The effect of odour reinstatement on children's episodic memory

Children's memory reports are often sparse, which increases the need for efficient interview methods. The present study investigated whether odour reinstatement can aid children's memory and increase the amount of information recalled from an experienced event. Children (N = 106, mean age 10 years, 8 months) experienced a magic show where a vanilla odour was present and were interviewed about their memory of the event either one week, or six months, after the magic show. During the interview, half of the children re-experienced the same vanilla odour. In contrast to studies on adult participants, no odour-reinstatement effect was found with the child participants in the present study. On the other hand, odour reinstatement reduced the children's ratings of how strong their emotions were during the event. Thus, odour reinstatement may affect different forensically relevant factors, and this should be considered in future research.     

Examining legal authoritarianism in the impact of punishment severity on juror decisions

Recent Supreme Court decisions point to an increased reliance on juries to determine a defendant's sentence. Evidence is mixed on whether jurors are more likely to convict when the potential punishment is mild. The current study examined this issue, as well as the impact of legal authoritarianism (LA) (Kravitz, D. A., Cutler, B. L., & Brock, P. 1993. Reliability and validity of the original and revised legal attitudes questionnaire. Law and Human Behavior, 17, 661–677. doi: 10.1007/BF01044688), on jurors’ decisions. An ethnically diverse sample of participants completed the individual difference measure prior to viewing a videotaped, reenacted criminal trial. We manipulated the severity of the punishment the defendant would receive if convicted. Results indicated LA moderated the effect of punishment severity on verdict. Specifically, at higher levels of punishment severity, civil libertarians convicted less, while legal authoritarians convicted more. That is, the severity-leniency effect held for civil libertarians, but not for legal authoritarians. As juries become more responsible for determining a defendant's sentence, attorneys should be aware of the defendant's potential sentence and use voir dire to identify jurors who are higher on LA.     

Old and very old adults as witnesses: event memory and metamemory

Older people constitute an important category of eyewitnesses. Episodic memory performance in older persons is poorer than in younger adults, but little research has been made on older persons’ metacognitive judgments. Since more persons of advanced age will likely be called upon as witnesses in coming years, it is critical to characterize this population’s metacognitive abilities. We compared event memory metacognition in old adults (66-year-old, n = 74) to very old adults (87 or 90 years old, n = 55). Participants were tested on their memory of a film, using questions with two answer alternatives and the confidence in their answer. As expected, the very old group had a lower accuracy rate than the old group (d = 0.59). The very old group, however, monitored this impairment, since their over-/underconfidence and calibration did not differ from the old group but they displayed a poorer ability to separate correct from incorrect answers (discrimination ability). Possibly, the very old group was able to monitor the level of their over-/underconfidence because they applied general self-knowledge about their memory skills. In contrast, the discrimination of correct from incorrect answers may be more dependent on ability to attend to the features of each retrieved memory.     

Size doesn't matter: emotional content does not determine the size of objects in children's drawings

Abstract

In Experiment 1 we examined whether children spontaneously alter the size of objects in their drawings of emotionally-laden events. To do this, we evaluated children's drawings of their own personal, past experiences. Children were asked to draw a picture of an event that had made them happy and an event that had made them sad. We found no differences in the size of object that children drew in their positive and negative emotional events. In Experiment 2, we asked adults with and without clinical training to discriminate children's drawings of happy events from their drawings of sad events. There was no difference in the accuracy of raters as a function of clinical expertise. Moreover, performance for both groups was at chance when we removed drawings with specific emotional indicators from the set (e.g. smiles or tears). We conclude that the emotional interpretation of drawings on the basis of the size of objects in that drawing is fraught with difficulty. We question the projective use of drawings in forensic and clinical practice.     

犯罪新闻报道的双向效果与少年犯罪

犯罪新闻报道作为向受众提供犯罪有关信息以及价值评判的一种文化传播方式,其对未成年人而言具有双向的效果,既能提供一种校正的模板,成为一种强力的社会控制器;但是,由于某些犯罪新闻报道基于经济效益的冲动,热衷于提供一些犯罪的暴力、色情等不良信息,又会成为刺激、诱导未成年人犯罪的因素,因此,应当通过加强国家监管、规范新闻从业人的报道行为以及提升未成年人媒介素养等方式使之达到一种有机的平衡,这一点先进国家的经验和教训可资参考。     

One voter and two choices: The impact of electoral context on the 2011 UK referendum

There is a debate in the literature on referendum voting as to whether these occasions are opportunities for voters to express issue preferences in the absence of partisan politics or whether they simply serve as referendums on the current government. In part, this latter, second order account is assumed to be driven by the amount and content of media coverage, and hence information about the referendum, that is available to voters. In this paper, we address the second order question and demonstrate that holding elections concurrently both reduces the amount of media attention to the second order contest—the AV referendum in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland where national elections were held—and moderates media priming, thereby affecting the salient cues in the decision making of voters in those contexts.     

The spoils of war

Antony Beevor's Berlin: The Downfall 1945 has been an international best-selling history of the fall of Berlin to Soviet troops in 1945. Now published in paperback, Beevor's magisterial narrative of Berlin's downfall has become a leading work of contemporary popular history. The public discussion of this book has been dominated by two themes: first, the ‘normalization’ of the suffering of German civilians and, second, the ‘disclosure’ of mass rapes by the liberating Soviet army in Germany. This review traces how key debates concerning the remembrance of the Second World War form these dominant readings of Berlin. In particular, it examines the formation of the re-remembering of the wartime rapes of Berlin women, and considers the implications of Beevor's account of the downfall of Berlin for how we understand sexual violence in armed conflict.     

辽宁沿海经济带中心城镇的辐射带动作用

城镇化是指农村人口向城镇人口转化的过程,同时具有人口持续集聚的特性,是中国在工业化过程中必然经历的历史阶段。在发展辽宁沿海经济带城镇化进程中,出现顶层设计的缺失、中心城镇的示范作用不明显、有城无业导致人口集聚难等不和谐音符,该文从中心城镇的设计与建设角度,多角度论述了中心城镇打造成要素集聚区,实现对周边卫星城镇的辐射带动作用。     

Spacing commemorative-related violence in Northern Ireland: assessing the implications for a society in transition

This paper explores the geography of commemorative-related violence in Northern Ireland and considers its ramifications for a society in transition. Using original primary research, this article contributes to discussions on violence, space and memory through a spatial analysis of new quantitative archival data and existing archival material explored through a multi-disciplinary lens. It examines the complex relationship between the practices and processes of commemoration, the violence that it sometimes occasions and the places in which such violence exists. In unpacking this specific form of violence we consider the continued importance of both place and past in a post-conflict society.     

Remembering the Southeast Asian Chinese massacres of 1941-45

This article examines a series of wartime massacres (sook chings) conducted at various Southeast Asian sites with a view to teasing out broader lessons about justice, compensation, apology and the uses of memory both on the side of the victims as well as the nation that perpetrated the crimes. Characteristically, the sook chings of Southeast Asia, occurring in ethnically complex societies with mostly Chinese as victims, displayed a planned character of strictly ethnic and political “cleansing” that meets broad definitions of genocide. This article also considers historical memory. Obviously, as with Japanese war crimes in China, the sook chings of Southeast Asia are remembered locally. But also, as in China, remembrance of the sook chings has been modulated by the state, mostly in the interest of good relations and business links with Japan (with some notable exceptions). But, alongside the Nanjing Massacre, much contested in Japanese historiography, the sook ching massacres remain virtually unknown to the Japanese public, and have not become an issue between Japan and the Southeast Asian countries where these events occurred.