficacy,and Voting

Depression is one of the most common health problems in the developed world. Previous research has primarily investigated the relationship between depression and voting, largely overlooking its cognitive foundations. We turn to political efficacy as a key political attitude and precondition for political engagement. We build on research into the cognitive aspects of depression to construct arguments linking depression, political efficacy, and voting. Using cross-sectional (European Social Survey) and longitudinal (U.K. Household Longitudinal Study) data, we find evidence for a negative relationship between depression and political efficacy, that depression reduces external but not necessarily internal political efficacy, and for an accumulation effect of depression on (external) political efficacy. We also show that political efficacy is a crucial mechanism for the depression–voting gap. Our research has important implications for political representation.     

Children's use of conversational rules in a referential communication task

Three experiments investigating first-grade children's comprehension, of referentially ambiguous messages are reported. In the first one children were shown to interpret a literally ambiguous message by means of the strategy based on the conversational Maxim of Antecedent rather than that based on the more appropriate Maxim of Quantity. The results of the second experiment suggest that the Maxim of Quantity can be used by children, provided the situation is quite simple; they also suggest that after having used such a maxim in a simple situation, children can apply it in a more complex situation. This generalization to new situations, however, is not a mere perseveration since, as shown in the third experiment, children can adjust their comprehension strategy to the situation requirements. The results are discussed with reference to the recent proposals on referential ambiguity and children communication failures.     

The motor way: Clinical implications of understanding and shaping actions with the motor system in autism and drug addiction

To understand others’ minds is crucial for survival; however, it is quite puzzling how access to others’ minds can be—to some extent—direct and not necessarily mediated by conceptual reasoning. Recent advances in neuroscience have led to hypothesize a role for motor circuits not only in controlling the elementary physical features of movement (e.g., force, direction, and amplitude), but also in understanding and shaping human behavior. The concept of “motor cognition” refers to these aspects, and neurophysiological, neuroimaging, and behavioral studies in human and nonhuman primates support this view. From a clinical perspective, motor cognition represents a challenge in several domains. A thorough investigation of the neural mechanisms mediating motor action/intention understanding and automatized/compulsive behaviors seems to be a promising way to tackle a range of neurodevelopmental and drug-related disorders. On the one hand, anomalies in motor cognition may have cascade effects on social functioning in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD); on the other, motor cognition may help explain the pathophysiology of drug-seeking and drug-taking behaviors in the most severe phase of drug addiction (i.e., see drug dependence, motor low-order cue reactivity). This may represent a promising approach that could improve the efficacy of rehabilitative interventions. The only way to shed light on multifactorial disorders such as ASD and drug addiction is through the investigation of their multiple factors. This motor way can promote new theoretical and experimental perspectives that would help bridge the gap between the basic neuroscience approach and clinical practice.     

Improving academic attitudes among ethnic minority youth at risk for early school leaving: the interactive effects of cross‐group friendships and ethnic identity

A growing body of research suggests that positive interethnic experiences enhance academic attitudes among ethnic minority youth. A number of studies also show that minority youth with an achieved ethnic identity have better academic attitudes and performance. Integrating these literatures, we aim to verify the combined effects of cross‐group friendships and ethnic identity on academic attitudes among a sample of youth at risk for early school leaving. The results showed that cross‐group friendships had a positive impact on academic attitudes for minority youth, but not for majority youth. However, individual levels of ethnic identity moderated these effects, which held true for minority youth with higher levels of ethnic identity. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Outgroup prejudice and perceptions of prosocial intergroup behaviors

How people perceive outgroup prosocial behaviors is an important but under‐researched aspect of intergroup relations. In three experiments conducted in two cultural contexts (Italy and Kosovo) and with two different populations (adolescents and adults; N = 586), we asked participants to imagine being offered help by an outgroup versus ingroup member. Participants attributed fewer prosocial motives to and were less willing to accept help from the outgroup (vs. ingroup) member. This was particularly true for highly prejudiced participants and when the outgroup was described negatively. Participants' perceptions of the outgroup helper's prosocial motives and expected quality of the interaction with the helper mediated the effect of helper's group membership on willingness to accept the help (Experiment 3). We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings for intergroup relations.     

Stabilizing Quantum Disjunction

Since the appearance of Prior’s tonk, inferentialists tried to formulate conditions that a collection of inference rules for a logical constant has to satisfy in order to succeed in conferring an acceptable meaning to it. Dummett proposed a pair of conditions, dubbed ‘harmony’ and ‘stability’ that have been cashed out in terms of the existence of certain transformations on natural deduction derivations called reductions and expansions. A long standing open problem for this proposal is posed by quantum disjunction: although its rules are intuitively unstable, they pass the test of existence of expansions. Although most authors view instabilities of this kind as too subtle to be detected by the requirement of existence of expansions, we first discuss a case showing that this requirement can indeed detect instabilities of this kind, and then show how the expansions for disjunction-like connectives have to be reformulated to rule out quantum disjunction. We show how the alternative pattern for expansions can be formulated for connectives and quantifiers whose rules satisfy a scheme originally developed by Prawitz and Schroeder-Heister. Finally we compare our proposal with a recent one due to Jacinto and Read.