Biomedical subjects

A F Sullwold

Publications and source records attributed to A F Sullwold.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1985

Qualifying the psychiatrist as a lay witness: a reaction to the American Psychiatric Association petition in Barefoot v. Estelle.

Organized psychiatry has recently begun to define limits to expert testimony. The American Psychiatric Association filed an amicus brief in the case of Barefoot v. Estelle urging legal curtailment of psychiatric testimony as to future dangerousness and prohibition on Constitutional grounds of expert psychiatric testimony solely based on hypothetical data. The Supreme Court refused relief on both questions. Psychiatric testimony to ultimate questions at law is limited by the inherent contextual variables of psychiatric clinical and experimental knowledge and practice. A forensic science model for psychiatric participation with explicit psychiatrically defined limitations is proposed using competence to stand trial as an example.

Antisocial Personality Disorder↗

PubMed1984

Competence to proceed: a functional and context-determinative decision.

Legally, the defendant's competence at any stage of criminal proceedings is defined in terms of the test set forth in Dusky v. United States, a test establishing minimum rationality as the basis for determining mental competence. A number of investigators have attempted to devise testing instruments to assist clinicians in applying this test to individual defendants being examined for competence. Competence, however, is both context-determinative and functional in nature. The evaluator must insist on being given specific information relating to the functions that the defendant is expected to perform. The evaluator must then assess the defendant's measurable skills in the light of those specified functions and articulate his findings to the court in terms of the skills and functions rather than in terms of conclusory legal labels. Competence is then best determined by the court as a legal, not a mental, health decision under the somewhat nebulous but nonetheless appropriate criterion of "fundamental fairness" in the light of the defendant's mental state.

Expert Testimony↗

PubMed1982

The generality of the stimulus-binding hypothesis across drinking behavior and task performance in alcoholics.

This experiment investigated the validity of applying the stimulus-binding hypothesis of obesity to conceptualize drinking and task performance behaviors in alcoholics. Twenty alcoholics and 12 nonalcoholics participated in two counterbalanced experimental sessions. One session involved an assessment of subjects' voluntary consumption of preferred and nonpreferred nonalcoholic beverages. The other session involved their performance of four tasks that involved or manipulated the presence of salient external cues. The prediction of heightened externality in alcoholics was supported on the beverage consumption measures and was marginally supported on the task performance measures. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for models and treatments of alcohol problems.

Adult↗

PubMed1982

A comparison of alcoholics' and nonalcoholics' causal attributions for drinking behavior.

Alcoholic individuals often are assumed to deny personal responsibility for their alcoholism and to attribute causation to external situational factors. To investigate this assumption, in a 2 x 2 factorial design 20 alcoholics and 20 nonalcoholics made causal attributions for a recent personal drinking episode and for the audiotaped episode of a target individual who was described as either an alcoholic or a nonalcoholic. Results suggested that alcoholic subjects tended to make greater internal attributions for their own drinking than did nonalcoholic subjects. Subjects' attributions for the target individual depended on both the subjects' and targets' drinking histories. The results are discussed in terms of their relevance to models of alcoholism and to actor-observer differences in causal attributions.

Alcohol Drinking↗

PubMed1981

Attributions of causality for drinking behavior made by alcoholics and by normal drinkers.

Alcoholic individuals often are assumed to deny personal responsibility for their alcholism and to assign causation to external situational factors. To evaluate this assumption, 20 alchololics and 14 nonalcoholics made causal attributions for a recent personal drinking episode and for the drinking behavior of three target individuals (an abstinent alcoholic, a nonabstinent alcololic, and a nonalcoholic). Results showed that both alcoholic and non-alcoholic subjects tended to make external attributions for their own drinking behavior. Subjects' attributons for the target individuals depended on bot the targest' and subjects' drinking histories. The results are discussed in terms of their relevance to models of alcoholism and to actor-observer differences in casual attribution processes.

Alcohol Drinking↗