Forensic Flashcards
Describe attachment theory (Bowlby)
Maternal deprivation is likely to have irreversible effects in later life, such as delinquency
What research (McCord) suggests about the importance of both parents being present
Shows separation increases delinquency but also highlights that parental love is just as important - those with affectionless parents were likely delinquents
Describe life-course theories of offending
Separation is a stressful experience contributing to delinquency, along with others such as parental conflict (supported by McCord)
Describe selection theories of offending
Families have preexisting differences (genetic and environmental) that are risk factors for producing delinquent children
Is 1) loss of mother or father, 2) broken home or high conflict more significant in predicting delinquency
1) loss of mother predicts delinquency more
2) intact high conflict homes predict delinquency just as well as broken homes
Eyesneck personality theory
Offending is natural, those that are not criminals have a conditioned conscience to oppose hedonistic tendencies. Criminals have poor conditionability, or were poorly conditioned by parents
Eyesnecks dimensions of personality (3) and what they mean for criminality
Extraversion (high related to self reported offending)
Neuroticism (high related to official offending)
Psychoticism (high related to both, as it describes antisocial traits)
Best traits for predicting criminality
Impulsivity the best trait, daringness being its strongest sub-predictor… study showed boys (8-10) picked by teachers and parents for impulsivity predicted offending well
Patterson’s social learning theory in criminality
Observed that antisocial children had parents deficient in child rearing… children in coercive families are more likely to learn coercive behaviours
Most important child rearing factors to avoid criminality (3)
Supervision (most important from research)
Warmth of relationship
Discipline being consistent and not too harsh
Research showing effect of harsh physical punishment on creating offenders
40% of offenders hit as children compared to 14% of controls
Study showing effect of consistent parenting on antisocial behaviour
Patterson’s parenting interventions (focusing on consistency and clarity) reduced steeling and AB
However, only a small sample
ICAP theory stands for and explain
Intergrated Cognitive Antisocial Potential
Combining many theories, it focuses on antisocial potential (risk factors) that leads to AB
1) Long term and 2) short term antisocial potential (AP)
1) traits such as impulsiveness, semi perminant environmental factors (homelessness), past history (crimes).. etc
2) motivating and situational factors (opportunities)
APs consistency and changability overtime
Highly consistent relative ordering overtime, though does change with age - peaking in late teens
Why differing AP models may be needed for different age brackets
Different factors more important to people at different life stages… e.g. The importance of peers increases during teenage years
Example of LT AP interaction that predicts offending
Desire for status / materials increases AP if they go about it through antisocial means… therefore this interacting with low income (reducing the means to go about it socially) is a likely combination for offenders
How ICAP explains the commission of crimes
The interaction between high LT AP and high ST AP ( good criminal opportunities )
How ICAP theory has a cyclical element
Offending will effect LT AP depending if the crimes consequence are reinforcing (increase) or punishing (decrease)
Though punishing can increase LT AP if the offender later feels stigmatised by society
Effect of parental criminality and low family income
Found them to predict convictions much more than AP, suggesting they effect opportunity more so than antisocial attitude
Types of attachment status (4) from strange situation task
Secure
Avoidant (distant or intolerant parent)
Ambivalent (inconsistent or controlling parent )
Disorganised (insensitive adult, relationship a source of fear)
Attachment status in 1) sexual offenders and 2) low empathy criminals
1) anxious (insecure) individuals feeling a need to belong, usually ambivalent or disorganised
2) avoidant individuals often lack empathy
Limitation of social learning theory for AB
Does not account for predispositions and not always applicable to each child, only has a degree of influence
Criticism of ICAP theory
Research based on male lower class offenders in Newcastle, so not necessarily applicable everywhere
How psychopathy is measured
PCL-R splits into two factors: prototypical (e.g. Superficial charm) and acquired (poor behavioural controls)
Research showing link between psychopathy and violent criminality
Found the correlation to be 4 times larger for psychopaths than for controls
1) Cognitive empathy
2) affective empathy
1) Taking another’s perspective on their thoughts (logical)
2) Feeling what another feels
Key distinction between psychopathy and autism
Psychopaths lack affective empathy, those with autism lack cognitive empathy
Types of aggression (2)
Proactive / instrumental - premeditated and linked to callousness
Reactive - acting without reflection after interpreting hostile actions
Difference in how psychopaths murder
93% were proactive by psychopaths whereas 48% were by others
Effectiveness of treating psychopaths
Those that behaved better in treatment were more likely to reoffend (manipulative), though untrue if it was a sexual offence
Brain difference in those with antisocial personality disorder (3)
Reduction in grey matter of the OPFC, DLPFC and MFPFC
Alongside smaller temporal lobes
Smaller posterior hippocampus predicted higher antisocial score
Brain difference in incarcerated psychopaths
Reduced temporal lobe volume, but normal PFCs
Conduct disorder
Repeated childhood behaviour that flouts basic rights of others
Brain differences in children with conduct disorder / callous traits (3)
Reduced activity in left amygdala
Asymmetry in frontal lobes, suggested to impair reasoning and emotion regulation
Smaller P300 amplitudes, which has been associated with criminality
Link between executive dysfunction and AB
Research indicates that those with AB are more executively disfunctioned, perhaps due to an inability to act rationally and control impulses
Genetic research on psychopathy (3)
Found genetic variance (A) to contribute .63, with non shared environment (E) taking the rest of the variance between DZ and MZ
(Supported by adoption studies, with biological parents criminality having greatest effect)
MAO-A gene interacting with childhood abuse found to increase AB risk
Developmental risk factors associated with violent behaviour (3)
Maternal smoking
Unhealthy maternal living
Low family IQ
Minor Physical Anomalies (MPAs) and their relevance
Arise from abnormal foetal development (infection / anoxia)
Consistently associated with higher risk of aggressive behaviour and offending
Also found to interact with family adversity to predict AB further
Difference between Foetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) and Foetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD)
FAS is the full blown version where patients have almost all symptoms, FASD is the umbrella term describing a spectrum of abnormalities
How FAS / FASD are caused
Alcohol is more concentrated in foetus as mother drinks, preventing nutrition and oxygen from getting to its organs… most harmful in first 3 months
FAS/FASD 1) damaged brain areas and 2) psychological problems
1) hippocampus, basal ganglia, corpus callosum
2) low ER, poor EF, intellectually disabled
FASD link to AB
60% found to be in trouble with the law
50% display unusual sexual behaviour
30% have alcohol and drug problems
How maternal smoking effects the foetus, and its relevance to forensic
Chemicals cross the placental barrier , reducing uterine blood flow thus depriving of oxygen and nutrition… later abnormal synaptic activity
Research suggests that it predisposes children to AB
Prenatal maturation effect on AB
Offspring of women in a food blockade has 2.5 times more antisocial personality disorder than controls
Obstetrical complications, and their link to AB
Examples include premature birth or anoxia. Found that newborns that suffered this have greater externalizing behaviors by 11… also interacting with maternal rejection to predict violent crime
ACE scores for children, and what they predict (2)
A way of measuring adverse experiences in childhood, with 10 types of experience each child has a rating from 0-10 on how many experienced
They predict suicide, risky sexual behavior
What ACE scores predict in the brain (2)
high ACE scores are associated with reduced corpus callosum, and increased’ electrical irritability’ in the limbic system
Examples of ACEs (unobvious) (3)
Household mental illness or substance use, parental separation
Attachment’s 1) genetic and 2) neurobiological links in research
1) DRD2 dopamine receptor gene strongly associated with insecure attachment
2) Attachment seems largely dependent on nature of neuropeptide release (e.g. oxytocin - love hormone)
Traumatic brain injury’s link to AB and why
27% of delinquents found to have TBI history
It usually effect EF as the OPFC is at front of brain so usually damaged 1st / most
Genetic influence on antisocial behaviour
Ace model studies and adoption studies found an over 50% genetic influence on variance, with C consistently being insignificant
Brunner syndrome
Patients have borderline ‘retardation’ and behaviors such as aggression, rape, arson quite common
A mutation in the MAOA gene in all patients tested, likely to cause abnormal serotonin which creates aggression
Features of FAS (6)
Small head, smooth area from nose to lips, thin upper lip, small eye openings, short, central nervous system dysfunction
Potential consequences of childhood maltreatment (3)
Disruption of emotion regulation
Amygdala abnormalities (fear response)
Reduced grey matter in orbitofrontal cortex
1) sympathetic and 2) parasympathetic automatic nervous system reactions
1) arousing reactions such as pupils dilating
2) calming reactions such as pupils contracting
Fearlessness theory of antisocial behavior (and evidence)
Those with low fear response (low resting HR) are harder to condition so are more likely to commit antisocial acts
Criminals have reduced fear conditioning compared to controls
Sensation seeking theory of antisocial behavior
Those with low HR are more likely antisocial because they seek stimuli to increase their HR, which is often antisocial
How encoding of event effects eye witness testimony
Depends on nature of attention of bystander alongside sensory inhibitors such as dim lights or time
How the storage stage effects eye witness testimony
Depends on interference by subsequent information and how this fits with ones schema
How the retrieval stage effects eye witness testimony
Depends on ability to surface minor details of events through articulation, depending on how good the interviewer is at ‘setting the scene’
Limitation of eye witness testimony research
Crime simulations (usually a video) shown to participants differs greatly to real crime
1) Estimator variables
2) system variables
1) Cannot be controlled by legal justice system
2) Within the control of the legal justice system (mainly retrieval stage)
Yerkes-Dodson’s law and limitation
Shows relationship between stress and recall to be an inverted U… recall is optimal with moderate stress levels
This is hard to prove in a lab environment, inducing real stress is unethical
The weapon effect
An unexpected weapon at a crime significantly detracts attention from the rest of the scene
Research concludes it true (though hard to test), but the effect diminishes the longer the weapon is present
Hypothesizes of the weapon effect (2) and what research says
1) Cue utilization - attention narrowed to threatening object for protective reasons
2) Unusual item hypothesis - it is unexpected in the context so draws more attention
As the effect does not increase alongside level of threat, (1) is not the soul reason. (2) is evidenced as the same effect occurs with a non weapon
Change blindness, and explaination
When attention fails to note supposedly salient changes to a scene
Most likely when assumptions about continuity are made alongside a lack of established representation of the scene (can be overwritten)
When stereotyping in eye witness testimony is more likely
When dealing with a high cognitive load
Older adults stereotype more
Why intoxication worsens crime scene encoding
Narrows focus to certain details at the expense of the periphery… shown in research
How age effects eyewitness reliability
Young adults most reliable, with older ones showing age related decline in memory etc
Children also less reliable, maybe because they lack schemas to make sense of events
Why misinformation / leading questions effect storage of eye witness memory (4)
Updateable memory hypothesis - memories can be overwritten by new information if they fit the persons schema
Strategic effects - demands of recall and context effects how it is remembered at the time
Blocked memory access - memory traces from original still coexist with misinformation and compete for activation
Source monitoring account - difficult to distinguish source of information
When taking on misinformation into ones own account is more likely (3)
When the original event does not have to be recalled
If they believe the misinformer has better memory of the event than them
If the cost of disagreeing is large
How common are false memories
Meta analysis concludes creating false memories from traumatic events is common, maybe sparked by therapy… showing the potential inaccuracy of eye witness testimony
Explanation for false memories
Arise from source monitoring errors, when imagined events are similar to real ones they allow a composition of both to form in a memory
Why delay from witnessing to recall reduces accuracy
Memory trace fades (forgetting curve), so best to interview straight after
Are flashbulb memories (often emotional) remembered with greater detail?
Some evidence suggests yes, a greater period of time with greater detail
However other studies show they feel just as vivid but details fade and change similar to normal memories (9/11 study)
Factors that effect retrieval
Question format (not leading, elaborative) Use cognitive interview techniques Give self-administered interview to avoid delay Initial confidence of witness predicts accuracy
Why the multistore memory model discredits eye witness testimony
Highlights several areas of possibility where memories become inaccurate or fade
Unconscious transference
Eyewitness misidentifies a familiar innocent person (often a bystander) as a result of source confusion error
