Disengaging and rehabilitating high-value detainees: a small scale qualitative study

In an era of international terrorism, interviews with high-value detainees may have the dual purpose of extracting useful information and of disengagement. We conducted a small-scale, qualitative study using in-depth, individual interviews with 11 experienced interviewers in the Southeast Asia region and Australia, in order to provide insights into the types of interviewing strategies employed in terrorist rehabilitation. Our findings highlight the potential efficacy of creating a physically comfortable and relaxed interview setting, and of using interview strategies that focus on rapport-building, principles of social persuasion and elements of procedural justice, along with a patient and flexible stance to questioning. We suggest that interviewers performing rehabilitation interviews with high-value detainees ought to be trained to use the social approach to interviewing

Pressure evolution of electronic and crystal structure of non-centrosymmetric EuCoGe3_3

We report on the pressure evolution of the electronic and crystal structures of the noncentrosymmetric antiferromagnet EuCoGe3. Using a diamond anvil cell, we performed high pressure fluorescence detected near-edge x-ray absorption spectroscopy at the Eu L3, Co K, and Ge K edges and synchrotron powder x-ray diffraction. In the Eu L3 spectrum, both divalent and trivalent Eu peaks are observed from the lowest pressure measurement (~2 GPa). By increasing pressure, the relative intensity of the trivalent Eu peak increases, and an average Eu valence continuously increases from 2.2 at 2 GPa to 2.31 at~50 GPa. On the other hand, no discernible changes are observed in the Co K and Ge K spectra as a function of pressure. With the increase in pressure, lattice parameters continuously decrease without changing I4mm symmetry. Our study revealed a robust divalent Eu state and an unchanged crystal symmetry of EuCoGe3 against pressure.Comment: Accepted in PRB https://journals.aps.org/prb/accepted/b2073O6fL9e1ca40307905b1de5bf05de12d8fc1

Psychological principles of successful aging technologies: A mini-review

Based on resource-oriented conceptions of successful life-span development, we propose three principles for evaluating assistive technology: (a) net resource release; (b) person specificity, and (c) proximal versus distal frames of evaluation. We discuss how these general principles can aid the design and evaluation of assistive technology in adulthood and old age, and propose two technological strategies, one targeting sensorimotor and the other cognitive functioning. The sensorimotor strategy aims at releasing cognitive resources such as attention and working memory by reducing the cognitive demands of sensory or sensorimotor aspects of performance. The cognitive strategy attempts to provide adaptive and individualized cuing structures orienting the individual in time and space by providing prompts that connect properties of the environment to the individual's action goals. We argue that intelligent assistive technology continuously adjusts the balance between `environmental support' and `self-initiated processing' in person-specific and aging-sensitive ways, leading to enhanced allocation of cognitive resources. Furthermore, intelligent assistive technology may foster the generation of formerly latent cognitive resources by activating developmental reserves (plasticity). We conclude that `lifespan technology', if co-constructed by behavioral scientists, engineers, and aging individuals, offers great promise for improving both the transition from middle adulthood to old age and the degree of autonomy in old age in present and future generations. Copyright (C) 2008 S. Karger AG, Basel

A survey of intelligence analysts’ strategies for solving analytic tasks

Analytic performance may be assessed by the nature of the process applied to intelligence tasks and analysts are expected to use a 'critical' or deliberative mindset. However, there is little research on how analysts do their work. We report the findings of a quantitative survey of 113 intelligence analysts who were asked to report how often they would apply strategies involving more or less critical thinking when performing representative tasks along the analytic workflow. Analysts reported using ‘deliberative’ strategies significantly more often than ‘intuitive’ ones when capturing customer requirements, processing data, and communicating conclusions. Years of experience working in the intelligence community, skill level, analytic thinking training, and time spent working collaboratively (opposed to individually) were largely unrelated to reported strategy use. We discuss the implications of these findings for both improving intelligence analysis and developing an evidence-based approach to policy and practice in this domain

Feature integration in natural language concepts

Two experiments measured the joint influence of three key sets of semantic features on the frequency with which artifacts (Experiment 1) or plants and creatures (Experiment 2) were categorized in familiar categories. For artifacts, current function outweighed both originally intended function and current appearance. For biological kinds, appearance and behavior, an inner biological function, and appearance and behavior of offspring all had similarly strong effects on categorization. The data were analyzed to determine whether an independent cue model or an interactive model best accounted for how the effects of the three feature sets combined. Feature integration was found to be additive for artifacts but interactive for biological kinds. In keeping with this, membership in contrasting artifact categories tended to be superadditive, indicating overlapping categories, whereas for biological kinds, it was subadditive, indicating conceptual gaps between categories. It is argued that the results underline a key domain difference between artifact and biological concepts

Complex exon-intron marking by histone modifications is not determined solely by nucleosome distribution

It has recently been shown that nucleosome distribution, histone modifications and RNA polymerase II (Pol II) occupancy show preferential association with exons (“exon-intron marking”), linking chromatin structure and function to co-transcriptional splicing in a variety of eukaryotes. Previous ChIP-sequencing studies suggested that these marking patterns reflect the nucleosomal landscape. By analyzing ChIP-chip datasets across the human genome in three cell types, we have found that this marking system is far more complex than previously observed. We show here that a range of histone modifications and Pol II are preferentially associated with exons. However, there is noticeable cell-type specificity in the degree of exon marking by histone modifications and, surprisingly, this is also reflected in some histone modifications patterns showing biases towards introns. Exon-intron marking is laid down in the absence of transcription on silent genes, with some marking biases changing or becoming reversed for genes expressed at different levels. Furthermore, the relationship of this marking system with splicing is not simple, with only some histone modifications reflecting exon usage/inclusion, while others mirror patterns of exon exclusion. By examining nucleosomal distributions in all three cell types, we demonstrate that these histone modification patterns cannot solely be accounted for by differences in nucleosome levels between exons and introns. In addition, because of inherent differences between ChIP-chip array and ChIP-sequencing approaches, these platforms report different nucleosome distribution patterns across the human genome. Our findings confound existing views and point to active cellular mechanisms which dynamically regulate histone modification levels and account for exon-intron marking. We believe that these histone modification patterns provide links between chromatin accessibility, Pol II movement and co-transcriptional splicing

Why is Behavioral Game a Game for Economists? : The concept of beliefs in equilibrium

The interdisciplinary exchange between economists and psychologists has so far been more active and fruitful in the modifications of Expected Utility Theory than in those of Game Theory. We argue that this asymmetry may be explained by economists' specific way of doing equilibrium analysis of aggregate-level outcomes in their practice, and by psychologists' reluctance to fully engage with such practice. We focus on the notion of belief that is embedded in economists' practice of equilibrium analysis, more specifically Nash equilibrium, and argue that its difference from the psychological counterpart is one of the factors that makes interdisciplinary exchange in behavioral game theory more difficult.Peer reviewe

Capturing and testing perceptual-cognitive expertise: A comparison of stationary and movement response methods

Numerous methods have been used to study expertise and performance. In the present article, we compare the cognitive thought processes of skilled soccer players when responding to film-based simulations of defensive situations involving two different experimental conditions. Participants either remained stationary in a seated position (n = 10) or were allowed to move (n = 10) in response to life-size film sequences of 11 versus 11 open-play soccer situations viewed from a player’s perspective. Response accuracy and retrospective verbal reports of thinking were collected across the two task conditions. In the movement-based response group, participants generated a greater number of verbal report statements, including a higher proportion of evaluation, prediction, and action planning statements, than did participants in the stationary group. Findings suggest that the processing strategies employed during performance differ depending on the nature of the response required of participants. Implications for behavioral methods and experimental design are discussed