IBSS-Ex: Exploring Recidivism Through a Tablet-Based Battery to Assess Individual Decision Making

长期以来，科学家们一直在探索和测量一系列决策特征，例如抑制冲动或理解他人情绪的能力。 研究人员已经开发、验证和完善了一系列神经认知评估，其中一些已被用于对囚犯未来的危险程度做出合理的预测。 这个跨学科的研究项目将建立在这些以前的努力，以测试是否新开发的基于平板电脑的测试电池可以通过识别和评估决策和刑事累犯的几个方面之间的关系，提高对未来犯罪的预测能力。 评估组合旨在量化个人的决策概况，即使用户的阅读熟练程度有限，并且以前几乎没有使用平板电脑的经验。 该项目将探索一种方法，可以更好地将个人决策的细节直接与过去和未来的行为联系起来。 虽然该项目将侧重于刑事累犯的主题，但待测试的软件将提供一个开源的、经过验证的工具，用于将决策与各种行为变量相关联。 项目调查结果将使人们更深入地了解罪犯的缺陷，从而可能产生更合理的、以证据为基础的预防和控制犯罪政策。 该项目还将为研究生和博士后研究人员提供教育和培训机会，他们是在科学研究活动中代表性不足的群体的成员，该项目将重点关注个人决策的签名是否有助于识别大量和高风险的刑事犯罪分子这一核心问题。 过去的研究采用了一系列技术，如精神病评估，行为清单和大脑扫描，这些技术通常发现罪犯在愤怒，同情，攻击，冲动控制和自我管理方面存在问题。 该项目通过实现三个具体目标来直接测量罪犯的这些特征：（1）完成电池的开发，（2）根据标准化神经认知测试对其进行验证，以及（3）通过将决策指标与300名释放缓刑犯的未来犯罪活动相关联来量化犯罪累犯模式。 该项目通过NSF跨学科行为和社会科学研究（IBSS）竞赛获得支持。

Scientists long have explored and measured a range of decision-making traits, such as the ability to inhibit impulses or to understand other people's emotions. Researchers have developed, validated, and refined a wide range of neurocognitive assessments, some of which have been used to try to make reasonable predictions of how dangerous prisoners will be in the future. This interdisciplinary research project will build on these previous efforts to test whether a newly developed tablet-based battery of tests can approve capabilities to improve prediction of future dangerousness by identifying and evaluating the relationships among several aspects of decision making and criminal recidivism. The assessment battery is designed to quantify an individual's decision-making profile, even if a user has limited reading proficiency and little to no previous experience with tablet computers. The project will explore a methodology than may be able to better tie details of individual decision making directly to past and future behavior. Although this project will focus on the topic of criminal recidivism, the software to be tested will provide an open-source, validated tool for correlating decision making with a variety of behavioral variables. Project findings will provide a deeper understanding of offenders' deficits, which may yield more rational, evidence-based policies aimed at the prevention and control of crime. The project also will provide education and training opportunities for graduate students and a post-doctoral researcher who are members of groups that are underrepresented in scientific research activities.This project will focus on the core question of whether signatures of individual decision making can help to identify high-volume and high-risk criminal offenders. Past studies have employed a range of techniques, such as psychiatric assessment, behavioral inventories, and brain scanning, which have generally found that offenders have problems with anger, empathy, aggression, impulse-control, and self-management. The project advances efforts to directly measure those traits among offenders by accomplishing three specific aims: (1) finalize development of the battery, (2) validate it against standardized neurocognitive tests, and (3) quantify patterns of criminal recidivism by correlating decision-making metrics with future criminal activity of 300 released probationers. This project is supported through the NSF Interdisciplinary Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (IBSS) competition.