Treatment recommendations for mentally disordered offenders: More than roulette?

Clinical judgments on the treatability and prognosis of mentally disordered offeenders (MDO) may strongly influence legal dispositions and the availability of treatment resources. This study examined 1,238 discharge summaries for MDOs referred for court assessments. Psychiatrists evidenced marked variability in how often they recommended treatment and how frequently they judged patients to have a poor prognosis. Two logit analyses suggested that diagnosis and consultation by other clinicians were associated with (a) treatment recommendations (i.e., Axis I diagnosis and social work consultations) and (b) prognosis (i.e., Axis II diagnosis and psychology consultations).     

Common response processing and psychological refractoriness

This experiment examined whether structural considerations, that is the functional closeness of limb control centres (Kinsbourne and Hicks 1978), have a role to play in common processing models of psychological refractoriness. A typical double stimulation paradigm was used (Kantowitz 1974). On experimental trials, subjects responded with the right hand (RT1) to an auditory signal (0.80 probability). After a varied interstimulus interval (ISI) of 100, 200, 300 or 700 msec, one of three lights corresponding to one of the other limbs provided the signal for the second response (RT2). Control trials for RT1 and RT2 involved both stimuli, but subjects were required to make only one response. Results indicated that experimental RT1 was lengthened considerably over control values. While typical double stimulation effects were found at short ISIs, that is RT2 was lengthened, RT2 at long ISIs was actually faster than double stimulation control values. Although the RT results were not in a pattern that would be predicted by functional distance (Kinsbourne and Hicks 1978), within subject correlations of RT1 and RT2 by limb condition suggest that structural considerations may have a role to play. While within subject correlations were positive at all levels of ISI, they decreased as the interval between the two signals increased. The implications of these results for common processing models are discussed.     

PROCESS PHILOSOPHY, SOCIAL THOUGHT, AND LIBERATION THEOLOGY

Abstract. This essay sets forth the decisive notions and postulates of process philosophy in Process Philosophy and Social Thought , edited by John B. Cobb, Jr. and W. Widick Schroeder. After commenting on the circumstances in which process philosophy came to be a major option among philosophical theologians, I provide some amplification of those notions and postulates. Then, selecting material from the eighteen articles in the volume, I offer several critical assessments of the process viewpoint and its relation to science and to the contemporary call for liberation.     

Computer workstations: Explorations in human and machine cognition

Professional and scientific work will increasingly be conducted at computer workstations. An expert-system adaptive interface is one method for supporting learning and raising productivity of workstation activities. A prototype application for an adaptive interface is described in terms of machine intelligence, needs, design philosophy, and cognitive research. The intelligent interface prototype includes the operator’s psychometric profile, prior performance history, and a current keystroke performance stack within a conventional expert system. Productions in the form of conditionals between the operator’s keystrokes and three types of commands to the underlying software are described and illustrated. Commands entered, syntax errors, excessive repetition of keystrokes, and skill level are used to detect the user’s intentions and accordingly modify the display and command structure of the underlying software. Determining human intentions to produce machine adaptation to individual users is not a trivial task. Efforts to develop a powerful and general adaptive interface pose significant problems, and success cannot be assured without intensive cognitive research.     

Item Variances and Median Splits: Some Encouraging and Reassuring Findings

ABSTRACT The article by Bissonnette, Ickes, Bernstein, and Knowles (1990) presented in this issue contains a series of simulations which vary widely in the degree to which they resemble the parameters that have been found in actual data. Their conclusions feature warnings based on simulations containing large confounds between trait extremity and item variance. In real data, however, the corresponding confounds typically have been small. When Bissonnette et al. used appropriately small confounds in their simulations, their results showed that median split techniques failed to inflate Type I error rates. The constructive implications of Bissonnette et al.'s simulations indicate that moderator-variable researchers should always perform a simple check for range restriction and for variance-extremity confounds, and that there is no danger of spurious conclusions as long as these checks conform to what has typically been found with real data.