Biomedical subjects

Paola Castelli

Publications and source records attributed to Paola Castelli.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Hearsay versus children's testimony: Effects of truthful and deceptive statements on jurors' decisions.

Researchers and courts are focusing increasing attention on the reliability of children's out-of-court statements, especially in relation to trials of child sexual abuse. The main goal of this study was to investigate the effects of presentation of children's out-of-court statements (e.g., hearsay) on jurors' perceptions of witness credibility and defendant guilt, and on jurors' abilities to reach the truth. Child participants experienced either a mock crime or were coached to say they experienced the crime when in fact they had not. During elaborate mock trials involving community member jurors, children's testimony was presented either: (1) live, (2) on videotape, or (3) via a social worker. Analyses revealed that testimony format directly influenced jurors' perceptions of child and social worker credibility (e.g., children were perceived as less likely to provide false statements if they testified live) as well as jurors' sympathy toward the child, all of which then predicted jurors' confidence in defendant guilt. Jurors had difficulty discerning accurate from deceptive child statements regardless of testimony format. Implications for psychology and the legal system are discussed.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Developmental differences in false-event rejection: Effects of memorability-based warnings.

The present study investigated the development of the memorability-based strategy, a metacognitive process through which individuals reject the occurrence of false events if they do not remember the events and they expect them to be highly memorable. Previous research found that only older children spontaneously use this strategy. In the present study, we examined whether providing children with relevant information about expected event-memorability and inferences derived from it induced strategy use. Children aged 5, 7, and 9 (n = 144) were asked about true and false (high- and low-memorability) autobiographical events. Participants were either interviewed according to the standard "lost-in-the-mall" procedure, or were additionally provided with warnings. Warnings were either congruent or incongruent with assessments and decision processes involved in the strategy use. Results showed that receiving memorability-congruent warnings increased false-event rejection rates in 7- and 9-year-olds, but not in 5-year-olds. However, only older children were more likely to reject high-memorability compared with low-memorability false events. Developmental trajectories and factors affecting reliance on the memorability-based strategy are discussed.

Age Factors↗

PubMed2004

Analysis of cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) expression in different sites of endometriosis and correlation with clinico-pathological parameters.

BACKGROUND: Recent studies have demonstrated the overexpression of cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) in endometriosis. The aim of this study was to investigate the expression of COX-2 in different anatomical sites of endometriosis and its association with clinico-pathological parameters in a single institutional series of patients undergoing operative treatment. METHODS: COX-2 expression was analysed by immunohistochemistry in 136 samples of endometriotic tissue from 103 patients affected by endometriosis. RESULTS: COX-2 immunoreaction was observed in 78.5% of ovarian endometriotic cysts, in 11.1% of peritoneal implants and 13.3% of recto-vaginal nodules. COX-2 positivity was not distributed differently according to age, pre-operative serum levels of CA125 and AFS score. Moreover, COX-2 positivity did not show any significant variation according to the subjective intensity of pain, as dysmenorrhoea, chronic pelvic pain, lower urinary tract or gastrointestinal symptoms, or according to infertility. CONCLUSIONS: Increased COX-2 expression in the endometriotic ovarian cyst wall was observed with respect to other extraovarian localizations. No relevant correlations between COX-2 positivity and clinico-pathological characteristics and symptoms of patients were observed.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Apolipoprotein E genotypes in a group of elderly subjects of Spanish descent living in Mexico City.

The association between the APOE gene and Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia has been widely documented, but its relevance as a genetic risk factor in specific ethnic groups other than Caucasians in the United States and Europe is limited. The aim of this work was to describe the distribution of the APOE genotype in 80 subjects of Spanish origin, over 60 years old, who were institutionalized in the Spanish Hospital of Mexico City. Thirty-eight subjects who met the DSM-IV and ICD-10 criteria for Alzheimer's disease or vascular dementia and 42 controls without dementia underwent genotyping. APOE epsilon allele frequencies were as follows: for affected individuals, epsilon2, 7.9%, epsilon3, 69.7%, and epsilon4, 22.4%; for controls, epsilon2, 4.8%, epsilon3, 91.6%, and epsilon4, 3.6%. The higher frequency of the epsilon4 allele in the affected group (chi2 = 14.5; df = 4, p = .006) confirms an association between this APOE molecular variant and dementia in elderly Spaniards.

Aged↗