Demonstrating detail in investigative interviews—An examination of the DeMo technique

Attaining an uninterrupted free report (FR) is at the heart of best practice investigative interviewing guidance. However, witnesses/victims do not naturally provide detailed accounts. Techniques have been developed to counter-act this, such as a report everything (RE) instruction. This research examined the relative effectiveness of an addition to the RE component, a demonstration of the level of detail, using a behavioural exemplar, by describing an innocuous object; the Demonstration for More detail (DeMo) technique. Participants (N = 61) watched a mock crime video and asked to recall it using one of three instructions: (a) basic FR as the control, (b) RE instruction and (c) RE instruction plus DeMo technique. Participants who were given the DeMo technique recalled more details than both the control and RE groups. Accuracy rates were similarly high across all conditions. The implications of using the DeMo technique within an investigative interview are discussed.     

The effect of social comparison information on the life satisfaction of frail older persons

In this study, the authors examined the effects of social comparison on the life satisfaction of 455 community-dwelling older persons. These older persons were confronted with a fictitious interview with either an upward or a downward target. After downward comparison, older persons felt more satisfied with their lives than after upward comparison, especially those who had higher levels of frailty. These effects were only found with lower levels of identification. Apparently, downward comparison only serves its self-enhancing function on life satisfaction among frail older persons when they perceive the comparison target as different from themselves.     

Why God Has Left the Netherlands: Explanations for the Decline of Institutional Christianity in the Netherlands Between 1966 and 2015

Why has the Netherlands witnessed such a strong process of secularization? This article examines this process very extensively. Based on modernization theory, it follows several social cultural developments in Dutch society over the last 50 years and distinguishes between effects on the individual level as well as on the level of society. We are able to do so because of rich data availability, derived from micro‐level longitudinal surveys (God in the Netherlands, Social and Cultural Developments in the Netherlands) enriched with macro‐level statistics (Statistics Netherlands). With this integrated approach, we provide explanatory insights into the transition of the Netherlands from a predominant Christian nation to a predominant secular nation. Our analysis clearly shows that macro‐level educational expansion has affected this process of secularization in the Netherlands, supplemented with the increase in social security, as a so‐called cohort effect. Moreover, the long‐term effect of Christian socialization is waning; Dutch people who were raised in a religious way increasingly lapse later in their life.     

Dampening of positive affect prospectively predicts depressive symptoms in non-clinical samples

Past research has convincingly shown that a ruminative response style to negative affect (NA) predicts concurrent and prospective levels of depressive symptoms. Recent findings suggest that how people respond to positive affect (PA) might also be involved in the development of depressive symptoms, although this has heretofore not been tested prospectively. Participants from two non-clinical samples (total N=487) completed measures of depressive symptoms, response styles to NA (negative rumination) and response styles to PA (positive rumination and mood dampening) at two assessments separated by a 3-month (Sample 1) and 5-month period (Sample 2). Results in both samples showed that increased dampening responses to PA predict depressive symptoms at follow-up, even when taking into account baseline depressive symptoms and ruminative responses to NA. The results suggest that (dampening) responses to PA add useful information above and beyond (ruminative) responses to NA in predicting depression symptoms prospectively.     

Depressed mood mediates the relationship between rumination and intrusions

Research suggests that rumination is a causal factor for intrusive memories. These are disturbing autobiographical memories that pop into one's mind involuntarily, spontaneously, and repetitively. A three‐wave longitudinal study was conducted to replicate this finding and to test whether one route via which rumination leads to (an increase in) intrusive memories is via depressed affect. Secondary school students (n = 72) filled out self‐report questionnaires measuring their level of rumination, depressive symptoms (DS), and intrusive memories. These were administered at three different points, with 3 weeks in between each measurement. Two types of rumination were measured, that is, depressive rumination and rumination in response to intrusions. Both bootstrapping analyses and cross‐lagged analyses yielded evidence for DS as a partial mediator of the relationship between rumination and intrusion frequency. Both depressive rumination and rumination about the content of intrusive memories seemed to be maladaptive: They may exacerbate negative emotions, which in turn trigger intrusive memories. Ruminative thinking also directly led to (an increase in) intrusive memories. These findings might suggest that people suffering from intrusive memories may benefit not only from therapies directly aimed at reducing intrusions but also from therapies aimed at reducing rumination and DS.     

Quantum logic as a dynamic logic

We address the old question whether a logical understanding of Quantum Mechanics requires abandoning some of the principles of classical logic. Against Putnam and others (Among whom we may count or not E. W. Beth, depending on how we interpret some of his statements), our answer is a clear “no”. Philosophically, our argument is based on combining a formal semantic approach, in the spirit of E. W. Beth’s proposal of applying Tarski’s semantical methods to the analysis of physical theories, with an empirical–experimental approach to Logic, as advocated by both Beth and Putnam, but understood by us in the view of the operational- realistic tradition of Jauch and Piron, i.e. as an investigation of “the logic of yes–no experiments” (or “questions”). Technically, we use the recently-developed setting of Quantum Dynamic Logic (Baltag and Smets 2005, 2008) to make explicit the operational meaning of quantum-mechanical concepts in our formal semantics. Based on our recent results (Baltag and Smets 2005), we show that the correct interpretation of quantum-logical connectives is dynamical, rather than purely propositional. We conclude that there is no contradiction between classical logic and (our dynamic reinterpretation of) quantum logic. Moreover, we argue that the Dynamic-Logical perspective leads to a better and deeper understanding of the “non-classicality” of quantum behavior than any perspective based on static Propositional Logic.     

Logics of Informational Interactions

The pre-eminence of logical dynamics, over a static and purely propositional view of Logic, lies at the core of a new understanding of both formal epistemology and the logical foundations of quantum mechanics. Both areas appear at first sight to be based on purely static propositional formalisms, but in our view their fundamental operators are essentially dynamic in nature. Quantum logic can be best understood as the logic of physically-constrained informational interactions (in the form of measurements and entanglement) between subsystems of a global physical system. Similarly, (multi-agent) epistemic logic is the logic of socially-constrained informational interactions (in the form of direct observations, learning, various forms of communication and testimony) between “subsystems” of a social system. Dynamic Epistemic Logic (DEL) provides us with a unifying setting in which these informational interactions, coming from seemingly very different areas of research, can be fully compared and analyzed. The DEL formalism comes with a powerful set of tools that allows us to make the underlying dynamic/interactive mechanisms fully transparent.     

Experiencing (Im)potentiality: Bollnow and Agamben on the Educational Meaning of School Practices

This article explores the uses of Agamben’s philosophy for understanding the educational meaning of practices that typically take/took place at school, such as the collective rehearsal of the alphabet or the multiplication tables. More precisely, I propose that these forms of ‘practising’ show what schooling, as a particular and historically contingent institution, is all about. Instead of immediately assessing the ‘practice of practising’ in terms of learning outcomes, I turn to Bollnow’s attempt to analyze this phenomenon in a substantially educational way, which for him essentially consists in opposing practising and learning. I show that his analysis is superficial and that we need Agamben’s notion of ‘potentiality’ in order to come to grips with the sense of this phenomenon. This will allow to see that practising concerns an uncommon way to relate to a subject matter that makes possible a transformation of individual and collective existence. The main objective of this investigation is not to hold a plea for reintroducing obsolete pedagogical methods, but to rethink the very meaning of education.     

Prevalence and Nature of Spiritual Distress Among Palliative Care Patients in India

In palliative care research, little attention has been paid to the empirical study of spirituality in patients in non-Western countries. This study describes the prevalence and nature of spiritual distress among Indian palliative care patients. Data from 300 adult cancer patients who had completed a questionnaire with 36 spirituality items were analyzed. Spirituality was shaped by the Indian religious and economic context. A latent class analysis resulted in three clusters: trustful patients (46.4 %), spiritually distressed patients (17.4 %), and patients clinging to divine support (36.2 %). After regression, the clusters were found to be associated with pain scores (p < .001), gender (p = .034), and educational level (p < .006). More than half of the patients would benefit from spiritual counselling. More research and education on spirituality in Indian palliative care is urgently required.     

Tailoring the Mode of Information Presentation: Effects on Younger and Older Adults' Attention and Recall of Online Information

Previous studies have mainly focused on tailoring message content to match individual characteristics and preferences. This study investigates the effect of a website tailored to individual preferences for the mode of information presentation, compared to 4 nontailored websites on younger and older adults' attention and recall of information, employing a 5 (condition: tailored vs. text, text with illustrations, audiovisual, combination) × 2 (age: younger [25–45] vs. older [≥65] adults) design (N = 559). The mode‐tailored condition (relative to nontailored conditions) improved attention to the website and, consequently, recall in older adults, but not in younger adults. Younger adults recalled more from nontailored information such as text only or text with illustrations, relative to tailored information.