Implementation Deficit — Why Member States do not Comply with EU directives?

This article discusses factors effecting the implementation of European policies at the national level. Four main independent variables are distinguished: political institutions, the degree of corporatism, citizens' support for the EU, and political culture in the member states. The impacts of these variables on the success of implementing EU directives in ten policy areas are then tested with the multiple regression model. The results suggest that political culture and the design of political institutions in the member states had the most significant impact on implementation behavior. Countries with a high level of trust and political stability combined with efficient and flexible political institutions had the most success in implementing European policies.     

Associated Adults: Prospective Person Memory for Family Abducted Children

In family abductions, authorities sometimes release pictures of both missing children and associated adults. The effectiveness of this approach was tested in a prospective person memory experiment. Participants studied mock missing child posters including a picture of a child, a picture of a child alongside a picture of the correct adult, or a picture of a child alongside a picture of the incorrect adult. Participants then saw pictures of child/adult pairs with instructions to make a response to ‘alert authorities’ if the target individuals were seen. Including the picture of the correct adult on the poster, significantly improved recognition relative to the other two conditions. There was no significant effect of including the picture of the incorrect associated adult.     

Eyewitness Identifications by Older and Younger Adults: A Meta-Analysis and Discussion

The current meta-analysis compared younger and older adult eyewitness identification accuracy and includes analyses designed to determine what witness and event factors might moderate any differences found. Results showed that, regardless of lineup type and perpetrator age, older eyewitnesses are reliably worse at making correct lineup decisions than younger eyewitnesses whether they are identifying perpetrators or rejecting perpetrator-absent lineups. Discussion of possible causes for this difference in identification accuracy is drawn from cognitive and social psychology literatures, and possible implications for future research and public policy are put forth.     

Mighty Morphin’ age progression: how artist,age range,and morphing influences the similarity of forensic age progressions to target individuals

When children go missing, authorities sometimes release age progressed images that are intended to approximate the person's current appearance. The current studies measured the influence of the range between the time when the child went missing and the age portrayed in the age progression on the similarity between the progressions and current images of the targets. Experiment 1 examined whole face images and Experiment 2 examined internal features only. Eight artists were recruited to produce progressions at three age ranges. Also included were averaged (morphed) images made of progressions of the same individual at a given range by different artists. Progressions across shorter ranges produced images more similar than those across longer ranges, and target comparisons yielded higher similarity ratings than foil comparisons. Although there was much variability among artists, the morphed images performed better than the average rating given to all age progressions.     

The effectiveness of supermarket posters in helping to find missing children

One approach used to help find missing children is to place posters of them at the exits of supermarkets. The present research addresses the question of how effective that approach is likely to be. Posters of 8 missing children were displayed on a bulletin board at a cooperating grocery store. Customers leaving the store completed a survey and took a recognition memory test for the children. Most customers thought the problem of missing children was an important issue. However, the majority of customers also reported either not looking at the posters or only briefly looking at the posters. Recognition memory for children depicted in the posters did not reliably differ from chance. It appears that there is much room for improvement when it comes to increasing the attention paid to posters meant to help find missing children.     

Factors Affecting Recognition of Senior Citizens in a Silver Alert

The current study investigated the recognition of faces of senior citizens in the context of a Silver Alert. Literature on face recognition and eyewitness identification has consistently found recognition failure due to factors such as Own-Age Bias, the Other-Race Effect, and Own-Gender Bias. Participants viewed a video of people in a naturalistic setting, a park. The target, an elderly woman, wore either typical clothing or atypical clothing (nightgown), was not present or was not present but replaced with a different senior. We measured accuracy, confidence, reaction time, and Prediction-of-Knowing in relation to type of clothing worn by the target as well as age, race, and gender of participants. We hypothesized that recognition of the target senior would be low but would be higher when the woman appeared in a nightgown (matching the stereotype of an individual with dementia) as compared to typical clothing. We did not find age, race, and gender effects on target recognition. We offer possible explanations for both significant and non-significant results as they apply to the unique population of missing elderly adults.     

Congress and the political expansion of the U.S. districts courts

Expanding the number of U.S. district judgeships is often justifiedas a response to expanding caseloads. Increasing judgeshipsduring unified government, however, allows Congress and thePresident to engage in political (patronage and ideological)control of the federal district courts. This paper examinesempirically the relative importance of caseload pressure andpolitical motives for Congress to expand the number of federaldistrict judgeships. We demonstrate that politics dominatesthe timing of judgeship expansion in the U.S. District Courts.We also show that both politics and caseload affect the actualsize of those timed expansions. In particular, we find thatbefore 1970, Congress seemed to have strong political motivationsfor the size of an expansion. After 1970, Congress became muchmore attentive to caseload considerations.     

Prospective Person Memory: The Role of Self-Efficacy,Personal Interaction,and Multiple Images in Recognition of Wanted Persons

Prospective person memory refers to recognition of individuals one has been asked to be on the lookout for, such as wanted criminals or missing persons. Past field experiments have tended to find very low rates of identification. The present experiments examine whether multiple pictures, personal interaction, and increased self-efficacy would improve prospective person memory. Participants viewed a mock wanted person alert and were told that if they saw the person depicted in the alert they could win a cash prize. The alert either showed a single picture of the target person or multiple pictures. The target individual then showed up at the dining hall participants routinely had lunch. Some participants had peronal interaction with the target and some participants were led to believe that the likelihood of encounter was quite high. Despite these manipulations, only a small number of participants reported seeing the target individual.