The Relationship Between Childhood Physical Abuse and Adult Attachment Styles

The purpose of the study was to identify the insecure adult attachment style associated with childhood physical abuse. Five hundred fifty-two female and 294 male university students completed questionnaires on their child abuse history, adult attachment style, and other variables. Regression analyses were completed. A history of physical abuse was associated with attachment avoidance while controlling for other forms of childhood abuse. Some support was also found for an association between physical abuse and attachment anxiety. Social support, as a control variable, was found to be an important predictor of attachment avoidance and attachment anxiety. A history of childhood physical abuse has important and specific impacts on intimate adult relationships with social support acting as a possible protective factor.     

Reducing the Hindsight Bias Utilizing Attorney Closing Arguments

In the legal system, jurors are asked to render a decision after the event in question has already occurred and the final outcome, typically negative, is known. This after-the-fact structure of the legal system makes jurors susceptible to a human judgment phenomenon known as hindsight bias. This study focused on reducing hindsight bias in a courtroom context by incorporating a debiasing strategy within the defense's closing argument. Subjects viewed one of three videotaped versions of plaintiff and defense closing arguments in a commercial litigation case (i.e., foresight condition, hindsight condition, and hindsight debiasing condition). Results indicate that the hindsight debiasing strategy was effective in reducing subject-juror hindsight bias.     

Effects of the NICHD Protocol Training on Child Investigative Interview Quality in Korean Police Officers

This study was conducted to determine, by comparing pre- and post-training interview of 18 Korean police officers, whether training in use of the NICHD Protocol improved the quality of investigative interviews of allegedly abused child victims. Results showed that Korean police officers more often followed the Protocol structure -they introduced themselves, explained the ground rules, and conducted episodic memory training-after they had been trained. Moreover, police officers used approximately three times as many desirable prompts (such as invitations and facilitators) and fewer suggestive prompts in interviews conducted after as opposed to before the training. Invitations elicited approximately four to seven times more details on average than the least productive prompts. These results confirmed that the NICHD Protocol is effective when used to interview alleged child abuse victims in East Asia.     

The institutionalisation of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the institutional development of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies (BCD) from 1826 to the present. Legislature careers, the internal organisation of the BCD, the current system for filling positions within the committees and electoral rules are the objects of this study. The process of development of the BCD should be understood in light of the dynamics of the Brazilian political system, which has undergone significant ruptures of regime, and also in light of the nearly permanent fragility of the democracy, especially of its representative components. It is an institution with legislature career patterns that vary through time, but always point towards opportunities out of the BCD, a stable, hierarchical and complex mode of organisation that currently values parties as distributors of opportunities. It is, above all, an institution that is subject to external influences from other parts of the political system, which diminish its autonomy and self-determination, as shown by the example of the rule for the adjudication of terms. With its 190 years, the BCD has evolved along with Brazilian democracy and today, although boasting a great structure and large resources, it still needs to establish itself as a decisive and permanent actor in driving public policies and communication (parties and government projects) with voters.     

Characteristics of male patients admitted to an adolescent secure forensic psychiatric hospital

This paper examines the characteristics of a group of 64 young men, who were consecutively admitted to Bluebird House, an NHS mixed gender, adolescent forensic, medium secure hospital. The characteristics examined focus on the young men’s clinical presentations, as informed by the Millon Adolescent Clinical Inventory, and their ICD10 (WHO 1992) diagnoses. The paper also examines the males’ route into, and out of, Bluebird House, as well as their risk profiles, especially with regards to others, as informed by Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth findings and staff recorded incidents. Correlational analysis is performed to try and understand this population, with statistically significant findings highlighted. The discussion considers the trajectory for some of these young men into adult personality disorders, their presentation and prognosis compared to their female counterparts, and how their presentation contrasts with adult male forensic populations.     

Assessing Empowerment in Divorce Mediation

The empowerment of disputants is a fundamental concern of mediation research, but empowerment is difficult to measure. This study operationally defines empowerment in a divorce case as an agreed-upon modification of the Texas Standard Possession Order in the direction of granting more time with the child to the noncustodial parent. Using a cross-case analysis of mediated and nonmediated divorce cases, this study found that couples that participated in mediation were empowered, not disempowered, in the construction of their visitation arrangements. Implications for measuring empowerment, litigation, and legislative policy are discussed.     

The effect of the presence and seating position of an interpreter on eliciting information and cues to deceit

The present experiment examined how the seating position of an interpreter during investigative interviews affects information elicitation and cues to deceit. A total of 60 native English speakers were interviewed in English and 200 non-native English speakers were interviewed in English (a non-native language) or through an interpreter who either sat next to the interviewer, behind the interviewee or interpreted via the telephone. Interviewees either lied or told the truth about a mock security meeting they watched. Interviewees who spoke in their native language provided more detail than interviewees who spoke in their native language through an interpreter or in a non-native language (English) without an interpreter. The latter groups did not differ. Additionally, the amount of detail differentiated truth tellers from liars in all conditions and interviewees found the presence of an interpreter to be a largely positive experience. The interpreter’s seating position had no effect on the findings.