Anne Lippert

Improving the Credibility of Child Sexual Assault Victims in Court: The Impact of a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner

The present study investigated the influence of a sexual assault nurse examiners (SANEs) testimony on mock juror perceptions of a child or adolescent victim of child sexual assault. Community members (N = 252, 156 females) read a fictional criminal trial summary of a child sexual assault case in which the victim was 6 or 15 years old and the prosecution presented medical testimony from a SANE or a traditional registered nurse (RN), or did not present medical testimony. Mock jurors were more likely to render guilty verdicts when a SANE testified compared with the other two testimony conditions. In addition, pro-victim judgments (e.g., sympathy toward the victim) and negative defendant judgments (e.g., anger toward the defendant) mediated this relation. Finally, cognitive network representations of the case demonstrated that the RN and no-medical-testimony groups were similar and the SANE group was distinct from the other two conditions. We discuss these results in terms of the implications of SANE testimony in child sexual assault court cases.

The impact of frequency of behavior and type of contact on judgments involving a criminal stalking case.

We investigated mock juror perceptions of the frequency of behavior and type of contact in an ex-intimate stalking case. We used a mock-juror methodology, in which 204 community members (129 women) read a stalking trial summary, rendered a verdict, and evaluated the intent of the defendant to cause the victim fear and distress, as well as the victims experience with these emotions. The trial varied as to whether there were 5 or 30 stalking incidents and whether the stalking involved personal contact or stalking via text message. Results showed that females were more likely to render a guilty verdict when the victim had been stalked 30 times rather than 5 times while males were equally likely to render a guilty verdict regardless of the frequency. Mock jurors were significantly more likely to render guilty verdicts in the personal contact condition than in the text message condition. Females perceptions of the victims fear and distress mediated the frequency of incidents x gender interaction. The victims fear and the defendants intentions mediated the main effect of type of contact on verdict. Cognitive network analyses showed that victim fear and the defendants intent to cause fear were central to participant verdict decision making. We discuss these results in terms of the implications, specifically that victim fear should be a primary focus in stalking legislation.

Successes and Failures in Building Learning Environments to Promote Deep Learning: The Value of Conversational Agents

This chapter describes some attempts to promote deep learning (as opposed to shallow learning) through conversational pedagogical agents. Learning environments with agents have been developed to serve as substitutes for humans who range in expertise from novices to experts. For example, AutoTutor helps students learn by holding a dialogue in natural language with the student, whereas trialogues have two agents interacting with the student in a three-way interaction. Agents can guide the interaction with the learner, instruct the learner what to do, and interact with other agents to model ideal behavior, strategies, reflections, and social interactions. Some agents generate speech, gestures, body movements, and facial expressions in ways similar to people. These agent-based systems have sometimes facilitated deep learning more than conventional learning environments. Agents have shown learning gains on a variety of subject matters and skills, including science, technology, engineering, mathematics, research methods, metacognition, and language comprehension. Learning environments are currently being developed to improve lifelong learning and collaborative problem solving.

Using the Internet to Facilitate Career Choices in Psychology-Related Fields

Career planning for psychology majors has broadened to include a diverse array of opportunities (e.g., medicine, law, education, government, and military). The Internet has made it possible for students to learn about and quickly obtain information regarding these new career options. This article describes various career resources on the Internet and highlights which websites might be best for students with a clear career direction, as well as those for students who are unclear about what the future holds. The websites described include large sites not affiliated with a college, university, or professional organization. Other websites described are affiliated with a(n) (a) psychology department, (b) department of the federal government, (c) for-profit company or nonprofit organization, (d) professional organization, and (e) online career management site.

ElectronixTutor: An Intelligent Tutoring System with Multiple Learning Resources for Electronics.

BackgroundThe Office of Naval Research (ONR) organized a STEM Challenge initiative to explore how intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) can be developed in a reasonable amount of time to help students learn STEM topics. This competitive initiative sponsored four teams that separately developed systems that covered topics in mathematics, electronics, and dynamical systems. After the teams shared their progress at the conclusion of an 18-month period, the ONR decided to fund a joint applied project in the Navy that integrated those systems on the subject matter of electronic circuits. The University of Memphis took the lead in integrating these systems in an intelligent tutoring system called ElectronixTutor. This article describes the architecture of ElectronixTutor, the learning resources that feed into it, and the empirical findings that support the effectiveness of its constituent ITS learning resources.ResultsA fully integrated ElectronixTutor was developed that included several intelligent learning resources (AutoTutor, Dragoon, LearnForm, ASSISTments, BEETLE-II) as well as texts and videos. The architecture includes a student model that has (a) a common set of knowledge components on electronic circuits to which individual learning resources contribute and (b) a record of student performance on the knowledge components as well as a set of cognitive and non-cognitive attributes. There is a recommender system that uses the student model to guide the student on a small set of sensible next steps in their training. The individual components of ElectronixTutor have shown learning gains in previous decades of research.ConclusionsThe ElectronixTutor system successfully combines multiple empirically based components into one system to teach a STEM topic (electronics) to students. A prototype of this intelligent tutoring system has been developed and is currently being tested. ElectronixTutor is unique in its assembling a group of well-tested intelligent tutoring systems into a single integrated learning environment.

When a corporation rapes: perceptions of rape in civil court for corporate defendants

ABSTRACT In recent years, the coupling of poor outcomes for rape victims in criminal court and the widening scope of legal responsibility for sexual assault has prompted plaintiffs to file civil suits for rape against corporations. Unfortunately, we know little about juror perception of civilly litigated rape against corporate defendants and most jury research involving corporate defendants concerns non-sexual injury cases (e.g. premises liability, automobile accidents). With the increasing number of corporations being sued civilly for rape, we need to understand how civil juries perceive these cases. The present study investigated mock jurors’ perceptions of a fictional civil rape trial against a hotel. Community members (Nu2009=u2009155) read one of three trial summaries: Civil rape trial against the alleged perpetrator, civil rape trial against a hotel, or criminal rape trial. Results indicate females have higher pro-plaintiff judgments than males in civil court, perceptions of greed typically associated with civil litigation apply to rape, and favorable plaintiff decisions are most likely against a corporate defendant. Also, mental models suggest mock jurors conceptualize criminal and civil rape cases against an individual similarly. We discuss our results in terms of psychological, legal and practical expectations when suing for rape.

“She Is his Girlfriend—I Believe this Is a Different Situation”: Gender Differences in Perceptions of the Legality of Intimate Partner Rape

Despite the alarming problem of intimate partner rape (IPR), there is a dearth of empirical data investigating how jury-eligible individuals perceive IPR in a courtroom setting. In particular, very little research has addressed IPR beyond the scope of marital rape. Thus, we investigated how community members perceived intimate partner rape involving both a married and non-married couple in a mock trial context. In Experiment 1, 129 participants (78 women) read a trial summary describing an intimate partner rape that differed as to whether the victim and defendant were married or in a cohabiting, non-marital relationship. In Experiment 2, which involved the same methods as Experiment 1, we gave 153 participants (79 women) four verdict options: not guilty, guilty of Rape in the First-Degree, Intimate Partner Rape, or Sexual Misconduct. In both experiments, women were more likely to render guilty verdicts than men and yielded more pro-victim/anti-defendant judgments. Participants did not perceive the case differently between the marital status conditions. In Experiment 2, the presence of other guilty verdict choices influenced both men and women’s guilt decisions. The proportion of women who found the defendant not guilty of any crime decreased by over 50% in Experiment 2, while the proportion of men who found the defendant not guilty remained stable across experiments. The results suggest that few men and women are willing to convict the defendant of Rape in the First-Degree—especially when presented with other, lesser sexual crime options—and that the victim and defendant’s intimate relationship is a mitigating factor causing mock jurors to view IPR as a lesser, sexual crime different to felony rape.