From therapeutic jurisprudence...to jurisprudent therapy

For nearly a decade, "therapeutic jurisprudence" (TJ) has provided a theoretical framework within which legal rules, legal procedure, and legal roles are analyzed in terms of their therapeutic, neutral, or antitherapeutic effects. This article proposed "jurisprudent therapy" (JT), an extension of the TJ model, as a context for analyzing mental health science, mental health practice, and mental health roles in terms of their "jurisprudent," neutral, or "antijurisprudent" effects. The JT perspective neither supplants nor supersedes TJ; rather, it mirrors and augments an established process for interdisciplinary contrast, comparison, and integration. Just as an empathic and evolving legal system provides psychological benefits, so does a legally informed and juridically compatible progression of social science promote principles of justice and human freedom. Consideration of these two complementary models in tandem yields an array of brainstorming devices, to synergistic effect, with heuristic implications for teaching, research, and service delivery.     

Capital juror questionnaires in death-penalty cases: A study of attitudes,denials, and deceptions

The Sixth Amendment right to an “impartial jury” should guarantee fundamental fairness that in capital cases may literally be a matter of life and death. For ecological validity, the current study focuses on capital jury questionnaires (CJQs) employed in actual death-penalty cases. Study I examined 248 undergraduates and their responses to death-penalty relevant questions. As an MTurk investigation, Study II consisted of 259 community members potentially eligible for capital trial jury trials. Misrepresentations were operationalized as either denials (concealing their true views) or outright deceptions (dissembling the opposite viewpoint). Both studies found that CJQ items were very susceptible to both types of misrepresentation, irrespective of support-life or support-death views. Nearly 30% of undergraduates openly acknowledged that they would misrepresent close to half their CJQ responses. Overall, community members were much more willing to engage in denials and outright deceptions. The discussion focuses on how CJQs could be improved to promote candor about death-penalty views.     

Investigating the Effects of Repeated Miranda Warnings: Do They Perform a Curative Function on Common Miranda Misconceptions?

In Miranda v. Arizona (1966), the Supreme Court of the United States required that custodial suspects be apprised of their Constitutional rights against self‐incrimination. The Court could not have anticipated the rampant popularization of Miranda warnings in subsequent movies and television dramas. Influenced by public media, many arrestees assume that they already “know” their rights, with no awareness of their misconceptions. The current investigation examines whether repeated exposures to Miranda warnings performs any “curative” function (i.e., dispelling common Miranda misconceptions held by pretrial defendants). The accumulative effects of five different Miranda warnings were tested over a several‐hour period on 260 detainees. For the nearly half (113 or 43.5%) with three or more misconceptions, improvement (i.e., ≥2 fewer misconceptions) occurred for only 35 defendants. Predictably, this improved group also tended to display a better understanding of Miranda‐relevant vocabulary words and a better recall of the administered Miranda warnings than their unimproved counterparts. On average, the improved group also performed better on general measures of intelligence, and listening and reading comprehension, while still evidencing substantial cognitive deficits. The curative function of Miranda advisements is considered in light of these findings. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Perceived responsibility for learning,self-efficacy,and sources of self-efficacy in mathematics: a study of international baccalaureate primary years programme students

The purpose of this study was to assess the interrelationship of elementary students’ perceived responsibility for learning, self-efficacy, and sources of self-efficacy in mathematics, and differentiation as a function of gender and grade level. Participants in this study included 442 third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade students from U.S. International Baccalaureate schools. Self-report measures were used to assess key study variables. Students in grade five reported higher levels of mathematics self-efficacy and perceived responsibility for learning than those in grade three. Grade four students also reported higher levels of perceived responsibility than grade three students. In addition, regression results revealed that mastery experience, vicarious experience, social persuasion, and physiological state accounted for a significant amount of variance in students’ mathematics self-efficacy, with social persuasion being the strongest predictor. Educational implications for practice within the context of International Baccalaureate schools are discussed.