Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to R L Dutra.
An item analytic study of the Tactual Performance Test Memory and Location scores was conducted. Item difficulty and Discrimination Index values are presented for the total sample and three groups: normal (n = 146), diffusely brain-damaged (n = 130), and undiagnosed patients sent for assessment (n =326).
The item difficulty and discrimination index values for the Tactual Performance Test Location scores are presented. The difference between this and the previous item analysis of the Location score is that in this analysis the subjects' Location scores were used only if the subject correctly remembered the block.
Internal consistency reliabilities were computed for the Tactual Performance Test Memory and Location scores (N=602). After adjusting for unequal item difficulty, the reliabilities for Memory and Location were .69 and .79, respectively.
Crimes against children, particularly cases involving abduction and/or homicide, continue to be problematic as both a social phenomenon and judicial responsibility. Such cases routinely receive immense community and media attention and rapidly overwhelm investigative resources. Research in the area of childhood victimization, however, has only recently gained national prominence. While numerous studies on child abuse and neglect have been conducted, research on child abduction and homicide remains scant. Previous studies examining child abduction suffer from limited geographical scope or fail to base predictive analyses on victim characteristics. The current study reports the results of a nationally representative sample (47 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico) of 550 cases of alleged child abduction obtained from Federal Bureau of Investigation files for the period 1985 through 1995. Study results demonstrate that both offender and offense characteristics vary significantly according to victim age, gender, and race. Such differences appear critical to crime reconstruction, criminal profiling, and investigative resolution. Additionally, these data suggest that current child abduction prevention programs may emphasize inaccurate offender traits.
Responses to two forms of the answer sheet for the Speech-Sounds Perception Test, the standard form and a revised form in which the error types were randomized, were analyzed for 40 subjects. Although there was a statistically significant difference between the forms, practically it was negligible.
An analysis of the types of error (Initial, Terminal, and Both) made on the Speech-Sounds Perception Test was conducted on data collected from 104 normal controls and 56 diffusely brain-damaged patients. The brain-damaged group made more Terminal and Both errors than the normal group. A logistic regression analysis showed that knowing the types of error did not produce a higher percentage of correctly classified subjects than knowing only the total score.
This study tested the alternative hypotheses of Weinberg et al. (J. clin. Psychol. 28, 361, 1976) and Robertson (Neuropsychologia 28, 217-222, 1990) regarding the nature of dysfunctions underlying impaired backward digit span among patients with unilateral neglect. Results support the Weinberg et al. hypothesis that visual imagery plays a primary role in performance of Digits Backward. The findings also indicate a unilateral component to the Digits Backward task. Both neglecting and non-neglecting patients with high digit span discrepancy (DD) evidenced attentional bias to right space and a specific impairment in rotating objects in left space. Results were not consistent with Robertson's hypothesis that high DD arises from a general attentional deficit. In fact, patients with low DD evidence greatest impairment on tests of attention.