How Can We Help Witnesses to Remember More? It’s an (Eyes) Open and Shut Case

Five experiments tested the idea that instructing a witness to close their eyes during retrieval might increase retrieval success. In Experiment 1 participants watched a video, before a cued-recall test for which they were either instructed to close their eyes, or received no-instructions. Eye-closure led to an increase in correct cued-recall, with no increase in incorrect responses. Experiments 2-5 sought to test the generality of this effect over variations in study material (video or live interaction), test format (cued- or free-recall) and information modality (visual or auditory details recalled). Overall, eye-closure increased recall of both visual detail and auditory details, with no accompanying increase in recall of false details. Collectively, these data convincingly demonstrate the benefits of eye-closure as an aid to retrieval, and offer insight into why hypnosis, which usually involves eye-closure, may facilitate eyewitness recall.     

Regional Arrangements as Agents of the UN Security Council: Some African and European Organisations Contrasted

The increased burden placed upon the UN Security Council in the post-Cold War era in respect of its discharge of its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security has fuelled calls for the greater use of regional arrangements as agents of the Council, to relieve its burden. However, the various agendas and capabilities of different arrangements make it difficult to adopt a uniform template of the role which regional arrangements can play as conductors of peace support operations authorised by the Security Council. This article attempts to provide a framework against which the potential role of different arrangements as viable agents to which the Security Council can entrust military enforcement operations, before going on to assess how selected African and European organisations fare against this framework. It will be demonstrated that when assessed against this framework, the organisations selected for comparison are remarkably similar.

Using State Child Labor Laws to Identify the Causal Effect of Youth Employment on Deviant Behavior and Academic Achievement

On the basis of prior research findings that employed youth, and especially intensively employed youth, have higher rates of delinquent behavior and lower academic achievement, scholars have called for limits on the maximum number of hours per week that teenagers are allowed to work. We use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to assess the claim that employment and work hours are causally related to adolescent problem behavior. We utilize a change model with age-graded child labor laws governing the number of hours per week allowed during the school year as instrumental variables. We find that these work laws lead to additional number of hours worked by youth, which then lead to increased high school dropout but decreased delinquency. Although counterintuitive, this result is consistent with existing evidence about the effect of employment on crime for adults and the impact of dropout on youth crime.

The Changing Structure of American Cities: A Study of the Diffusion of Innovation

Using historical and numerical analysis and the five-part schema, this study finds that over the past 50 years structural modifications and adaptations by American cities have generally followed the standard S curve of the diffusion of innovation. In tests of Kaufman's and Hirshman's theories of epochs of change from representativeness to administrative efficiency, this study determines that mayor-council cities have, in a standard innovation diffusion S curve, adopted many of the key features of council-manager cities, increasing their administrative efficiency. At the same time, council-manager cities, again in an S curve, have adopted many of the key features of mayor-council cities, increasing their political responsiveness. Fewer cities are now either distinctly mayor-council or council-manager in form, and most cities are structurally less distinct, constituting a newly merged or hybrid model of local government—the type III city.     

Gun control in the United States

A.B., University of California, Berkeley, 1964; Ph.D., University of California, Irvine, 1970.