Examination of the validity and usefulness of the video suggestibility scale for children

The Video Suggestibility Scale for Children (VSSC) was developed by Scullin and colleagues (Scullin & Ceci, 2000; Scullin & Hembrooke, 1998) as a tool for discriminating between children who have different levels of suggestibility. The scale requires children to view a 5-minute video about a birthday party, and to subsequently participate in an interview consisting of 18 yes/no questions. The VSSC consists of two main subscales; Yield (a measure of children's willingness to respond affirmatively to misleading questions about the video) and Shift (a measure of the children's tendency to change their responses after negative feedback from the interviewer). Preliminary research by Scullin and colleagues suggested that the scale possesses satisfactory internal consistency and that children's scores on the VSSC can predict their performance in another suggestibility paradigm. This thesis presents two studies, which further examine the validity and usefulness of the VSSC in an Australian sample of 3- to-5-year-old children. In Study One, children's performance on the VSSC (N = 77) was compared to their performance using other measures of suggestibility. These measures included children's willingness to assent to a false event as well as the number of false interviewer suggestions and new false details that the children provided in their accounts about an independent true-biased and an independent false (non-experienced) event. An independent samples t-test revealed that those children who assented to the false activity generated higher scores on the Yield measure. This pattern was also observed for the Shift subscale although it was not significant. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that Yield was a significant predictor of the number of false details reported about the false activity, but not the true-biased activity. There was no significant relationship between the Shift Vlll subscale and any of the dependent variables. Overall this study provided partial support for the construct validity of the VSSC. However, it indicated that children's performance on this scale may not be generalisable across different contexts and interview paradigms, and that the Yield subscale is more generalisable than the Shift subscale. Study Two examined whether various group and individual factors that have previously been shown to relate suggestibility (i.e., age, IQ, memory, socio-economic status, gender, temperament) could predict suggestibility as measured by the VSSC. Two hundred and twenty children were recruited from kindergartens, and were divided into two broad socio-economic categories (based predominantly on income). Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that age, intelligence and memory inversely predicted children's Yield suggestibility. Further, children of low socio-economic backgrounds were more suggestible than children of high socio-economic background, and boys were more suggestible than girls on the Yield measure. Although shyness and other internalised and externalised characteristics were explored, no reliable significant relationships were found with Yield. With regard to the Shift subscale, no reliable relationships were found for any of the independent variables except for SES. Overall, results of Study 2 indicated that the VSSC is a potentially useful measure for discriminating between children's suggestibility on the basis on their individual characteristics, although benefits were observed mainly in relation to the Yield subscale. With reference to the findings of these two studies, the potential contribution of the VSSC for research and applied forensic contexts was discussed.

Enabling electronic medicine at Kiwicare : the case of video conferencing adoption for psychiatry in New Zealand

Telemedicine emerges as a viable solution to New Zealand health providers in reaching out to rural patients, in offering medical services and conducting administrative meetings and training. No research exists about adoption of telemedicine in New Zealand. The purpose of this case study was to explain factors influencing adoption of telemedicine utilizing video conferencing technology (TMVC) within a New Zealand hospital known as KiwiCare. Since TMVC is part of IT, tackling it from within technological innovation literature may assist in providing an insight into its adoption within KiwiCare and into the literature. Findings indicate weak presence of critical assessment into technological innovation factors prior to the adoption decision, thereby leading to its weak utilization. Factors like complexity, compatibility and trialability were not assessed extensively by KiwiCare and would have hindered TMVC adoption. TMVC was mainly assessed according to its relative advantage and to its cost effectiveness along with other facilitating and accelerating factors. This is essential but should be alongside technological and other influencing factors highlighted in the literature.

Strategies to develop divided attention skills through video game training

Research .over the past two decades has confirmed the learning opportunities that video games can offer. The objectives of the current study were to investigate the ability of video games to enhance divided attention skills and compare these skills based on individuals' level of expertise in video game playing. Female participants aged between 17-25 years categorised as experts or novices, were divided into experimental and control groups. All participants completed the pre and post-test of divided attention between which only the experimental group received video game training. Results indicate that participants who received video game practice achieved an increase in their dual-attention skills compared to those who did not receive any training, with novices displaying a greater
enhancement in perfonnance. Implications include the provision of video game training to enhance divided attention skills in air pilot training, driving, and heavyequipment operation apart from other tasks necessitating dual-task efficiency.

The treatment of multicultural issues in contemporary forensic psychology textbooks

This article examines whether practice issues relating to clients from different cultural or ethnic groups are adequately addressed in a wide selection of contemporary forensic psychology textbooks. Specifically, we examine the extent to which cross-cultural issues are engaged within these texts, and how well the information provided informs forensic practice. While most of the reviewed texts acknowledged the need to consider cultural issues, there was relatively little discussion of specific issues, and practical guidelines were rarely offered. It is argued that without more widespread acknowledgment of the direct implications of cultural issues for forensic practice, it is unlikely that a fair and reliable system for the investigation and treatment of complaints made by and against people from different cultural groups will be obtained.

Specialisation within specialisation? Thoughts on the content of contemporary forensic psychology programs

This paper provides details of, and the rationale for, a Doctorate of Forensic Psychology recently developed at Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. The course prioritises training in psycho-legal issues with children and young people. In discussing this program, the presenters identify two issue  that guided the development of the program. The first concerns the need to delineate forensic content from that in clinical programs, while still maintaining appropriate focus on the skills needed to work effectively in forensic settings. The second addresses the need for courses to acknowledge the marked diversity among forensic clientele and to develop competencies that lead to effective work practices with these sub-groups. In constructing the Deakin forensic program, it was noted that forensic psychologists required an increasing degree of expertise in the procedural and substantive aspects of the legal system. The authors propose that as forensic psychology gains momentum as a discrete area of expertise, there is an increasing need for practitioners to have a sound understanding of the legal institutions and practices they work under, as well as being able to apply specialist knowledge to particular sub-groups. This paper discusses these issues, and outlines how the authors sought to address them in their course curriculum.

Integrating highlights for more complete sports video summarization

Summarization is an essential requirement for achieving a more compact and interesting representation of sports video contents. We propose a framework that integrates highlights into play segments and reveal why we should still retain breaks. Experimental results show that fast detections of whistle sounds, crowd excitement, and text boxes can complement existing techniques for play-breaks and highlights localization.

Using object and trajectory analysis to facilitate indexing and retrieval of video

This paper aims to show that by using low level feature extraction, motion and object identifying and tracking methods, features can be extracted and indexed for efficient and effective retrieval for video; such as an awards ceremony video. Video scene/shot analysis and key frame extraction are used as a foundation to identify objects in video and be able to find spatial relationships within the video. The compounding of low level features such as colour, texture and abstract object identification lead into higher level real object identification and tracking and scene detection. The main focus is on using a video style that is different to the heavily used sports and news genres. Using different video styles can open the door to creating methods that could encompass all video types instead of specialized methods for each specific style of video.

Scope of practice in forensic nursing

1. There is significant role variation, across the Western world, in relation to how forensic nurses practice. 2. The authors conducted a pilot survey of forensic nurses in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and the United Kingdom to examine forensic nursing practice, role definition, and role boundaries. 3. Issues arising from the data include the visibility of forensic nurses, the client group, forensic-specific education, and role development.

Championing telemedicine in New Zealand : the case of utilizing video conferencing in psychiatry and dermatology

This research explores the factors that could influence telemedicine success in two hospitals involved in a rural setting in New Zealand. Findings from the cases revealed that telemedicine utilising the video conferencing technology (TMVC) was adopted based on its cost-benefit to the hospitals. This is necessary but considering the impact of other factors, specifically the compatibility factor could have made the adoption decision more effective earlier on. The administration manager was the primary instigator of TMVC in psychiatry in one of the hospitals, whereas in the other hospital it was the dermatologist. Therefore, this research emphasises the importance of the tight coupling between the roles of both the management and the clinical champions for TMVC to succeed in New Zealand. However, the research results suggest the limited use of the technology in the cases.

A simulation model for video traffic performance via ATM over TCP/IP

Although TCP has emerged as the standard in data communication, the introduction of ATM technology has raised numerous problems regarding the effectiveness of using TCP over A TM networks, especially when video traffic performance is considered. This paper presents a simulation model for transmission performance of video traffic via ATM over TCP/IP. The interactivity between TCP/IP and ATM, generation of MPEG traffic and evaluation of traffic performance are implemented in the model. The design and implementation details of the model are carefully described. The experiments conducted using the model and experimental results are briefly introduced, revealing the capability of our model in simulating network events and in evaluating potential solutions to performance issues.

Reducing blocking artefacts in MPEG video coded images using entropic methods

In this paper investigation is made of the. use of entropic methods to identify smooth image blocks in order to filter the reconstructed image of block based transform coded images. We know that blocking artefact is Visually more prominent in the smooth region of a block rather than in the textured region. The entropic methods are employed to distinguish between smooth and textured blocks in a reconstructed image. The linear filtering is then carried out on the smooth region of the image to reduce the blocking artefact. The en tropic criteria investigated in this paper are: Shannon's (Logarithmic) Entropy, Exponential Entropy, and Quadratic Entropy.

Classification of self-consumable highlights for soccer video summaries

An effective scheme for soccer summarization is significant to improve the usage of this massively growing video data. The paper presents an extension to our recent work which proposed a framework to integrate highlights into play-breaks to construct more complete soccer summaries. The current focus is to demonstrate the benefits of detecting some specific audio-visual features during play-break sequences in order to classify highlights contained within them. The main purpose is to generate summaries which are self-consumable individually. To support this framework, the algorithms for shot classification and detection of near-goal and slow-motion replay scenes is described. The results of our experiment using 5 soccer videos (20 minutes each) show the performance and reliability of our framework.