‘You didn't take Lucy's skirt off’: The effect of misleading information on omissions and commissions in children's memory reports

Purpose. The current study explored how misleading information affects children's omissions and commissions over time. Method. Fifty‐nine younger (M_age = 4.16) and fifty‐nine older (M_age = 9.44) children were instructed to remove three pieces of clothing from a puppet. Half of them were provided with false evidence that they had removed only two items, while the other half were provided with false evidence that they had removed a fourth piece of clothing. In three neutral interviews separated by 1‐week intervals, children had to report which pieces of clothing they had removed. Results. Overall, omission and commission errors significantly decreased over time, although this pattern was more pronounced for omission errors. Younger and older children were equally likely to make omission errors, whereas commission errors were more typical for younger than for older children. Also, we found that commission errors more readily occur than omission errors. Conclusion. Even when children's memory reports pertain to an event in which they actively participated, misleading information may elicit omission and commission errors, with especially the latter category being very persistent over time.     

Cranial Backspatter Pattern Production Utilizing Human Cadavers

A backspatter pattern results from blood drops that travel retrograde to an applied external force. Historically, an array of animals and nonhuman objects have been used to create and study backspatter patterns. In this study, backspatter patterns captured on foam core targets that were placed 45.72 cm (18 in) behind the impact site (occipital area of the skull) were produced by cranial gunshots to human cadavers that were reinfused with fresh defibrinated bovine blood. These patterns were compared to the backspatter patterns produced by shooting blood‐soaked sponges, a typical simulant used in controlled studies of backspatter pattern production and characteristics. The backspatter pattern produced by shooting an actual human head was found to be different than those of blood‐soaked sponges in the number of stains produced, the size and size range of the stains, and the stain dispersion patterns.     

Welfare Administration Reform Between Coordination and Specialization

This article identifies transboundary coordination practices and related modes of specialization in welfare administration reforms. We describe how the 2005 reform of the welfare administration in Norway started as a process of integration involving merger and partnership, but later, following the 2008 reorganization, introduced re-centralization and re-specialization. The main research questions are how we can explain this change of administrative reform? Why was the integrative administrative reform not sustainable and reorganization through re-specialization seen as a better answer to the “wicked issues” of welfare services? To answer these questions we apply a structural-instrumental perspective and a cultural-institutional perspective.     

Measuring interrogative suggestibility in children: Reliability and validity of the bonn test of statement suggestibility

Abstract

The present paper describes three studies that examined false confessions in the laboratory. Studies 1 (N=56) and 2 (N=9) relied on the by now classic computer crash paradigm introduced by Kassin and Kiechel (Psychological Science, 7, 125–128, 1996). Study 3 (N=12) employed a novel paradigm in which undergraduate participants were falsely accused of exam fraud. Our data indicate that false confessions do occur, even when conditions become more ecologically valid. Furthermore, we explored whether individual differences in compliance, suggestibility, fantasy proneness, dissociation, and cognitive failures are related to false confessions. Of these, only fantasy proneness was associated with false confessions.     

Integration and social networks: Lutherans in revolutionary Paris, 1789–1797

Using the wedding registers of the Swedish embassy chapel in Paris during the years of the French Revolution, the article analyses patterns of integration among Lutheran immigrants who had come to reside in Paris. Using the network paradigm but not restricting the analysis to kinship networks, the identified relationships show that geographical origin played a significant role in the creation of networks, as did occupation. People with common geographical origins, and within the same trade, built up social networks lasting many years. Residential proximity was also present in network ties. In most of the weddings analysed, these different factors were intertwined, suggesting that the process of social integration often demanded both time and space as necessary elements. Moreover, the evidence suggests more generally that examining only kinship ties in the study of historical network analysis is unnecessarily restrictive if sources permit the examination of other bases on which networks can be formed.     

Bourgeois Myth versus Media Poetry in Prime-time: Re-visiting Mark Frost and David Lynch's Twin Peaks

This article explores IVIark Frost and David Lynch's television series Twin Peaks from the perspective of the two dominant world-views it dramatized. The world-view based in bourgeois myth can be described as employing significations that are always present in naturally and mythically transcendent terms. The other world-view is generated by media poetry, which is a virtual mode of signification that re-mediates linguistic/audio/visual phenomena with contingent capacities for meaning. That generative potential for signification is an aspect of all media use, but media poetry specifically highlights and exploits the capacity of new multi-media to enhance “poetic” possibilities for meaning-making. This may occur through either the actual use of virtual media, through a critical ambiguity with regard to official ideologies and formal/generic con-straints, or through thematic content that destabilizes fixed meanings/representations and entertains possibilities for alternative significations. The article makes the case that the adolescent characters in the show specifically embody the productive world-view inherent in media poetry, and the “poetic” challenges they present to adult, mythic society allow for the continual re-mediation of any and all bourgeois myths. Those adolescents, especially Laura Palmer, embody cultural meanings that refuse ideological codification; that is, that can still become. Twin Peaks, as the article demonstrates, is a striking example of media poetry since it was aired on prime-time network television; it still deserves attention for the stunning ways it remediated the mythic nature of American, middle-class society.     

Democracy,Economic Wealth and Social Capital: Sorting Out the Causal Connections

There is widespread agreement that democracy, economic wealth and culture are causally linked, but there is sharp disagreement about the degree to which each of the factors influences the others. We contend that a society's culture, in the form of social capital, remains largely unchanged for long periods of time and that it leaves an indelible mark on the society's politics and economics. Using the 1990 World Values Surveys (WVS), we develop national-level social capital scores for the populations of 11 countries. We also use the cumulative General Social Surveys (GSS) to develop social capital scores for Americans who claim to have ancestral ties to these 11 nations. The WVS and GSS scores are strongly correlated, suggesting that social capital is durable and portable. Moreover, the GSS scores, which serve, in effect, as instrumental measures of 19th-century social capital, prove to be better predictors of contemporary politics and economics in the 11 WVS nations than commonly used 19th-century measures of politics and economics.     

Ambush at Kamikaze Pass

Abstract

“I was visiting an Indian school and a movie was being shown in the auditorium about the cavalry and the Indians. The cavalry was, of course, outnumbered and holding an impossible position where the Indians had chased them into the rocks. The Indians, attempting to sneak up on the cavalry, were being killed, one every shot. When it finally appeared that the Indians were going to overrun the army position the ubiquitous cavalry appeared on the far horizon with their bugle blowing, and charged to save the beleaguered few. The whole auditorium full of Indian students cheered.” Our Brother's Keeper: The Indian in White America.     

Struggling on the World Scene: An Over-ambitious EU versus a Committed Iran

Abstract

In 2003, the EU was hopeful to convince Iran to give up its nuclear programme. Five years later, most signals point to an accelerated nuclear programme in Iran. This article first aims to sketch an overview of the EU efforts, and secondly to make an interim assessment of the effectiveness of the EU's approach vis-à-vis Iran. While the final assessment may be different, the current evaluation is disappointing from the point of view of the EU. The Iranian case does not enhance the EU's strategic reputation in the world.