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As more psychotherapists enter forensic practice, fundamental differences between patients in treatment and patients in personal injury litigation require adjustment of clinicians' orientation toward patients. Therapists' traditional support, acceptance, and empathy toward patients in psychotherapy must be supplemented with increased objectivity regarding plaintiffs' self-presentation. Adopting a more investigative attitude toward patients' self-reports may represent for some therapists an uncomfortable transformation of the traditional therapeutic relationship. Awareness of the reasons for disparities between patients in these two roles can improve clinical judgment. Clinicians are advised to become knowledgeable about these issues and to adopt a more analytical, data-oriented attitude toward patients' self-reports when conducting forensic examinations.

Findings from empirical research serve as the foundation for neuropsychological assessment of individuals suspected of exposure to formaldehyde, Insofar as conclusions regarding causal relationships between exposure and neuropsychological deficits are based on research methodologies that are reliable, findings can be informative. Unfortunately, existing research is not rooted in sound methodology and findings may mislead rather than enlighten clinicians. Two prominent shortcomings in formaldehyde research are discussed: selection bias in recruitment of research participants and unreliability of participant recall for obtaining data on important background variables and exposure levels. Selected examples illustrate the influence of these shortcomings on research showing a causal relationship between long-term, low-level exposure to formaldehyde and chronic neurobehavioral deficiencies. The implications of these weaknesses for assessment of individual patients are discussed.

Does patient self-attention to physical and psychological symptoms compared to self-distraction result in different clinical conclusions in forensic contexts? Participants in 2 studies were instructed either to attend carefully to somatic symptoms and sensations (attention instructions), to tally how many questionnaire items were related to physical versus emotional symptoms (distraction instructions), or received no attentional instructions (controls). The principal findings were that physical symptoms and reports of anxiety and depression were greater after attention instructions than after distraction instructions. Insofar as assessment contexts produce differential attention to self, examiners are advised to use caution in drawing conclusions regarding accuracy of self-reported symptoms.

The health effects of long-term. low-level exposure to organic solvents have been studied for many years. While the volume of literature is great, definitive conclusions regarding chronic neurobehavioral effects of environmental exposure are premature. Methodological shortcomings in research preclude confidence in studies allegedly supporting a causal link between chronic low-dose solvent exposure and lasting neurobehavioral deficits. In this article, the shortcomings reviewed include selection bias in recruitment of research subjects, overreliance on subjective recall in determining levels and duration of exposure, between-study variability in kinds of solvents examined, variability in tests selected to assess neurobehavioral functioning, and diversity in reported findings. The implications of these for characterizing the state of organic solvent research are discussed.

The effect of information about detection of an odor on causal ascriptions for illness was investigated. In four different scenarios perceptions regarding the cause of a hypothetical symptomatic experience were compared for events described with and without an odor. Participants (N = 106) were asked to imagine themselves becoming ill after engaging in several common experiences, including pumping gasoline at a service station. In two scenarios participants read that they smelled an offensive odor while pumping the gasoline whereas in two other scenarios no information about an odor was provided. Further, information about gasoline described with or without odor was presented either early or late in the stimulus paragraphs. All participants then responded to questions including an open-ended question asking them to make causal attributions for their illness. Participants in the odor-suggested group ascribed the cause of illness more frequently to gasoline and perceived the probability of other potential causes as lower than did participants in the nonodor suggested group. Findings suggest that peoples' implicit theories about toxicity contain causal connections between malodorous stimuli and illness. The implications of implicit theories for perception of illness are discussed.

The effects of counterfactual thinking and causal attribution on accident-related judgments were investigated. Subjects read about a couple who died in an automobile accident where mutability of the outcome was varied. Mutability refers to the extent that a factual event can be mentally altered, with mutable outcomes more easily imagined otherwise than immutable outcomes. In comparison to the immutable scenario, participants reading the mutable scenario saw the accident as more avoidable, ascribed a greater causal role to the accident perpetrator, and perceived the perpetrator having more causal control over the couple's deaths. In addition to increased anger, a harsher financial penalty was levied against the accident perpetrator by participants in the mutable than in the immutable condition. Multiple regression analysis supported the efficacy of attribution theory to explain the affective and behavioral consequences of counterfactual thinking in accident-related judgments.

Response bias refers to systematic error in the data produced by patients or research subjects, e.g., due to erroneous recall or reporting. In forensic settings, response bias appears to be associated with the nature of the proceedings. The present study tested whether patients in litigation exhibit different response patterns than nonlitigating patients when asked about their preinjury problems. 34 litigants and 80 nonlitigants rated various areas of cognitive and emotional functioning as problematic in the past and currently. The primary finding was that plaintiffs reported pre-injury functioning superior to that of controls. These findings suggest the need for caution in inferences that litigants are either reliable or deceitful because response biases may affect self-reports in a misleading fashion.

Psychologists should keep in mind the base rate of symptoms in those prone to litigation and use caution in relying on self-reports as evidence of injury when these people litigate. Personal injury claimants in a survey had more neurotoxic and neuropsychologic complaints than subjects with head trauma or toxic exposure in their medical histories.

Female and male subjects read one of three scenarios depicting a social-sexual interaction between a man and a woman. The scenarios varied in severity of the stimulus male's behavior according to whether sexual harassment had occurred. Subjects then rated the offensiveness of his behavior and whether it constituted sexual harassment. Subjects also rated the stimulus male's behavior on Weiner's (1986) three basic dimensions of causality: locus of causality, or the perceived cause of the behavior as internal or external; stability, or the likelihood of its recurrence; and controllability, or the amount of volitional influence he exercised during the interaction. Additionally, subjects reported their anger at the target male and sympathy for the target female. Findings generally indicated that for both women and men, as the scenarios increased in severity, these ratings were elevated. Gender comparisons also showed elevations in these ratings for female but not for male subjects, and only in the scenarios of lesser severity. Regression analyses revealed attribution variables - control, stability, and anger - as reliable predictors of perceived offensiveness and harassment in the most severe scenario, whereas affects were the most reliable predictors in scenarios of lesser severity. The implications of these findings for perception of sexual harassment are discussed.

This research examined the influence of hindsight bias and causal attribution on perceptions of a technological disaster. After reading a fictitious account of a toxic substance spill near a populated area, subjects were provided with information that disease rates had either increased or had remained stable (hindsight conditions), or were presented with no outcome information (control condition). Subjects were then asked to predict the likelihood of increases in disease rates and to make causal attributions regarding the target company and residents of the disaster community. When compared to subjects provided with either no outcome information or with information that disease rates remained stable (positive-outcome condition), subjects told that disease rates had increased (negative-outcome condition) showed elevated predictions regarding future disease rates, ascribed greater responsibility for the accident to the target company, and reported more anger toward the company and greater sympathy for the residents. Subjects receiving positive outcome information and no outcome information did not significantly differ on these measures. In addition, results from a path analysis supported the efficacy of attribution theory to account for the cognitive, affective, and behavioral consequences resulting from hindsight bias following a negative environmental event.

This article reports on the relationship between outcome knowledge regarding an environmental event and self-reported fear of future illness. A sample of 95 subjects in three conditions showed that outcome knowledge increases postevent likelihood estimations, thus indicating a hindsight bias. Subjects' perceived likelihood of increases in disease rate is shown to substantially predict subjects' level of fear of future illness for both cancer and noncancer disease. Demographic variables of gender, political ideology, and attitude toward environmental activism were shown to have mixed results in predicting fear of future illness. Positive attitude toward environmental activism modestly predicted fear of cancer but not fear of noncancer disease. Political ideology failed to significantly predict fear of future illness, although it showed a trend toward significance for predicting fear of cancer. Gender significantly predicted fear of noncancer disease but not fear of cancer, with females indicating more fear than males. The implications of the accuracy of outcome information following ambiguous and uncertain events on the genesis and exacerbation of fear of future illness is discussed.

Causal information was found to influence the impressions and reactions of subjects in three experiments. The first two experiments involved a memory test with sentences and reading of a paragraph on a borrower of class notes. Causal controllability governed the subjects' response to the borrower. These, exposed to stable causal information, reacted more sympathetically to the predicament of the borrower. The third experiment explored subjects' perception of a person's difficulties based on causal information. The effect of causal interpretation on attribution processes is being studied.

In documenting cognitive processes underlying persons' reactions to negative events, counterfactual thinking, hindsight bias, and attribution theory focus on distinct, although not unrelated, aspects of human information processing. Counterfactual thinking highlights the cognitive processing undertaken when persons imagine different courses of action that lead to alternative outcomes. Hindsight bias describes the inflated retrospective estimates individuals make regarding event probabilities that come with the advantage of knowledge about outcomes. And attribution theory concerns the affective and behavioral consequences that result from the perceived causes of events. This essay argues that a more comprehensive understanding of the processes underlying human response to traumatic events results from the integration of counter-factual thinking, hindsight bias, and attribution theory into a single model.

Abstract Background RNA degradation is critical to the survival of all cells. With increasing evidence for pervasive transcription in cells, RNA degradation has gained recognition as a means of regulating gene expression. Yet, RNA degradation machinery has been studied extensively in only a few eukaryotic organisms, including Saccharomyces cerevisiae and humans. Giardia lamblia is a parasitic protist with unusual genomic traits: it is binucleated and tetraploid, has a very compact genome, displays a theme of genomic minimalism with cellular machinery commonly comprised of a reduced number of protein components, and has a remarkably large population of long, stable, noncoding, antisense RNAs. Results Here we use in silico approaches to investigate the major RNA degradation machinery in Giardia lamblia and compare it to a broad array of other parasitic protists. We have found key constituents of the deadenylation and decapping machinery and of the 5'-3' RNA degradation pathway. We have similarly found that all of the major 3'-5' RNA degradation pathways are present in Giardia, including both exosome-dependent and exosome-independent machinery. However, we observe significant loss of RNA degradation machinery genes that will result in important differences in the protein composition, and potentially functionality, of the various RNA degradation pathways. This is most apparent in the exosome, the central mediator of 3'-5' degradation, which apparently contains an altered core configuration in both Giardia and Plasmodium, with only four, instead of the canonical six, distinct subunits. Additionally the exosome in Giardia is missing both the Rrp6, Nab3, and Nrd1 proteins, known to be key regulators of noncoding transcript stability in other cells. Conclusions These findings suggest that although the full complement of the major RNA degradation mechanisms were present - and likely functional - early in eukaryotic evolution, the composition and function of the complexes is more variable than previously appreciated. We suggest that the missing components of the exosome complex provide an explanation for the stable abundance of sterile RNA species in Giardia.

This study investigated response bias in self reported history of factors relevant to the assessment of traumatic brain injury, toxic brain injury and related emotional distress. Response bias refers to systematic error in self report data. A total of 446 subjects comprising 131 litigating and 315 non litigating adults from five locations in the United States completed a symptom questionnaire. Data were obtained from university faculty and students, from patients in clinics specializing in physiatry, neurology, and family medicine, and from plaintiffs undergoing forensic neuropsychological evalua tions. Comparisons were made for litigant and non litigant ratings of their past and current cognitive and emotional functioning, including life in general, ability to concentrate, memory, depression, anxiety, alcohol, drugs, ability to work or attend school, irritability, headaches, confusion, self esteem, and fatigue. Although there is no basis for hypothesizing plaintiffs to be healthier than the general population, plaintiffs rated their pre injury functioning superior to non plaintiffs. These findings suggest that response biases need to be taken into account by forensic examiners when relying on litigants self reports of pre injury status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As neuropsychologists are involved increasingly in the neuropsychological assessment of individuals reporting both acute and long-term exposure to hydrocarbons, the value of research for providing guidance also increases. Research findings inform neuropsychologists about likely neuropsychological deficits given certain intensity and duration of exposure and about neuropsychological tests most appropriate for detecting hydrocarbon-induced deficits. Although high-dose events are associated with neuropsychological deficits, methodological weaknesses in the existing research impede a consensus on the implications of low-dose exposures in humans. Three flaws inherent in research on low-dose hydrocarbon exposures and their implications for neuropsychological assessment of individuals are discussed: Selection bias in recruitment of research participants, biased recall of research participants, and between-study variation in neuropsychological tests and results. Because they undermine the reliability and validity of existing research, lack of awareness of these weaknesses may interfere with unbiased assessment of individual patients suspected of hydrocarbon-induced neuropsychological deficits. Examples from the social-cognitive psychological literature contribute to understanding how misleading research findings can lead experts to form expectancies that bias assessment of individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The frequency with which various psychological tests are administered in forensic evaluations was assessed. Data was gathered from reports of adult personal injury evaluations by 100 examiners identified as experts in neuropsychology. A rank ordering of tests from most to least used by examiners was created. For example, the most frequently used tests were the WAIS-R, MMPI, WMS-R, Trails A & B, Finger Oscillation Test, Bender-Gestalt, Category Test, and Wisconsin Card-Sorting Test. Selected comparisons were made of test ranking from earlier surveys. Implications of findings for examiners and expert witnesses are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]