When meaning is useless

The aim of this study is to disentangle the relative contribution of semantic and phonological representation in immediate serial recall. Indeed, short-term memory (STM) performance could be enhanced by familiarity with the phonological form of the word only or together with semantic information. Participants learned two sets of words in an unknown language: for one set they acquired both phonology and semantics, while for the other only phonology. After that, they performed two immediate serial recall tasks involving either “phonology and semantics” or “only phonology” words and one with untrained words. The analyses showed that the trained lists did not differ from each other, while they did from the untrained one. These data confirm that familiarity with the phonological form is sufficient for immediate serial recall. Therefore, we argue that semantics is not required for verbal STM, but knowledge of the phonological form is what matters.     

White‐Collar Criminals: The ‘Kinder,Gentler’ Offender?

Even though white‐collar criminals (WCCs) cause financial damage and, at times, emotional and physical harm to individuals, organisations, and consumers, their crimes are viewed as being less harmful than street‐level crimes. Misperceptions that WCCs commit financial crimes because of a temporary moral lapse that represents an ‘out of character’ act for the offender still permeate the criminal justice system and academic venues. Yet, research shows that WCCs may display a pattern of criminal thinking that parallels street‐level offenders coupled with the same behavioural traits that serve as risk factors for offences to occur. Furthermore, the belief that WCCs are non‐violent is misguided, as there is a subgroup of WCCs who are willing to resort to violence, namely homicide, to prevent their fraud schemes from being discovered and revealed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Spatial patterns of Indian serial burglars with relevance to geographical profiling

Earlier studies in Western countries have shown remarkably consistent spatial patterns in serial offenders, mainly for serious crimes notably serial killing and rape, but also (although with less clear patterns) for burglary. The universality of such spatial patterns are of theoretical interest in contributing to our understanding of criminal spatial behaviour and have practical significance for the possibility of using geographic profiling in developing countries. As such, burglars in India provide a particularly interesting test of the generality of the observed spatial consistencies. Information was therefore obtained on the offence location choices of 30 burglars, committing 150 offences in the Rourkela and Keonjhar districts of India. The home to crime distances were compared with those from developed countries, revealing similar but slightly shorter distances. In addition, the domocentricity of criminal spatial activity, reflected in the ‘marauder’ model (Canter & Gregory 1994) was tested through examination of the Canter Circle hypothesis, the mean interpoint distances (as they related to average distances from home), and the home base ‘search costs’ using a geographical profiling system (Dragnet). Overall the study found that the spatial patterns of the sample of Indian Burglars were not very different from their counterparts in the UK, North America and Australia, showing that the areas in which an offender is active tend to be shaped by, and, relatedly, close to, where he or she lives, irrespective of the part of the world in which this is. These results suggest that geographical profiling systems such as Dragnet would be productively used on the Indian sub‐continent. The results also contribute to our understanding of possible universalities in offender spatial behaviour. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The use of a linkage analysis as evidence in the conviction of the Newcastle serial murderer,South Africa

The linking of a series of crimes to one individual has always been problematic, especially in the absence of eyewitness or forensic evidence. During the investigation, another means whereby this can be done is through linkage analysis. Yet a linkage analysis can also play a role during the trial of a serial offender. This paper examines the use of a linkage analysis report as evidence during the trial of the Newcastle serial murderer in South Africa. The linkage analysis examined the circumstances of the crime, modus operandi, and signature behaviour of the offender, to come to the conclusion that all the offences were committed by one individual, despite the lack of eyewitness or forensic evidence linking the suspect to two of the four incidents. This evidence was admitted by the court and the presiding officer concurred that the accused was guilty of committing the crimes during the third and fourth incidents. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Visual Hebb repetition effects survive changes to both output order and concurrent articulation*

Building upon the work of Guerrette, Guérard, and Saint-Aubin [(2017). The role of overt language production in the Hebb repetition effect. Memory and Cognition, 45(5), 792–803. doi:10.3758/s13421-017-0693-4], we examine the effect of output order on the visual Hebb repetition effect. We limit opportunities for forward recall at test by using a novel positional recall procedure, employing non-verbal visual stimuli, and requiring participants to undertake concurrent articulation (CA). During encoding, participants received sequences of six unfamiliar-faces. Every third sequence, participants received the same faces in the same serial order (the Hebb sequence). At test, participants were required to either select the faces in their order of original presentation (SR) or recall the serial position of each individually re-presented face tested in a randomised order (PR). For both recall conditions, and following CA, the Hebb repetition effect persisted, demonstrating that the Hebb repetition effect is not dependent upon forward recall.     

Behavioural linking of stranger rapes

A sample of serial stranger rape cases ( n = 43) that had occurred in Finland during the years 1983–2001 were studied with the objectives being to: (a) describe the characteristics of the offenders; (b) explore the structure of serial rape; and (c) demonstrate behavioural linkage through an analysis of the offenders' crime scene behaviour using both multidimensional scaling (MDS) and discriminant function analysis (DFA). The material was content analysed with regard to the occurrence of a number of dichotomous variables. The inter‐relationships of the variables was studied using MDS. The analysis revealed two previously identified major modes of interaction with the victim: involvement and hostility. Employing MDS and DFA, it was shown that the offences of different offenders were distinguishable in terms of variation between the offences of different offenders and consistency within the offences of a single offender. Using DFA, the classification accuracy clearly exceeds that expected by chance, and 25.6% of the cases were classified without any error. The results are discussed in relation to their practical utility and previous studies. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Serial homicide: an investigation of behavioural consistency

To examine if serial homicide offenders are consistent across their crimes, a model was developed empirically that could be used to distinguish between crimes that were instrumental and those that were expressive. The first known three offences in each series of 69 US serial homicides committed by 23 offenders, were examined and the instrumental and expressive themes determined. Three models were then explored that test for consistency across these themes. The most liberal model was found to classify all of the offences effectively and to reveal complete consistency across the three crimes for all offenders. The implications of these results for offender profiling and further study of serial homicide are discussed. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

项目突显方式对视觉搜索策略的影响

搜索策略是将视觉注意导引到目标最可能出现位置的直接认知控制。本研究采用眼动跟踪技术与视觉搜索时间——鼠标点击时间的分离技术,探讨计算机视觉界面不同项目突显方式下的搜索策略问题。结果表明：（1）有无项目突显方式、不同的突显有效性水平,被试采用了导向式和序列式两种不同的搜索策略;（2）被试采用导向式搜索策略时,被试在第一个感兴趣区域首注视点百分比小于58.3％,在视觉搜索过程中的注视点数量明显较小、扫视轨迹长度和注视时间明显较少;（3）被试采用序列式搜索策略时,被试在第一个感兴趣区域首注视点百分比大于58.3％,在视觉搜索过程中的注视点数量明显较多、扫视轨迹长度和注视时间明显较长;（4）采用导向式的视觉搜索策略能显著减少被试的视觉搜索时间,提高视觉搜索的绩效,但不能显著减少被试的鼠标点击时间;（5）因为视觉界面上突显的设置改变了用户的搜索策略,所以提高了视觉搜索绩效。