Sentencing Convicted Juvenile Felony Offenders in the Adult Court: The Direct Effects of Race

While research indicates that Black and Hispanic adults sentenced in the criminal court tend to be rendered more severe punishments than their White counterparts, only one prior study has examined whether this finding holds for juveniles tried in the adult system. The findings from this sole study need replication, however, since the effects posed by trial type were not taken into account and it is likely that the results are confounded by measurement error resulting from overlap in criminal sentencing. The current study addressed these issues by assessing whether race has a direct impact on waived juveniles being criminally sentenced to restitution, probation, or jail. Data were derived from a secondary, cross‐sectional national dataset on felony juvenile offenders convicted in the adult system. Three hypotheses were tested. After controlling for a number of important legal and extra‐legal predictors of sentencing, race differences in sentencing outcomes were observed and the findings yielded partial support for the hypotheses. The implications of the research are noted. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mood, motivation, and misinformation: aging and affective state influences on memory

Normative age differences in memory have typically been attributed to declines in basic cognitive and cortical mechanisms. The present study examined the degree to which dominant everyday affect might also be associated with age-related memory errors using the misinformation paradigm. Younger and older adults viewed a positive and a negative event, and then were exposed to misinformation about each event. Older adults exhibited a higher likelihood than young adults of falsely identifying misinformation as having occurred in the events. Consistent with expectations, strength of the misinformation effect was positively associated with dominant mood, and controlling for mood eliminated any age effects. Also, motivation to engage in complex cognitive activity was negatively associated with susceptibility to misinformation, and susceptibility was stronger for negative than for positive events. We argue that motivational processes underlie all of the observed effects, and that such processes are useful in understanding age differences in memory performance.     

The illusion of the positive: The impact of natural and induced mood on older adults' false recall

ABSTRACT Recent research suggests that affective and motivational processes can influence age differences in memory. In the current study, we examine the impact of both natural and induced mood state on age differences in false recall. Older and younger adults performed a version of the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM; Roediger & McDermott, 1995 , Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 21, 803) false memory paradigm in either their natural mood state or after a positive or negative mood induction. Results indicated that, after accounting for age differences in basic cognitive function, age-related differences in positive mood during the testing session were related to increased false recall in older adults. Inducing older adults into a positive mood also exacerbated age differences in false memory. In contrast, veridical recall did not appear to be systematically influenced by mood. Together, these results suggest that positive mood states can impact older adults' information processing and potentially increase underlying cognitive age differences.     

Metacognition, risk behavior, and risk outcomes: the role of perceived intelligence and perceived knowledge.

The present study explores 2 key variables in social metacognition: perceived intelligence and perceived levels of knowledge about a specific content domain. The former represents a judgment of one's knowledge at an abstract level, whereas the latter represents a judgment of one's knowledge in a specific content domain. Data from interviews of approximately 8,411 female adolescents from a national sample were analyzed in a 2-wave panel design with a year between assessments. Higher levels of perceived intelligence at Wave 1 were associated with a lower probability of the occurrence of a pregnancy over the ensuing year independent of actual IQ, self-esteem, and academic aspirations. Higher levels of perceived knowledge about the accurate use of birth control were associated with a higher probability of the occurrence of a pregnancy independent of actual knowledge about accurate use, perceived intelligence, self-esteem, and academic aspirations.