Statistics, Not Experts

The legal system should rely much more than it now does on statistical evidence. It should be cautious about the judgments of experts, who make predictable cognitive errors. Like everyone else, experts have a tendency to blunder about risk, a point that has been shown to hold for doctors, whose predictions significantly err in the direction of optimism. We present new evidence that individual doctors\u27 judgments about the ordinary standard of care are incorrect and excessively optimistic. We also show how this evidence bears on legal determinations of negligence, by doctors and others

Causation in Tort: General Populations vs. Individual Cases

To establish causation, a tort plaintiff must show that it is more probable than not that the harm would not have occurred if the defendant had followed the relevant standard of care. Statistical evidence, based on aggregate data, is sometimes introduced to show that the defendant\u27s conduct created a statistically significant increase in the likelihood that the harm would occur. But there is a serious problem with the use of such evidence: It does not establish that in the particular case, the injury was more likely than not to have occurred because the defendant behaved negligently. Under existing doctrine, a plaintiff should not be able to establish liability on the basis of a showing of a statistically significant increase in risk. This point has general implications for the use of statistical evidence in tort cases. It also raises complex issues about the relationship between individual cases and general deterrence: Optimal deterrence might be obtained by imposing liability on defendants who engage in certain behavior, even though a failure to engage in such behavior cannot be connected with the plaintiff’s harm by reference to the ordinary standards of causation

Causation in Tort: General Populations vs. Individual Cases

To establish causation, a tort plaintiff must show that it is “more probable than not” that the harm would not have occurred if the defendant had followed the relevant standard of care. Statistical evidence, based on aggregate data, is sometimes introduced to show that the defendant’s conduct created a statistically significant increase in the likelihood that the harm would occur. But there is a serious problem with the use of such evidence: It does not establish that in the particular case, the injury was more likely than not to have occurred because the defendant behaved negligently. Under existing doctrine, a plaintiff should not be able to establish liability on the basis of a showing of a statistically significant increase in risk. This point has general implications for the use of statistical evidence in tort cases. It also raises complex issues about the relationship between individual cases and general deterrence: Optimal deterrence might be obtained by imposing liability on defendants who engage in certain behavior, even though a failure to engage in such behavior cannot be connected with the plaintiff’s harm by reference to the ordinary standards of causation

Gesture analysis for physics education researchers

Systematic observations of student gestures can not only fill in gaps in students' verbal expressions, but can also offer valuable information about student ideas, including their source, their novelty to the speaker, and their construction in real time. This paper provides a review of the research in gesture analysis that is most relevant to physics education researchers and illustrates gesture analysis for the purpose of better understanding student thinking about physics.Comment: 14 page

Cognitive demands of face monitoring: Evidence for visuospatial overload

Young children perform difficult communication tasks better face to face than when they cannot see one another (e.g., Doherty-Sneddon & Kent, 1996). However, in recent studies, it was found that children aged 6 and 10 years, describing abstract shapes, showed evidence of face-to-face interference rather than facilitation. For some communication tasks, access to visual signals (such as facial expression and eye gaze) may hinder rather than help children’s communication. In new research we have pursued this interference effect. Five studies are described with adults and 10- and 6-year-old participants. It was found that looking at a face interfered with children’s abilities to listen to descriptions of abstract shapes. Children also performed visuospatial memory tasks worse when they looked at someone’s face prior to responding than when they looked at a visuospatial pattern or at the floor. It was concluded that performance on certain tasks was hindered by monitoring another person’s face. It is suggested that processing of visual communication signals shares certain processing resources with the processing of other visuospatial information

Making Peace with Your Enemy: Nelson Mandela and His Contributions to Conflict Resolution

This is a transcription of the tenth anniversary celebration of the Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution at the William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The event was held in honor of NelsonMandela, and included a panel discussion about his contributions to the dispute resolution field. Panelists included Dean Penelope Andrews of the University of Cape Town Faculty of Law, Prof. Carrie Menkel-Meadow of the U.C. Irvine School of Law, Prof. Robert Mnookin of Harvard Law School, and Judge Richard Goldstone, a former member of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. An introduction was made by Dean Dan Hamilton of the Boyd School of Law and Prof. Jean Sternlight, Director of the Saltman Center. Prof. Andrea Schneider, Director of the Marquette University Law School Dispute Resolution Program, delivered opening remarks and led the panel discussion

Clear otorrhea: a case of Munchausen syndrome in a pediatric patient

This paper reports a case of Munchausen syndrome in a pediatric patient. An 11-year-old girl presented with the complaint of clear fluid otorrhea. She underwent numerous investigations with deception of the physicians. The literature with respect to Munchausen syndrome in the pediatric patient is reviewed. Diagnosis of Munchausen syndrome is difficult especially during the initial assessment, although suspicion might be aroused by inconsistencies in the patient’s history and discrepancies between signs and symptoms

Transitional knowledge in the acquisition of concepts

These studies explore children's conceptual knowledge as it is expressed through their verbal and gestural explanations of concepts. We build on previous work that has shown that children who produce a large proportion of gestures that do not match their verbal explanations are in transition with respect to the concept they are explaining. This gesture/speech mismatch has been called "discordance." Previous work discovered this phenomenon with respect to 5- to 7-year-old children's explanations of conservation problems. Study 1 shows: (1) that older children (10 to 11 years old) exhibit gesture/speech discordance with respect to another concept, understanding the equivalence relationship in mathematical equations, and; (2) that children who produce many discordant responses in their explanations of mathematical equivalence are more likely to benefit from instruction in the concept than are children who produce few such responses. Studies 2 and 3 explore the properties and usefulness of discordance as an index of transitional knowledge in a child's acquisition of mathematical equivalence. Under any circumstance in which new concepts are acquired, there exists a mental bridge connecting the old knowledge state to the new. The studies reported here suggest that the combination of gesture and speech may be an easily observable and significantly interpretable reflection of knowledge states, both static and in flux.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/27122/1/0000114.pd

Munchausen by internet: current research and future directions.

The Internet has revolutionized the health world, enabling self-diagnosis and online support to take place irrespective of time or location. Alongside the positive aspects for an individual's health from making use of the Internet, debate has intensified on how the increasing use of Web technology might have a negative impact on patients, caregivers, and practitioners. One such negative health-related behavior is Munchausen by Internet

Infants’ intentionally communicative vocalisations elicit responses from caregivers and are the best predictors of the transition to language: a longitudinal investigation of infants’ vocalisations, gestures, and word production

What aspects of infants’ prelinguistic communication are most valuable for learning to speak, and why? We test whether early vocalisations and gestures drive the transition to word use because, in addition to indicating motoric readiness, they 1) are early instances of intentional communication and 2) elicit verbal responses from caregivers. In study 1, 11-month-olds (N = 134) were observed to coordinate vocalisations and gestures with gaze to their caregiver’s face at above chance rates, indicating that they are plausibly intentionally communicative. Study 2 tested whether those infant communicative acts that were gaze-coordinated best predicted later expressive vocabulary. We report a novel procedure for predicting vocabulary via multi-model inference over a comprehensive set of infant behaviours produced at 11- and 12-months (n = 58). This makes it possible to establish the relative predictive value of different behaviours that are hierarchically organised by level of granularity. Gaze-coordinated vocalisations were the most valuable predictors of expressive vocabulary size up to 24 months. Study 3 established that caregivers were more likely to respond to gaze-coordinated behaviours. Moreover, the dyadic combination of infant gaze-coordinated vocalisation and caregiver response was by far the best predictor of later vocabulary size. We conclude that practice with prelinguistic intentional communication facilitates the leap to symbol use. Learning is optimised when caregivers respond to intentional vocalisations with appropriate language