Acoustic Distinctions in the Speech of Male Psychopaths

A key feature of psychopathy is the ability to deceive, manipulate, and con the unwary, while seeming to be perfectly sincere. Is this impression of sincerity achieved solely through body gestures and facial expression, or is there also something different about the voice quality of psychopaths? We analyzed the acoustic characteristics of speech in 20 male offenders (10 psychopaths and 10 nonpsychopaths), assessed with the Psychopathy Checklist—Revised (Hare, 1991). We used a computer program developed by Alpert, Merewether, Homel, Martz, and Lomask (1986) to measure variations in amplitude and prosody. Results indicated that psychopaths spoke more quietly than controls and did not differentiate, in voice emphasis, between neutral and affective words. These findings are consistent with the developing view that psychopaths are insensitive to the emotional connotations of language. In addition, their vocal characteristics may be part of a self-presentation mode designed to manipulate and control interpersonal interactions.     

Memory for Faces and Objects by Deaf and Hearing Signers and Hearing Nonsigners

The memory of 11 deaf and 11 hearing British Sign Language users and 11 hearing nonsigners for pictures of faces of and verbalizable objects was measured using the game Concentration. The three groups performed at the same level for the objects. In contrast the deaf signers were better for faces than the hearing signers, who in turn were superior to the hearing nonsigners, who were the worst. Three hypotheses were made: That there would be no significant difference in terms of the number of attempts between the three groups on the verbalizable object task, that the hearing and deaf signers would demonstrate superior performance to that of the hearing nonsigners on the matching faces task, and that the hearing and deaf signers would exhibit similar performance levels on the matching faces task. The first two hypotheses were supported, but the third was not. Deaf signers were found to be superior for memory for faces to hearing signers and hearing nonsigners. Possible explanations for the findings are discussed, including the possibility that deafness and the long use of sign language have additive effects.     

Symmetry and Belief Revision

This paper continues the recent tradition of investigating iterated AGM revision by reasoning directly about the dynamics for total pre-order (“implausibility ordering”) representations of AGM revision functions. We reorient discussion, however, by proving that symmetry considerations, almost by themselves, suffice to determine a particular, AGM-friendly implausibility ordering dynamics due to Spohn 1988, which we call “J-revision”. After exploring the connections between implausibility ordering dynamics and the social choice theory of Arrow 1963, we provide symmetry arguments in the social choice-theoretic framework for an interesting generalization of J-revision due to Nayak 1994. We conclude by arguing that the symmetry principles that uniquely favor J-revision and its generalizations are importantly expressive of the purely qualitative framework for representing beliefs that distinguishes the AGM program. Our results therefore comprehensively vindicate Spohn's 1988 conjecture that essentially J-revision is the best that can be done by way of a purely qualitative model of belief revision. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

SUPERVISING PROFESSIONAL COUNSELORS

Practical problems in supervision of counselors stem from personality differences and differences in theoretical viewpoints. A survey of current literature on counselor supervision together with personal experiences as a supervisor of counselors, lead to certain conclusions for handling the situations which may arise.     

Appropriateness measurement: Review,critique and validating studies

The test-taking behaviour of some examinees may be so unusual that their test scores cannot be regarded as appropriate measures of their ability. Appropriateness measurement is a model-based approach to the problem of identifying these test scores. The intuitions and basic theory supporting appropriateness measurement are presented together with a critical review of earlier work and a series of interrelated experiments. We conclude that appropriateness measurement techniques are robust to errors in parameter estimation and robust to the presence of unidentified aberrant examinees in the test norming sample. In addition, the frequently criticized ‘three-parameter logistic’ latent trait model was found to be adequate for the detection of spuriously low scores in actual test data.     

The coding of constrained and preselected movement distance: Same-limb versus switched-limb reproduction

Three experiments were conducted to investigate the codes subserving the retention of movement extent information. Each experiment compared preselected and constrained movements in two independent movement tasks: same-limb reproduction and switched-limb reproduction. When movement direction was the same for both criterion and reproduction movements (experiment 1), same-limb reproduction was more accurate than switched-limb performance. With movement direction altered, however, switched-limb reproduction was equal to same-limb reproduction (experiment 2). These results were confirmed in experiment 3 which manipulated both movement direction and reproduction limb in a within-subject design. Furthermore, while preselected reproduction was superior to constrained reproduction in all three experiments, the two groups were not differentially affected by either the movement task or direction variables. The overall findings were interpreted as providing support for a multiple-cue memorial representation of movement extent and the notion of coding flexibility.     

The origins of fear of snakes

In the present study, a questionnaire about the nature and origin of fear of snakes was administered to 60 Phobic, 82 Low Fear and 35 High Fear college students. Phobic and High Fear subjects reported greater fear on a variety of components of snake fear. There was little evidence supporting the role of direct conditioning experiences in the acquisition of fear of snakes. Rather, the results suggested a variety of observational and instructional learning experiences as related to the acquisition of snake fear. Although preparedness for direct conditioning does not seem relevant, a preparedness for observational and instructional learning is possible.