The consistency of inconsistency in serial homicide: patterns of behavioural change across series

Linkage analysis is a crucial part of the investigative process when faced with a possible series of related offences. Establishing behavioural consistency (i.e., offender's behaviours consistently present across the series) is at the core of linkage. Recent empirical studies have found little evidence of consistency looking at either individual or groups of behaviours in serial homicide. It is argued that behavioural changes are rooted in the changing cognitive strategies that offenders use to reach their ultimate goal (i.e. the commission of multiple homicides). Factors that could account for these changes include learning, situational factors, loss of control, and changes in the offender's fantasy. Patterns of behavioural change have been identified in serial crimes, such as rape. However, no empirical studies have looked at patterns of behavioural change in serial homicide. The present study examined patterns of consistency and change using a combination of thematic and behavioural subgroup approaches that use Multidimensional Scaling. Thematic differentiation indicative of behavioural manifestations of cognitive strategies was found in all three examined subgroups: planning, wounding, and offender–victim interaction, and patterns of change within these subgroups provided support for the above theories. Looking at behavioural patterns rather than individual behaviours, may be a more fruitful way of examining consistency in serial homicide, and could have significant implications for linkage analysis. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Autonomic activity, pain, and perceived health in patients on sick leave due to stress-related illnesses

Objective: The aim of the present study was to compare autonomic activity, pressure-pain thresholds, and subjective assessments of health and behavior between patients with stress-related illnesses and healthy control subjects.Methods: Twenty sick-listed patients with stress-related illnesses and 20 age- and gender-matched healthy subjects performed tests of autonomic regulation and algometric tests, and completed questionnaires about physical and mental health and behavioral patterns.Results: Patients exhibited higher autonomic reactivity to cognitive and physical laboratory tasks (p<0.05), and had lower pressure-pain thresholds in the shoulders and lower back than healthy control subjects (p<0.05). Furthermore, the patients rated considerably poorer health and health behavior than the control subjects (p<0.05).Conclusions: The results indicate an engagement of the autonomic nervous system in stress-related illnesses. Furthermore, they show that patients with stress-related illnesses experience symptoms of musculoskeletal pain, and it is therefore recommended that assessments of musculoskeletal pain be incorporated in the clinical examinations and the rehabilitation of patients with stress-related illnesses.     

Sensitivity to amplitude envelope rise time in infancy and vocabulary development at 3 years: A significant relationship

Here we report, for the first time, a relationship between sensitivity to amplitude envelope rise time in infants and their later vocabulary development. Recent research in auditory neuroscience has revealed that amplitude envelope rise time plays a mechanistic role in speech encoding. Accordingly, individual differences in infant discrimination of amplitude envelope rise times could be expected to relate to individual differences in language acquisition. A group of 50 infants taking part in a longitudinal study contributed rise time discrimination thresholds when aged 7 and 10 months, and their vocabulary development was measured at 3 years. Experimental measures of phonological sensitivity were also administered at 3 years. Linear mixed effect models taking rise time sensitivity as the dependent variable, and controlling for non‐verbal IQ, showed significant predictive effects for vocabulary at 3 years, but not for the phonological sensitivity measures. The significant longitudinal relationship between amplitude envelope rise time discrimination and vocabulary development suggests that early rise time discrimination abilities have an impact on speech processing by infants.     

Finding words and rules in a speech stream: functional differences between vowels and consonants

We have proposed that consonants give cues primarily about the lexicon, whereas vowels carry cues about syntax. In a study supporting this hypothesis, we showed that when segmenting words from an artificial continuous stream, participants compute statistical relations over consonants, but not over vowels. In the study reported here, we tested the symmetrical hypothesis that when participants listen to words in a speech stream, they tend to exploit relations among vowels to extract generalizations, but tend to disregard the same relations among consonants. In our streams, participants could segment words on the basis of transitional probabilities in one tier and could extract a structural regularity in the other tier. Participants used consonants to extract words, but vowels to extract a structural generalization. They were unable to extract the same generalization using consonants, even when word segmentation was facilitated and the generalization made simpler. Our results suggest that different signal-driven computations prime lexical and grammatical processing.     

Maternal provision of structure in a deliberate memory task in relation to their preschool children's recall

Strategic remembering emerges gradually during the preschool years. Socialization practices, specifically mother–child social interactions, might provide the foundation for the development of skills necessary for effective organization of information in memory. In the current study, 48 mothers and their 40-month-olds were engaged in the process of remembering (i.e., study and recall) categorically related picture stimuli in a laboratory context. Children’s recall was reliably predicted by the way in which mothers structured both the study and recall periods of the deliberate memory task. Specifically, maternal verbal and physical behaviors that focused on organization of items, such as sorting items into distinct groups and providing the name of a category, were most beneficial in supporting children’s memory. Moreover, some mothers employed a number of different mnemonic techniques that emphasized categorical connections among items, suggesting systematic approaches in the manner in which mothers help children to learn effective ways of remembering.     

Husserl's Theory of Language as Calculus Ratiocinator

This paper defends an interpretation of Husserl's theory of language, specifically as it appears in the Logical Investigations, as an example of a larger body of theories dubbed 'language as calculus'. Although this particular interpretation has been previously defended by other authors, such as Hintikka and Kusch, this paper proposes to contribute to the discussion by arguing that what makes this interpretation plausible are Husserl's distinction between the notions of meaning-intention and meaning-fulfillment, his view that meaning is instantiated through meaning-intending acts of transcendental consciousness, and his view that the content of meaning-intending acts is ideal meaning simpliciter. As well, the paper argues that the phenomenological method of reduction itself presupposes the notion that reality as such can be reached by subtracting the influence of the language of the natural attitude and its ontological commitments and it, thus, presupposes the conception of language as a reinterpretable calculus.     

Beliefs in Conspiracies

This study used canonical correlation to examine the relationship of 11 individual difference variables to two measures of beliefs in conspiracies. Undergraduates were administered a questionnaire that included these two measures (beliefs in specific conspiracies and attitudes toward the existence of conspiracies) and scales assessing the 11 variables. High levels of anomie, authoritarianism, and powerlessness, along with a low level of self-esteem, were related to beliefs in specific conspiracies, whereas high levels of external locus of control and hostility, along with a low level of trust, were related to attitudes toward the existence of conspiracies in general. These findings support the idea that beliefs in conspiracies are related to feelings of alienation, powerlessness, hostility, and being disadvantaged. There was no support for the idea that people believe in conspiracies because they provide simplified explanations of complex events.