Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Recent hacked posts

Over the past few weeks some advertising posts somehow made it on to this blog.  Someone must have hacked the account.  I believe I have deleted all these advertisements from the blog.  Thanks again.

Tuesday, December 17, 2019

Cohort differences on the CVLT-II and CVLT3: evidence of a negative Flynn effect on the attention/working memory and learning trials: The Clinical Neuropsychologist: Vol 0, No 0

This will be added to the Flynn effect reference project document when it is next updated.

Cohort differences on the CVLT-II and CVLT3: evidence of a negative Flynn effect on the attention/working memory and learning trials: The Clinical Neuropsychologist: Vol 0, No 0
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13854046.2019.1699605


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Kevin S. McGrew, PhD
Educational & School Psychologist
Director
Institute for Applied Psychometrics (IAP)
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Friday, December 6, 2019

Evaluating Intellectual Disability after the Moore v. Texas Redux | Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law


http://jaapl.org/content/47/4/486


Abstract

This article reviews the history of the U.S. Supreme Court's rulings on intellectual disability in capital cases, highlighting the difficulty states have had in devising a workable definition that meets constitutional standards. The Court's decisions in Penry v. Lynaugh (1989), Atkins v. Virginia (2002), and Hall v. Florida (2014) are briefly summarized. Next, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals' ruling in Ex parte Briseno (2004) is discussed as a prelude to the Supreme Court's decision in Moore v. Texas I (2017). On remand, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals interpreted the Supreme Court's Moore I ruling in a manner that resulted in finding Mr. Moore intellectually able, and therefore eligible for the death penalty, in Ex parte Moore II (2018). Finally, the importance of the Supreme Court's most recent ruling on intellectual disability in capital cases, Moore v. Texas II (2019), is explored in depth. The article concludes with recommendations for best practices among forensic evaluators who assess capital defendants for intellectual disability.


Sent from my iPhone

Variations in reliability and validity do not influence judge, attorney, and mock juror decisions about psychological expert evidence. - PsycNET

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-55518-001

Citation

Chorn, J. A., & Kovera, M. B. (2019). Variations in reliability and validity do not influence judge, attorney, and mock juror decisions about psychological expert evidence. Law and Human Behavior, 43(6), 542–557. https://doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000345

Abstract

Objective: We tested whether the reliability and validity of psychological testing underlying an expert's opinion influenced judgments made by judges, attorneys, and mock jurors. Hypotheses: We predicted that the participants would judge the expert's evidence more positively when it had high validity and high reliability. Method: In Experiment 1, judges (N = 111) and attorneys (N = 95) read a summary of case facts and proffer of expert testimony on the intelligence of a litigant. The psychological testing varied in scientific quality; either there was (a) blind administration (i.e., the psychologist did not have an expectation for the test result) of a highly reliable test, (b) nonblind administration (i.e., the psychologist did have an expectation for the test result) of a highly reliable test, or (c) blind administration of a test with low reliability. In a trial simulation (Experiment 2), we varied the scientific quality of the intelligence test and whether the cross-examination addressed the scientific quality of the test. Results: The variations in scientific quality did not influence judges' admissibility decisions nor their ratings of scientific quality nor did it influence attorneys' decisions about whether to move to exclude the evidence. Attorneys' ratings of scientific quality were sensitive to variations in reliability but not the testing conditions. Scientifically informed cross-examinations did not help mock jurors (N = 192) evaluate the validity or the reliability of a psychological test. Conclusion: Cross-examination was an ineffective method for educating jurors about problems associated with nonblind testing and reliability, which highlights the importance of training judges to evaluate the quality of expert evidence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)


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Kevin S. McGrew,  PhD
Educational Psychologist
Director
Institute for Applied Psychometrics (IAP)
www.themindhub.com
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Tuesday, December 3, 2019

Meta-analysis of relation between WCST and IQ

https://res.mdpi.com/d_attachment/brainsci/brainsci-09-00349/article_deploy/brainsci-09-00349.pdf

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Kevin S. McGrew,  PhD
Educational Psychologist
Director
Institute for Applied Psychometrics (IAP)
www.themindhub.com
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Thursday, November 28, 2019

Ethnic adjustment abuses in forensic assessment of intellectual abilities. - PsycNET

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-61762-001

Within the past few years, courts have been more open to accepting evidence of psychological research. For instance, in 2002, the United States Supreme Court, citing an American Psychological Association (APA) Amicus brief, declared that the execution of mentally retarded individuals was unconstitutional because it violated the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Between 2005 and 2012, the Supreme Court accepted APA briefs describing the limitations in neural development of adolescents and its relevance to sentencing. In 2013, the Court ruled that in assessing an individual's intelligence there must be a consideration of the standard error of measurement. All of this suggested a progressive movement in judicial recognition of psychological research. However, during the same time, many courts were allowing and accepting testimony in capital sentencing cases of so-called ethnic adjustment. Some psychologists were testifying that defendants who were from ethnic minority groups had IQ scores that were suppressed and that therefore their scores had to be "adjusted" upward to compensate for the suppression. However, these adjustments were based purely on clinical judgment and did not reflect any empirical studies. As a result, several of these individuals who had their IQ scores adjusted have been executed. This article will describe the case law surrounding this concept, ethical issues that it raises, and how a practitioner can provide useful consultation to attorneys who represent defendants in such cases. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)

Wednesday, November 6, 2019

After Being Reversed Twice, Texas Appeals Court Takes Intellectually Disabled Prisoner Off Death Row

https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/after-being-reversed-twice-texas-appeals-court-takes-intellectually-disabled-prisoner-off-death-row

Atkins Court Decisions: A bunch to update from FL and OK


I have been WAYYYYYYYY behind in posting recent Atkins court decisions and related documents.  Here I post info regarding a number of cases, without comment.  Click on each to access PDF files.

Bowles (2019, FL)

Harris (2019, OK)

Smith (2019, OK)

Walls (2019, FL; one, two).  More info here.

Atkins Court Decision: TX CCA Commutes Bobby Moore’s Death Sentence in Intellectual Disability Case



After iterating through the courts for years, the Atkins case of Bobby Moore, which had the Texas Briseno factors as a core issue, has been settled.

Click here for news story.  Here is another news story link.

Saturday, September 21, 2019

Forensic Clinicians' Understanding of Bias (MacLean et al., 2019)


Abstract

Bias, or systematic influences that create errors in judgment, can affect psychological evaluations in ways that lead to erroneous diagnoses and opinions. Although these errors can have especially serious consequences in the criminal justice system, little research has addressed forensic psychologists' awareness of well-known cognitive biases and debiasing strategies. We conducted a national survey with a sample of 120 randomly selected licensed psychologists with forensic interests to examine (a) their familiarity with and understanding of cognitive biases, (b) their self-reported strategies to mitigate bias, and (c) the relation of a and b to psychologists' cognitive reflection abilities. Most psychologists reported familiarity with well-known biases and distinguished these from sham biases and reported using research-identified strategies but not fictional or sham strategies. However, some psychologists reported little familiarity with actual biases, endorsed sham biases as real, failed to recognize effective bias mitigation strategies, and endorsed ineffective bias mitigation strategies. Furthermore, nearly everyone endorsed introspection (a strategy known to be ineffective) as an effective bias mitigation strategy. Cognitive reflection abilities were systematically related to error, such that stronger cognitive reflection was associated with less endorsement of sham biases.

Keywords: bias, forensic evaluation, survey, cognitive reflection

Tuesday, September 17, 2019

Digit Span Subscale Scores May Be Insufficiently Reliable for Clinical Interpretation: Distinguishing Between Stratified Coefficient Alpha and Omega Hierarchical - Gilles E. Gignac, Matthew R. Reynolds, Kristof Kovacs, 2019



Digit Span Subscale Scores May Be Insufficiently Reliable for Clinical Interpretation: Distinguishing Between Stratified Coefficient Alpha and Omega Hierarchical - Gilles E. Gignac, Matthew R. Reynolds, Kristof Kovacs, 2019
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1073191117748396

Sent from Flipboard


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Kevin McGrew, PhD
Educational Psychologist
Director, Institute for Applied Psychometrics
IAP
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Thursday, August 29, 2019

Reasonable Accommodations for Meeting the Unique Needs of Defendants with Intellectual Disability | Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law

http://jaapl.org/content/47/3/310


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Kevin McGrew, PhD
Educational Psychologist
Director, Institute for Applied Psychometrics
IAP
www.themindhub.com
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Adjudicative Competence and the Criminalization of Intellectual Disability | Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law

http://jaapl.org/content/47/3/321


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Kevin McGrew, PhD
Educational Psychologist
Director, Institute for Applied Psychometrics
IAP
www.themindhub.com
******************************************************

Thursday, August 15, 2019

Saturday, July 27, 2019

Declines in vocabulary among American adults within levels of educational attainment, 1974–2016 - ScienceDirect

File under Flynn effect related research

Abstract

We examined trends over time in vocabulary, a key component of verbal intelligence, in the nationally representative General Social Survey of U.S. adults (n = 29,912). Participants answered multiple-choice questions about the definitions of 10 specific words. When controlled for educational attainment, the vocabulary of the average U.S. adult declined between the mid-1970s and the 2010s. Vocabulary declined across all levels of educational attainment (less than high school, high school or 2-year college graduate, bachelor's or graduate degree), with the largest declines among those with a bachelor's or graduate degree. Hierarchical linear modeling analyses separating the effects of age, time period, and cohort suggest that the decline is primarily a time period effect. Increasing educational attainment has apparently not improved verbal ability among Americans. Instead, as educational attainment has increased, those at each educational level are less verbally skilled even though the vocabulary skills of the whole population are unchanged.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289618302198



Friday, July 5, 2019

Sunday, June 9, 2019

Communication and cross-examination in court for children and adults with intellectual disabilities: A systematic review - Joanne Morrison, Rachel Forrester-Jones, Jill Bradshaw, Glynis Murphy, 2019


Courts in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have identified children and adults with intellectual disabilities (ID) as vulnerable witnesses. The call from the English Court of Appeal is for advocates to adjust questioning during cross-examination according to individual needs. This review systematically examined previous empirical studies with the aim of delineating the particular communication needs of children and adults with ID during cross-examination. Studies utilising experimental methodology similar to examination/cross-examination processes, or which assessed the communication of actual cross-examinations in court were included. A range of communication challenges were highlighted, including: suggestibility to leading questions and negative feedback; acquiescence; accuracy; memory and understanding of court language. In addition, a number of influencing factors were identified, including: age; IQ level; question styles used. This review highlights the need for further research using cross-examination methodology and live practice, that take into consideration the impact on communication of the unique environment and situation of the cross-examination process.


Monday, May 27, 2019

Atkins court decisions: Busby v Davis (TX) and Smith v Alabama



FYI--two recent Atkins related decisions

Busby v Davis (TX: 2019)

Smith v Alabama (2019)

Texas ID death penalty update: Death Penalty Reform Bill Gets Watered Down to ‘Nothing’ Before Passing Senate After passing the House.


Death Penalty Reform Bill Gets Watered Down to ‘Nothing’ Before Passing Senate

After passing the House, HB 1139, meant to reform how Texas decides whether a defendant is too intellectually disabled to execute, was significantly softened in Senate committee.  Story at this link. 

Thursday, April 25, 2019

The mysterious disappearance of blogmaster of IQs Corner

My regular readers have noticed that I have not posted anything to my three blogs since last thanksgiving.  Why?

Well..I came down with a serious illness and spent 82 days in the hospital, 72 of which were at the world renowned Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN.  I have since returned home and am doing OT and PT rehab....that is now my full time job.  

I want to thank all who learned of my experience and sent kind words of support.  I shall return.

If you want more details you can check out the Caring Bridge log my lovely wife maintained.

https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/kevinmcgrewiq



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Kevin S. McGrew,  PhD
Educational Psychologist
Director
Institute for Applied Psychometrics (IAP)
www.themindhub.com
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