Law Commons^™

Juvenile Competence To Stand Trial: An Examination Of The Effects Of Cognitive Ability, Psychiatric Symptomatology, And Psychosocial Maturity, Aaron John Kivisto

Doctoral Dissertations

As the courts have evolved over the past 30 years towards increasingly punitive sanctions for youthful offenders, the fundamental protections afforded to adult defendants have become increasingly relevant for youthful offenders. Among these protections, the right of juveniles to be competent to stand trial has gained nearly universal recognition throughout this country’s courts. Congruent with theory and previous research, we hypothesized that age, intellectual ability, psychiatric symptomatology, and maturity would all be directly related to adolescents’ competence. It was also anticipated that adolescents in the detention sample would evidence lower maturity and competency-related abilities compared to the community sample. Expanding …

An Examination Of The Organizational Factors That Contribute To Police Officer Perceived Organizational Support, Dustin Cody Gaines

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of this research was to examine the effect of various organizational arrangements on police officers' belief that they and their work are valued by the department. This study examines four management domains and their impact on officers' feelings of being valued. These four management domains are: inclusiveness in decision-making, supervisor relationships, professionalism. and communicated direction. The data came from a sample of 176 survey respondents who are patrol officers in a Southern Californian municipal police department.

The Effect Of The Reciprocity Norm And Guided Imagery On The Development Of Implanted Memories In Children, Misty Christina Duke

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Previous research has shown that the use of guided imagery can create source monitoring errors in adults and induce false memories for events that never occurred. Research has also shown that some forms of social influence can induce suggestibility in children. The current study examined whether guided imagery and a social influence technique involving the norm of reciprocity could induce the formation of false memories in children. One hundred sixteen first- and second-grade children were interviewed twice and asked to freely recall three true events as well as one false event that they were told was true. Interviewers used guided …

Group Decision Making In The Jury Context: A Combined Theoretical Approach, Larissa Angelique Schmersal

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Much of the extant research on jury decision making has been conducted at the juror level, examining the individual decisions of mock jurors. Although studying mock juror decisions provides initial insight into jury decision making, studying the deliberation process should be a priority for future research. Few theoretical models have been developed to examine the decision process of the jury. The social combination and the social communication approaches provide some insight into this process; however, analysis of these methods is scarce due, in part, to their limited applicability.

The current study examined the jury deliberation using a combined theoretical approach. …

Reflexivity In Financial Markets: A Neuroeconomic Examination Of Uncertainty And Cognition In Financial Markets, Steven Pikelny

Senior Projects Spring 2011

Financial markets exist to disperse the risks of an unknown future in an economy. But for this process to work in an optimal fashion, investors – and subsequently markets – must have a way to interpret uncertainty. The investor rationality and market efficiency literature utilizes a methodology inadequate to address this fact, so I supplement it with the perspectives of epistemology, economic sociology, neuroscience, cognitive science, and philosophy of mind. This approach suggests that what is commonly viewed as market “inefficiency” is not necessarily caused by investor irrationality, but rather by the inherent nature of the epistemological problem faced by …

Gender Inequality In The Law: Deficiencies Of Battered Woman Syndrome And A New Solution To Closing The Gender Gap In Self-Defense Law, Meredith C. Doyle

CMC Senior Theses

Dr. Lenore Walker developed battered woman syndrome to address the issue of domestic violence and to give battered women a defense in situations in which they kill their abusive partners when they are not overtly threatening them. Self-defense law is based on male on male combat. Women are less able to protect themselves in an attack by a man, and so they may preemptively attack their sleeping partners to avoid a situation in which they cannot adequately protect themselves. Battered woman syndrome explains why these battered women act in a way that is irrational to a non-battered person. Walker's theory …