The Flynn Effect and U.S. Policies: The Impact of Rising IQ Scores on American Society Via Mental Retardation Diagnoses.

Over the last century, IQ scores have been steadily rising, a phenomenon dubbed the Flynn effect. Because of the Flynn effect, IQ tests are periodically renormed, making them harder. Given that eligibility for mental retardation (MR) services relies heavily on IQ scores, renormed tests could have a significant impact on MR placements. In longitudinal IQ records from 9 sites around the country, students in the borderline and mild MR range lost an average of 5.6 points when retested on a renormed test and were more likely to be classified MR compared with peers retested on the same test. The magnitude of the effect is large and affects national policies on education, social security, the death penalty, and the military. This paper reports the perceptions of professionals as they relate to IQ score fluctuations in normal, borderline, and/or MR populations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Network regression with predictive clustering trees

Network data describe entities represented by nodes, which may be connected with (related to) each other by edges. Many network datasets are characterized by a form of autocorrelation, where the value of a variable at a given node depends on the values of variables at the nodes it is connected with. This phenomenon is a direct violation of the assumption that data are independently and identically distributed. At the same time, it offers an unique opportunity to improve the performance of predictive models on network data, as inferences about one entity can be used to improve inferences about related entities. Regression inference in network data is a challenging task. While many approaches for network classification exist, there are very few approaches for network regression. In this paper, we propose a data mining algorithm, called NCLUS, that explicitly considers autocorrelation when building regression models from network data. The algorithm is based on the concept of predictive clustering trees (PCTs) that can be used for clustering, prediction and multi-target prediction, including multi-target regression and multi-target classification. We evaluate our approach on several real world problems of network regression, coming from the areas of social and spatial networks. Empirical results show that our algorithm performs better than PCTs learned by completely disregarding network information, as well as PCTs that are tailored for spatial data, but do not take autocorrelation into account, and a variety of other existing approaches.     

PRILJ: an efficient two-step method based on embedding and clustering for the identification of regularities in legal case judgments

In an era characterized by fast technological progress that introduces new unpredictable scenarios every day, working in the law field may appear very difficult, if not supported by the right tools. In this respect, some systems based on Artificial Intelligence methods have been proposed in the literature, to support several tasks in the legal sector. Following this line of research, in this paper we propose a novel method, called PRILJ, that identifies paragraph regularities in legal case judgments, to support legal experts during the redaction of legal documents. Methodologically, PRILJ adopts a two-step approach that first groups documents into clusters, according to their semantic content, and then identifies regularities in the paragraphs for each cluster. Embedding-based methods are adopted to properly represent documents and paragraphs into a semantic numerical feature space, and an Approximated Nearest Neighbor Search method is adopted to efficiently retrieve the most similar paragraphs with respect to the paragraphs of a document under preparation. Our extensive experimental evaluation, performed on a real-world dataset provided by EUR-Lex, proves the effectiveness and the efficiency of the proposed method. In particular, its ability of modeling different topics of legal documents, as well as of capturing the semantics of the textual content, appear very beneficial for the considered task, and make PRILJ very robust to the possible presence of noise in the data.

     

Suggestibility of the child witness: a historical review and synthesis

The field of children's testimony is in turmoil, but a resolution to seemingly intractable debates now appears attainable. In this review, we place the current disagreement in historical context and describe psychological and legal views of child witnesses held by scholars since the turn of the 20th century. Although there has been consistent interest in children's suggestibility over the past century, the past 15 years have been the most active in terms of the number of published studies and novel theorizing about the causal mechanisms that underpin the observed findings. A synthesis of this research posits three "families" of factors--cognitive, social, and biological--that must be considered if one is to understand seemingly contradictory interpretations of the findings. We conclude that there are reliable age differences in suggestibility but that even very young children are capable of recalling much that is forensically relevant. Findings are discussed in terms of the role of expert witnesses.     

Relation Between Oxidative Stability and Composition in Argentinian Olive Oils

The relation between oxidative stability and composition in 58 virgin olive oils from different cultivars and Argentinian regions was studied over four harvest years. The oxidative stability of the oils was assessed using the OSI index (110 °C, 20 L/h air flow). A multiple linear regression model is proposed using OSI values as the dependent variable (multiple R = 0.933, p = 1 × 10⁻¹⁵), with positive contributions of the independent variables: fatty acid composition [oleic acid/(linoleic acid + linolenic acid), 55.3%, p = 1 × 10⁻¹⁵], total polyphenols (24.1%, p = 1.8 × 10⁻⁹), carotenes (4.8%, p = 6.1 × 10⁻⁵), β-tocopherol (1.9%, 6.0 × 10⁻³) and other compounds (13.9%). Highly significant correlation was observed between oxidative stability indexes estimated by the compositional model and those experimentally determined by Rancimat method (b = 0.981, R = 0.924). Chlorophylls and Δ-5-avenasterol contributions to the model were non-significant when variables related with fatty acids and polyphenols were included. The results suggest that the fatty acid composition and the polyphenol content are the main factors that affect the oxidative stability of olive oils. The proposed model allows the estimation of the oxidative stability in olive oils independently of the cultivar. The model was obtained also taking into account samples that lie out of the international legal limits in some compositional values due to natural variations.     

Adult recollections of childhood abuse: Cognitive and developmental perspectives.

This research was conducted, as part of American Psychological Association Working Group on the Investigation of Memories of Childhood Abuse (see record 2000-13581-002), to address concerns about cases in which an individual has no memory for a traumatic experience, enters therapy, and emerges sometime later with an elaborate memory. The article summarizes research on human memory, focusing on the literature in cognitive and developmental psychology. The authors provide a broad overview of memory and its development by making use of a conceptual framework for thinking about the flow of information within the memory system. They then focus on 3 topics: (1) a developmental perspective and its relevance for considering questions of adults attempting to remember things from the distant past; (2) suggestibility, memory distortions, and the extent to which misleading information may degrade memory performance; and (3) distinguishing between reality and fantasy, and monitoring the sources of information. The report concludes with a treatment of the importance of determining boundary conditions for some of the effects that are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The inhibitory effect of 8-OH-DPAT on the firing activity of dorsal raphe serotoninergic neurons in rats is attenuated by lesion of the frontal cortex

The dose-response inhibitory effect of 8-OH-DPAT on the firing rate of dorsal raphe serotoninergic neurons was shifted 10-fold to the right after acute fronto-cortical deafferentation. This finding suggests that the inhibitory effect of 8-OH-DPAT on the dorsal raphe firing rate might be mediated indirectly by the frontal cortex.     

Stalking the IQ€xpertise relation: When the critics go fishing.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 117(4) of Journal of Experimental Psychology: General (see record 2008-10698-001). In this commentary, subjects #24 and #25 were incorrectly listed as failing race 5 (0s). The corrections appear in the erratum. The erratum also includes a line missing from Footnote 2.] Detterman and Spry (1988) criticize several conclusions we made in our study of racetrack handicapping and cognitive complexity (Ceci & Liker, 1986). Specifically, they claim that our use of an unreliable measure of expertise was responsible for our failure to obtain a relation between expertise and IQ. Consequently, we were accused of accepting the null hypothesis too readily. In this reply, we demonstrate, contrary to their claim, that the reliability of the measure in question is very high (.88) and that its reliability is manifested in its high correlation with another variable, interactive reasoning, overlooked by Detterman and Spry. We conclude by pointing out a number of factually inaccurate claims made by Detterman and Spry along with what appears to have been selective reporting of correlations to bolster their arguments; and we suggest that their failure to consider one entire aspect of our analyses rendered their criticisms baseless. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"The effects of stereotypes and suggestions on preschoolers' reports": Correction.

Reports an error in the original article by M. D. Leichtman and S. J. Ceci (Developmental Psychology, 1995[Jul], 31[4], 568–578). On pages 572 and 573, the artwork for Figures 3 and 4 was reversed. (The following abstract of this article original appeared in record 1995-40033-001). Children's (N?=?176) reported memories of a strange man's visit were studied. Three- to 6-yr-olds were interviewed repeatedly after the event in 1 of the following conditions: (a) control, in which no interviews contained suggestive questions; (b) stereotype, in which children were given previsit expectations about the stranger; (c) suggestion, in which interviews contained erroneous suggestions about misdeeds committed by the stranger; and (d) stereotype plus suggestion, in which children were given both pre- and postvisit manipulations. Results from open-ended interviews after 10 weeks indicated that control participants provided accurate reports, stereotypes resulted in a modest number of false reports, and suggestions resulted in a substantial number of false reports. Children in the stereotype-plus-suggestion group made high levels of false reports. All experimental conditions showed dramatic developmental trends favoring older children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)