Public safety radio dispatchers incontrovertibly have to manage multiple tasks at any given time, from relaying lifesaving information to field units, to simultaneously overseeing several monitors and keeping up with the radio transmissions in a timely manner. Interestingly, however, the underlying cognitive abilities necessitated for performing such tasks have not been thoroughly investigated. To begin understanding the cognitive faculties that underlie dispatching tasks, we gauged cognitive ability measures relevant to dispatcher duties and introduced Working Memory Capacity (WMC) as underlying the differentiation on performance. The four general dispatcher cognitive factors identified by Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) literature, were Reasoning, Perceptual, Memory, and Verbal. This study substantiated the relationship that higher WMC had on increased performance of the four factors; WMC was a strong predictor of overall cognitive task accuracy. This study also measured dispatcher abilities detached from any dispatcher-like duties, to better explore the cognitive underpinnings without the confound of dispatcher-like tasks within the measures. High and low WMC group comparisons also revealed accuracy differences in cognitive abilities, task switching costs, and dual-task interference. Overall, this study provides support for WMC’s executive functioning as a key underlying mechanism determining dispatcher cognitive ability level.

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The process of judicial decision-making is not well understood. This paper has tried to shed some light on that process by examining the impact of presentence report recommendations upon the sentences handed down by the judges of a circuit court. Very little empirical work has been done on this problem, even though the presentence report recommendation is generally regarded by those in the judicial system as extremely important to the sentencing process.

First responders, especially law enforcement, frequently encounter individuals experiencing substance use concerns. Previous research has documented that a greater understanding of substance use disorders promotes a decrease in stigmatizing perspectives. We present a novel approach to training law enforcement officers to improve their interactions with community members exhibiting substance use disorders, while also promoting their professional well-being. The present study sought to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of the Stigma Reduction and Resiliency Training for First Responders (SRRT-FR) in a sample of law enforcement officers, as well as its efficacy in decreasing stigmatizing perspectives towards substance use disorders and increasing professional resiliency. One hundred and ten law enforcement officers participated in SRRT-FR and completed pre-, post- (n = 77), and four-month follow-up (n = 42) surveys that assessed their perceptions towards individuals with substance use disorders, as well as their well-being within their profession. Preliminary results suggest that SRRT-FR is feasible and acceptable amongst officers and may decrease some stigmatizing perspectives and increase resiliency. The findings warrant replication with larger sample sizes and randomized controlled trials involving law enforcement officers, as well as other first responders.

The purpose of this study was to examine ex-offender’s beliefs on the impact of incarceration and societal reintegration on mental health. The study is a qualitative design using interviews that were audio recorded and transcribed for analysis. The study sought to address the relationship between perceptions of mental health and experiences of incarceration and reintegration among formerly incarcerated individuals. The following themes emerged from participant responses: incarceration challenges, mental health stigma, and rehabilitation service accessibility. The findings of this study may contribute to social work practice by providing awareness to the factors impacting ex-offenders’ mental health and interventions needed. The significant importance the findings provide may influence social work advocacy for the services supporting rehabilitative reintegration and may reduce the rate of rearrested offenders, providing overall better mental health resources and services to this population.

Victims of childhood bullying often use passive coping strategies and experience depression, substance abuse use, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to examine adults' lived experiences of coping methods they used as victims of bullies during adolescence. Lazarus and Folkman's transactional theory of stress and coping provided the framework for the study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 young adults who were bullied as adolescents. Coding analysis indicated 7 emerging themes for coping: confrontation, self-controlling, seeking social support, accepting responsibility, escape-avoidance, problem-solving, and positive reappraisal. Participants reported that some coping methods were perceived as effective. The results suggested that self-support and the support of friends and family were key factors in overcoming childhood victimization. Findings may be used by parents, teachers, counselors, and community members to assist bullied or at-risk adolescents in developing coping methods to support their ongoing personal development.

[pt] A responsabilidade jurídica é, sem dúvidas, um dos institutos mais relevantes do direito, tendo em vista o seu papel de assegurar a coesão social. Dentro da tradição jurídica, os modelos explicativos sobre a atribuição de responsabilidade buscaram prescrever, a partir da uma perspectiva racional, quais os fatores que deveriam ser levados em conta a fim de produzir juízos de responsabilização de forma acurada. Segundo estes, tais juízos deveriam ser produtos de um processo iniciado pela análise causal do evento danoso, seguida da análise das intenções do agente para somente depois assinalar sua culpa e a respectiva punição. No entanto, a tais modelos tradicionais escaparam o fato de que a nossa capacidade de realizar juízos de responsabilidade está inclusa em uma complexa estrutura cognitiva a partir da qual normativizamos o mundo. Recentes descobertas de pesquisadores pertencentes aos campos das ciências cognitivas, da filosofia experimental, da psicologia moral e da psicologia social demonstraram uma inversão na forma como enxergamos o processo de atribuição de responsabilidade. As teorias e pesquisas empíricas formuladas por essas áreas apontam a ingerência da moralidade, das intuições e das emoções em conceitos considerados como neutros pela teoria do direito, como os de causalidade e intencionalidade, e na forma como as pessoas formulam seus juízos de responsabilidade. Neste trabalho busco demonstrar a influência de julgamentos morais e de processos de natureza intuitivo-afetiva sobre a tomada de decisão acerca do instituto da responsabilidade jurídica, com enfoque na responsabilidade penal. Ao final do trabalho, deixo algumas pistas investigativas sobre os impactos dessa influência para o nosso sistema penal. / [en] Legal responsibility is, undoubtedly, one of the most relevant institutes of Law, considering its part in assuring social cohesion. Among legal tradition, the explaining models on the attribution of responsibility intend to assign, from a rational perspective, which factors should be taken in consideration in order to produce accurate responsibility judgments. According to them, such judgments should be products of a process started by the causal analysis of the harmful event, followed by the analysis of the intentions of the agent, to only later assign its blame and respective punishment. However, such traditional models miss the fact that our ability to make responsibility judgments is integrated among a complex cognitive structure from which we normatize the world. Recent discoveries from researchers of the cognitive sciences, experimental philosophy, moral psychology and social psychology fields demonstrate an inversion in the way we see the process of the attribution of responsibility. The theories and empirical researches formulated by these areas point to the interference of morality, intuitions and emotions in concepts considered as neutral by legal theory, such as the concepts of causality and intentionality, and in the way people formulate their responsibility judgments. In this work, I intend to demonstrate the influence of moral judgments and of processes of intuitive and affective nature over the decision-making about the institute of legal responsibility, focusing on criminal responsibility. At the end of this work, I trace some investigative clues about the impact of such influence on our criminal system.

Mental health treatment in state prisons is revealed to be highly variable, under-funded, and systematically inadequate. Existing literature exposes this injustice but fails to provide a comprehensive proposal for reform. This paper attempts to fill that gap, outlining a cost-effective, evidence-based treatment proposal, directly addressing the deficits in care revealed through analysis of our current system. In addition, this paper provides historical overviews of the prison system and mental health treatment, utilizing theoretical perspectives to contextualize this proposal in the present state of affairs. Lastly, the evidence is provided to emphasize the potential economic and social benefits of improving mental health treatment in state prisons. Significant findings suggest a clear financial, legal, and moral incentive for states to address this issue, while the proposal provides a viable method of doing so.

Le thème de la présente recherche est l'étude des conditions dans lesquelles se développent les compétences interculturelles des jeunes immigrants en milieu scolaire à Sherbrooke. La problématique met en évidence divers questionnements en lien non seulement avec l’évolution de la société québécoise, mais aussi avec les besoins propres aux systèmes éducatifs et aux contextes dans lesquels évoluent les personnes concernées. Au niveau national et particulièrement au plan institutionnel, ces contextes sont de plus en plus marqués par l’émergence d’expériences interculturelles complexes. Celles-ci constituent des phénomènes dynamiques et en transformation; elles provoquent des sentiments multiples, des comportements spécifiques, des troubles émotionnels, des chocs culturels, etc. Ces phénomènes s’accentuent proportionnellement à l’augmentation du nombre de nouveaux arrivants dans certaines régions. Ainsi, le nombre des jeunes immigrants à Sherbrooke s’accroît sans cesse. Les professionnels du milieu scolaire ne savent plus comment agir de façon adéquate dans une telle situation ; ils déplorent leur propre manque de connaissances et de ressources dans ce domaine, étant donné que l'augmentation de l'immigration vers les petites villes constitue un phénomène relativement nouveau au Canada. Ce phénomène demeure largement sous-représenté dans la documentation scientifique. Il est traité de manière parcellaire et peu adaptée aux réalités spécifiques des adolescents évoluant dans une telle région. Il s’agit donc d’un champ conceptuel à redéfinir; son cadre de référence est à rebâtir. Dès lors, il s’avère impératif de mener une analyse fine pour mieux comprendre le processus de développement des compétences interculturelles chez les immigrants, afin de mettre en place des outils efficaces pour une meilleure appropriation des connaissances et des actions pertinentes dans plusieurs sphères culturelles et institutionnelles. Pour cela, nous avons adopté un modèle de référence structurant permettant d’analyser les conditions du développement des compétences vues sous l’angle des facteurs favorables et défavorables, en allant du microsystème au macrosystème. Quatre types de répondants ont été interrogés : les jeunes québécois, les adolescents immigrants et leurs parents, ainsi que les enseignants œuvrant au sein des classes multiethniques, pour obtenir un regard global sur les témoignages des différents acteurs concernés par les expériences d'intégration. A l’issue des analyses, les résultats montrent que les conditions étudiées relèvent de plusieurs facteurs essentiels, qui sont classés selon l’écosystème. On y retrouve principalement les degrés de motivation et d’estime de soi, l’image perçue de l’école (microsystème), les stratégies parentales (mesosystème), la formation et les approches des enseignants (exosystème) ainsi que les lois touchant à l’accueil scolaire (macrosystème). De plus, il faut noter que les jeunes immigrants tendent à s’acculturer plus rapidement et au mieux dans la nouvelle société aussi bien que dans le nouveau collectif scolaire.Dans le présent travail, les concepts traités en rapport avec la notion des compétences interculturelles se trouvent enrichis par des apports multidisciplinaires (psychologie, sciences de l’éducation, sociologie, ainsi qu’anthropologie). / The subject matter of the present research is the analysis of conditions in which immigrant youth develop their cross cultural competences in school milieu in Sherbrooke.Several questions pertaining to changes taking place in Quebec society and the particular needs of Quebec’s educational system, in which the target population evolves, are outlined. Nationally, and particularly on the institutional level, the emergence of complex intercultural trajectories is increasingly taking center-stage. Such experiences represent dynamic evolving phenomena that provoke various feelings, specific behavior patterns, emotional disorders and cultural shocks. They are more clearly identifiable in certain regions where the number of newly arrived immigrants continuously grows. And the immigration in Sherbrooke is in constant evolution. Academic professionals are not sufficiently skilled to adequately perform in this kind of situations. They deplore their lack of knowledge and resources in this area, given that immigration to small towns on this scale is a relatively new phenomenon in Canada.Furthermore, this new phenomenon remains largely unexplored in the scientific domain. This subject is only partially paid attention to and is poorly adapted to the specific realities of immigrant youth being brought up in such regions.The conceptual field and frame of reference appear to have to be entirely reconstructed. To do so, it is necessary to analyze the conditions in which immigrant youth develop their cross-cultural competencies as it would allow us to understand the process of how they are acquired.Such subtle analysis will provide for carrying out tools and techniques to better equip academic professionals with knowledge and skills to help them face their new school realities and act in an appropriate and efficient manner.To address this need, we deployed an analysis pattern, which allowed us to study the evolution of cross-cultural competences by considering positive and negative factors for their development. These factors have been classified in an ecosystem, going from micro-system to macro-system.In the present study four types of respondents were interrogated: Quebecois youth, immigrant youth and their parents and teachers working in multicultural classes. These four respondents’ types were necessary to obtain a comprehensive view of the immigrant situation and their integration. We used focus groups, projective imagination test and face to face interviews.The results of the global analysis have shown that there are several crucial factors which were classified into the ecosystem. The main identified factors are: the degree of self-motivation, self esteem and how the school image is perceived (microsystem), parental strategies (mesosystem), teachers’ academic background and their tutorial approach, as well as policies around “welcome classes” structure (macrosystem). Moreover, we noticed that immigrant youth tend to faster adopt and integrate the culture of the Quebec society as well as merge with the new school community.The present research aimed to study the concepts of cross-cultural competencies has been enriched by the multidisciplinary approach we have applied throughout our analysis (psychology, pedagogy, sociology and anthropology).

The present series of studies examine how jurors and public defenders evaluate different pieces of evidence and integrate them into a coherent conclusion within the context of a criminal case. Previous research has shown that in situations where both sides of the case are compelling, decision-makers nevertheless come to highly confident and polarized decisions, called coherence shifts (Simon, 2004). The present research sought to expand on coherence effects, improve upon the methodology of previous studies, and explore potential moderators of coherence. In Study 1, mock jurors (n = 306) read about a criminal case and evaluated multiple pieces of evidence at various points throughout the case. Results indicated that participants exhibited pronounced coherence shifts (i.e., their evaluations of the various pieces of evidence (a) became more consistent as the case progressed, and (b) were evaluated in line with their initial leanings) using an improved methodology that randomized evidence order and evidence valence. Furthermore, participants’ interim leanings of guilt or innocence biased their subsequent evaluations of ambiguous evidence. The direction and magnitude of participants’ coherence shifts were predicted by their pretrial dispositions towards prosecution and defense. Participants lacked awareness of how their perceptions of the evidence have shifted. Coherence shifts were not, however, moderated by asking mock jurors to justify their decisions, or by asking mock jurors to play devil’s advocate while considering each piece of evidence, underscoring the pervasiveness of this cognitive bias. Study 2 examined whether actual public defenders experience coherence shifts and how those shifts relate to the plea bargaining process; however, no coherence shifts were observed. Study 3 examined whether the timing of the defense’s presentation of their case could reduce coherence effects; results indicated that reading about the defense’s case immediately after the prosecution’s case (c.f. following a delay) marginally (p = .09) reduced coherence effects among jurors who acquitted the defendant, suggesting one potential strategy to mitigate this bias.