Crime and amnesia: A review

The present article reviews amnesia for criminal offenses. It discusses the organic disorders most likely to be implicated, and the nature and differentiation of psychogenic amnesia. With the exception of alcohol and drug intoxication, organic dysfunction is a rare (though important) cause of amnesia for crime. Likewise, fugue states may occasionally be triggered by an offence, but are a very rare cause of the amnesia claimed by offenders. Amnesia is most commonly seen in homicide cases, in which it is claimed by 25% to 45% of offenders, but it occurs also in other types of violent crime, and occasionally in nonviolent crime. It arises in states of extreme emotional arousal, in alcoholic intoxication, and in states of florid psychosis; and it is also associated with depressed mood. Various methods have been advocated for the differentiation of genuine amnesia from deliberate simulation: this distinction can be difficult, but it is noticeable that many amnesic subjects either have reported the crime themselves or have made no attempt to conceal it. The nature of the deficit in this type of amnesia, and its implications for assessment, are also discussed.     

Certification and Licensure Issues

Certification and licensure are important credentials for counselors. In less than 25 years, licensure laws on counseling have been passed in 41 states and the District of Columbia. Although much progress has been made regarding certification and licensure, all is not bliss. A reaction to certification and licensure issues is provided.     

Directionally different expectancy theory predictions of work motivation and job satisfaction

Conventionally, expectancy theory has utilized a multiplicative combination of expectancy and value scores in predicting both job behavior (work motivation and job performance) and job-related affect (job satisfaction). An extensive clinical literature, however, suggests that affect is a function of the discrepancy between expectancies and values. Hence, two hypotheses were advanced and tested in organizational settings: (1) that the multiplicative formulation (EV) will yield superior predictions of work motivation and job performance in comparison to the discrepancy model (E-V), (2) that the discrepancy model (E-V) will yield superior predictions of job satisfaction in comparison to the multiplicative model (EV). Results from three studies (of 399 engineers, 202 librarians, and 1,777 engineers) were highly supportive of both hypotheses.An early version of this paper was presented at the 10th Annual National Meeting of the American Institute for Decision Sciences, November 1, 1978, and an abbreviated write-up appeared in the AIDSProceedings. The author is greatly indebted to the following people: Susanne P. Wahba, for allowing the use of her data (Study Two); Gene Dalton and Paul Thompson, for their contribution to the research in Study One; and Joe Folkman for his help with the data analysis in Study Three. Financial support was provided in part by the Research Foundation of the City University of New York (RF10662).     

Psychological stages of careers in engineering: An expectancy theory taxonomy

Expectancy and value scores from 376 engineers were used to develop a taxonomy of nine psychological categories, these being differentially related to motivation and satisfaction. Static and longitudinal analyses (over 4 years) revealed significant relationships between age, prior category, and organizational reward practices, on the one hand, and the distribution and movement of respondents across categories, on the other. Results suggested a dynamic, three-stage psychological model of careers in engineering.     

Travel: a long-range goal of retired women

The authors surveyed retired persons (predominately women) with regard to their immediate, intermediate, and long-range activities following retirement. As predicted, leisure travel emerged as a frequent long-range goal for persons retired more than 5 years. The travel activity preferences of long-retired older women present challenges and opportunities to both researchers and marketers. Length of trips and frequency of trips have been predicted from regression models, with trip length in particular being well predicted by the problem of daily life hassles. A theoretical model of continued post-retirement travel is presented as a variant of Solomon's opponent process theory of affect (R. L. Solomon, 1980). The authors suggest that to the degree that places traveled to are varied and different, older people may remain stimulated and continue to enjoy retirement.     

Individual differences in infant fearfulness and cognitive performance: a testing,performance, or competence effect?

The author conducted 2 studies to examine the relations between infant fear and cognitive testing performance in 12-month-old infants. In Study 1, fear was assessed by using 2 standard temperament questionnaires and a laboratory-based, standardized stranger approach. Individual differences in cognitive development were assessed using the Object Permanence Scale of the Infant Psychological Development Scales (I. C. Uzgiris & J. M. Hunt, 1975). All 3 assessments of fear significantly predicted object permanence performance, with correlations ranging from -.32 to -.35. In Study 2, fear was assessed via a maternal report questionnaire, and habituation performance was assessed via a basic-level categorization task. Familiarity with the examiner and with the testing environment was manipulated to test for a familiarity influence on performance. Testing revealed individual differences in both fear and habituation. Results suggest that highly fearful infants required more trials to habituate and were less likely to meet the habituation criterion than infants who were less fearful. Methodological and conceptual implications of these results are discussed.     

Differential effect of lesion side on intra-individual variability in children with focal lateralized epilepsy

A differential impact of hemispheric side (left vs right) on cognitive measures, specifically Verbal and Performance IQ, has been described previously for both focal onset seizures and lateralized brain lesions. This study revealed a differential effect on intra-individual variability, measured as subtest scaled-score range, on the Dutch WISC-R and WISC-III, in children with epilepsy. The presence of documented brain lesion was associated with elevated variability on the Verbal Scale for the left hemisphere seizure group and with decreased variability on the Verbal and Full Scales for the right hemisphere seizure group.     

Reward Allocation by Impartial Allocators to Friend or Stranger Co-workers under Equal and Unequal Ability and Performance

The effects of a relationship variable (friends, strangers), an ability variable (equal, unequal), and a performance variable (equal, unequal) were studied in 40 male and 40 female university students. Eight versions of a hypothetical vignette were prepared to manipulate the eight treatment combinations. After reading an assigned vignette, subjects were asked to allocate $90 between two stranger or friend co-workers. Among other effects, the Relationship by Ability by Performance interaction was significant. The stranger, unequal ability, unequal performance allocations to the lower ability co-worker were significantly higher than the stranger, equal ability, unequal performance allocations, and the stranger, unequal ability, unequal performance allocations were higher than the friends, unequal ability, unequal performance allocations; this difference approached significance (p < .06). The questionnaire data revealed that, despite having favored strangers, the impartial allocators expected strangers to be less satisfied with their distribution than friends with their distribution. In this study, impartial allocators tended to compensate strangers to a greater extent for low performance or ability than friends or, alternatively, were more likely to ignore performance and ability differences between strangers than between friends.