Bailenson on Transformed Social Interaction in Virtual Reality

Professor Jeremy N. Bailenson of the Stanford University Department of Communication on 25 January 2010 gave a presentation, entitled Transformed Social Interaction in Virtual Reality, at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Several aspects of the presentation may be of interest to legal informatics or legal communication researchers:

• Professor Bailenson discussed his research on the acquisition of false memories in virtual reality: Kathryn Y. Segovia & Jeremy N. Bailenson, Virtually True: Children’s Acquisition of False Memories in Virtual Reality, 12 Media Psychology 371 (2009).

Abstract: Previous work on human memory has shown that prompting participants with false events and self-relevant information via different types of media such as narratives, edited 2-dimensional images, and mental imagery creates false memories. This study tested a new form of media for studying false memory formation: Immersive Virtual Environment Technology (IVET). Using this tool, we examined how memory was affected by viewing dynamic simulations of avatars performing novel actions. In the study, 55 preschool and elementary children were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 memory prompt conditions (idle, mental imagery, IVET simulation of another child, or IVET simulation of self). Each child was questioned 3 different times: once before the memory prompt, once immediately after the memory prompt, and once approximately 5 days after the memory prompt. Results showed that preschool children were equally likely to develop false memories regardless of memory prompt condition. But, for elementary children, the mental imagery and IVET self conditions caused significantly more false memories than the idle condition. Implications regarding the use of digital media in courtroom settings, clinical therapy settings, entertainment, and other applications are discussed.

• Professor Bailenson discussed several studies suggesting techniques that make one more or less persuasive, or more or less confident while communicating, in virtual reality. That research may be of interest to those studying potential applications of virtual reality to legal communication and decisionmaking, such as in legislative or administrative lawmaking, judicial or administrative proceedings, online alternative dispute resolution, legal negotiation, communication with clients, policy debates, etc.;
• During the discussion, Professor Julie E. Cohen of Georgetown Law Center remarked that Professor Bailenson’s research suggests that virtual reality vitiates perhaps the most important basis of evidentiary validity in U.S. evidence law: personal knowledge obtained via direct perception;
• Throughout the presentation and discussion, Professor Bailenson discussed a variety of innovative methods for conducting empirical research on human cognition and behavior in virtual reality; many of those methods seem applicable to a range of legal informatics and legal communication research.

Segovia & Bailenson on Children’s Acquisition of False Memories in Virtual Reality

Kathryn Y. Segovia & Professor Jeremy N. Bailenson, both of the Stanford University Department of Communication, have published Virtually True: Children’s Acquisition of False Memories in Virtual Reality, 12 Media Psychology 371 (2009). Here is the abstract:

Previous work on human memory has shown that prompting participants with false events and self-relevant information via different types of media such as narratives, edited 2-dimensional images, and mental imagery creates false memories. This study tested a new form of media for studying false memory formation: Immersive Virtual Environment Technology (IVET). Using this tool, we examined how memory was affected by viewing dynamic simulations of avatars performing novel actions. In the study, 55 preschool and elementary children were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 memory prompt conditions (idle, mental imagery, IVET simulation of another child, or IVET simulation of self). Each child was questioned 3 different times: once before the memory prompt, once immediately after the memory prompt, and once approximately 5 days after the memory prompt. Results showed that preschool children were equally likely to develop false memories regardless of memory prompt condition. But, for elementary children, the mental imagery and IVET self conditions caused significantly more false memories than the idle condition. Implications regarding the use of digital media in courtroom settings, clinical therapy settings, entertainment, and other applications are discussed.

Professor Bailenson discussed this and other research findings at his 25 January 2010 presentation, entitled Transformed Social Interaction in Virtual Reality, at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Karaganis on Media Piracy in Emerging Economies

Joe Karaganis of the Social Science Research Council on 2 February 2010 gave a presentation entitled Media Piracy in Emerging Economies, at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Here is the abstract:

Joe Karaganis will discuss findings from a forthcoming six-country study of media piracy, including work on Russia, India, Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa. The study provides a rare empirical look at the organization of piracy and enforcement in developing countries, and explores the transformation of both as the optical disk economy give way to digital distribution.

Some findings of the research that may be of particular interest to legal informatics and legal communication scholars include:

• Factors contributing to piracy differ markedly among different types of intellectual property;
• Pricing appears to be a key factor contributing to piracy of music, films, and software distributed on tangible media (such as DVDs);
• Prices of pirated media distributed on disc have plummeted in recent years, due to growth of the number of production facilities, reduction in the cost of raw materials and of distribution, and competition from online media;
• Most empirical research on media piracy is conducted by the media industries;
• The “Special 301″ process administered by the U.S. Trade Representative, through which the U.S. Government encourages its trading partners to improve intellectual property enforcement, is a key context for, and influence on, media industry piracy research and the U.S. and international policy debate about media piracy;
• The quality of media industry research respecting the costs of media piracy is questionable but improving;
• Media industry piracy research methodologies are insufficiently disclosed, such that results of that research generally cannot be replicated;
• To the extent that questionable media industry piracy research serves as a basis for U.S. trade policy respecting international intellectual property enforcement, that policy process lacks transparency and the empirical foundation for the policy appears to lack credibility;
• Outside of the U.S., media piracy enforcement has so far been focused on distributors and retailers, not on consumers; but this may change in the coming years, as online distribution in emerging economies supersedes distribution on disc;
• Consumers in emerging economies who purchase pirated media goods are generally aware of the pirated nature of the goods, because of price signalling, but consumers purchase the pirated goods anyway; this suggests that social and moral norms respecting consumption of pirated media are not aligned with legal norms;
• In many emerging economies, enforcement has substantially disrupted formal retail distribution of pirated media, but this has generally not resulted in reduced consumption of pirated media; rather, enforcement has caused the retail market to shift to more informal and mobile venues, such as street vendors.

Click here for David Weinberger’s liveblog of the presentation.

The Effects of Diversity on Judicial Decision Making: Report on ABA Panel

The influence of judges’ social diversity on judges’ decision making was the topic of a program, entitled “Diversity on the Bench: Is the ‘Wise Latina’ a Myth?” and held at the American Bar Association (ABA)’s Midwinter Meeting in Orlando, Florida, USA, on 6 February 2010, according to a report in ABA Journal. The ABA Judicial Division sponsored the program.

The program discussed in particular the following articles:

• Pat K. Chew & Robert E. Kelley, Myth of the Color-Blind Judge: An Empirical Analysis of Racial Harassment Cases, 86 Washington University Law Review 1117 (2009).
  

  Abstract: In this Article, we present an exploratory empirical study of federal workplace racial harassment cases that span a twenty-year period. Multiple analyses found that judges’ race significantly affects outcomes in workplace racial harassment cases. African American judges rule differently than White judges, even when one takes into account their political affiliation or certain characteristics of the case. Our findings further suggest that judges of all races are attentive to the relevant facts of the cases but may reach different conclusions depending on their races.

  When race, political affiliation, and certain case characteristics are all considered simultaneously, the role that race plays loses some statistical significance (as one might expect given the increasing number of variables).

  While we cannot predict how an individual judge might act, our empirical analysis suggests that African American judges as a group and White judges as a group perceive racial harassment differently. These findings counter the traditional myth that the race of a judge would not make a difference—a myth premised on a presumption of a formalistic and objective decision-making process.

  Given the underrepresentation of minority judges, the growing minority population in the U.S., and minority skepticism of judicial fairness, this Article offers empirical support for a more racially diverse judiciary. An increase in the number of judges of color promises to increase diverse perspectives in the judicial system and to help unveil the complex reality of racial dynamics in the workplace.

• Jennifer L. Peresie, Note, Female Judges Matter: Gender and Collegial Decisionmaking in the Federal Appellate Courts, 114 Yale Law Journal 1759 (2005). Summary:
  

  This Note provides data to illuminate whether and how the presence of female judges on three-judge federal appellate panels affects collegial decisionmaking in a subset of gender-coded cases—those involving claimants alleging sexual harassment or sex discrimination in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.3 An empirical analysis of 556 federal appellate cases decided in 1999, 2000, and 2001 reveals that judges’ gender mattered to case outcomes. Though plaintiffs lost in the vast majority of cases, they were twice as likely to prevail when a female judge was on the bench.

  This Note has three goals. First, it contributes to the literature on the role of gender in individual judicial decisionmaking. I show that for at least two types of cases—Title VII sex discrimination and sexual harassment—a significant correlation existed between gender and individual federal appellate judges’ decisions. In my data set, female judges were significantly more likely than male judges to find for plaintiffs. Second, the Note begins to illuminate the impact of gender on panel decisionmaking, by showing that the presence of a female judge significantly increased the probability that a male judge supported the plaintiff in the cases analyzed. This analysis reaffirms the importance of collegiality in appellate courts, thus distinguishing the Note from past literature, which focused almost exclusively on male/female differences. Third, the Note proposes several possible explanations for how the presence of a female judge might increase the likelihood that a male judge will support the plaintiff in gender-coded cases.

For more information, please see Edward Adams’s report on the program in ABA Journal.

Kosslyn on Brain Bases of Deception: Why We Probably Will Never Have a Perfect Lie Detector

Dean Stephen M. Kosslyn of Harvard University, gave a presentation entitled Brain Bases of Deception: Why We Probably Will Never Have a Perfect Lie Detector, on 10 January 2010 at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Here is the abstract:

Different brain systems are used when one produces lies in different ways, such as by fabricating lies spontaneously “on the fly” versus fabricating them on the basis of a previously memorized story. This discovery indicates that there is no single “lie center” in the brain, and makes it unlikely that a single neural pattern of activation can distinguish deception from telling the truth. Stephen M. Kosslyn – Dean of Social Science and John Lindsley Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and Associate Psychologist in the Department of Neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital – explains and discusses the significance of this discovery.

In the presentation, Dean Kosslyn also presents evidence that different attributes of lies, when combined in a given situation, may interact with each other, so as to activate additional, different systems of the brain; and that individuals appear to differ respecting how the relevant processes are implemented in their brains. Dean Kosslyn argues that all of these findings taken together support the conclusion that lie detection is unlikely to be perfected.

Dean Kosslyn referred in the presentation to three of his papers:

Giorgio Ganis, Robert R. Morris, & Stephen M. Kosslyn, Neural Processes Underlying Self- and Other-Related Lies: An Individual Difference Approach Using fMRI, 4 Social Neuroscience 539 (2009).

Abstract: Two hypotheses were tested using a novel individual differences approach, which identifies rate-limiting brain regions, that is, brain regions in which variations in neural activity predict variations in behavioral performance. The first hypothesis is that the rate-limiting regions that support the production of lies about oneself (self-related) are partially distinct from those underlying the production of lies about other individuals (other-related). The second hypothesis is that a cingulate-insular-prefrontal network found to be rate-limiting for interference tasks is involved in both types of lies. The results confirmed both hypotheses and supported the utility of this individual differences approach in the study of deception in particular, as well in the study of complex cognitive phenomena more generally.

Charity J. Morgan, Julia B. LeSage, & Stephen M. Kosslyn, Types of Deception Revealed by Individual Differences in Cognitive Abilities, 4 Social Neuroscience 554 (2009).

Abstract: The two studies reported in this article are an extension of the neuroimaging study by Ganis et al. (2003), which provided evidence that different types of lies arise from different cognitive processes. We examined the initial response times (IRTs) to questions answered both deceptively and truthfully. We considered four types of deceptive responses: a coherent set of rehearsed, memorized lies about a life experience; a coherent set of lies spontaneously created about a life experience; a set of isolated lies involving self-knowledge; and a set of isolated lies involving knowledge of another person. We assessed the difference between truthful and deceptive IRTs. Scores from cognitive tasks included in the MiniCog Rapid Assessment Battery (MRAB) were significant predictors of IRT differences. Each type of lie was predicted by a distinct set of MRAB scores. These results provide further evidence that deception is a multifaceted process and that different kinds of lies arise from the operation of different cognitive processes.

G. Ganis, S.M. Kosslyn, et al., Neural Correlates of Different Types of Deception: An fMRI Investigation, 13 Cerebral Cortex 830 (2003).

Abstract: Deception is a complex cognitive activity, and different types of lies could arise from different neural systems. We investigated this possibility by first classifying lies according to two dimensions, whether they fit into a coherent story and whether they were previously memorized. fMRI revealed that well-rehearsed lies that fit into a coherent story elicit more activation in right anterior frontal cortices than spontaneous lies that do not fit into a story, whereas the opposite pattern occurs in the anterior cingulate and in posterior visual cortex. Furthermore, both types of lies elicited more activation than telling the truth in anterior prefrontal cortices (bilaterally), the parahippocampal gyrus (bilaterally), the right precuneus, and the left cerebellum. At least in part, distinct neural networks support different types of deception.

In his presentation, Dean Kosslyn also referred to a recent special issue of the journal Social Neuroscience, in which the first two papers listed above appear: Neural Correlates of Deception, 4 Social Neuroscience no. 6 (p. 465-574) (Dec. 2009).

Staudt on A2J Author: Technology that Attacks Barriers to Access to Justice

Professor Ronald W. Staudt of the Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago-Kent College of Law, has published All the Wild Possibilities: Technology that Attacks Barriers to Access to Justice, forthcoming in Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review. Here is the abstract:

Predicting how technology will affect the future of the legal profession is difficult and unreliable work. I have made my share of such predictions in the past thirty years, including foretelling the death of the paper casebook in law schools and vast improvements in law practice that would be triggered by computers and document assembly software. Neither of these two prophesies has yet been fulfilled. Yet a real success story has emerged based in part on my persistent optimism that technology can improve the delivery of legal services. A2J Author, a modest software tool that allows lawyers to build guided Internet interviews for prospective clients, has been adopted across the United States and in several foreign countries as an interface for public access to legal processes. This Article describes the origin of A2J Author as a collaboration by courts, legal aid agencies, and funding sources. The Article explores the combination of factors that produced this technology, which successfully attacks barriers to access to justice. Finally, the Article speculates on whether A2J Author can begin to transform the delivery of legal aid and government services to low income people.

Loughnan & Shackel on the Travails of Postgraduate Research in Law

Dr. Arlie Loughnan and Dr. Rita Shackel, both of the University of Sydney Faculty of Law, have published The Travails of Postgraduate Research in Law, 10 Legal Education Review 99 (2009). Here is the abstract:

The face of postgraduate legal research in Australia has changed considerably in recent years. Certainly the number of students undertaking postgraduate research degrees at Australian law schools has burgeoned. Research degree programs in law include Masters by research, PhDs and SJDs. The rise in the numbers of postgraduate research degree students, together with an expanding array of research projects and methodologies, has generated new challenges for the postgraduate scholar, their supervisors and faculties seeking to support such students. These challenges arise in three areas: the intellectual challenges of postgraduate research in law; the personal aspects of the postgraduate research experience; and the supervision process and relationship. This article examines each of these areas, and argues that law faculties, postgraduate research supervisors and students need to reflect on the nature of contemporary postgraduate legal research, the purpose of and rationale for undertaking a postgraduate research degree in law and the unique and multifaceted challenges that must be met in developing, supervising and successfully completing a postgraduate degree project. With the current or prospective postgraduate research student in mind, this article points to some modest suggestions for enhancing law students’ research degree experience.

Braun on the Citation of Academic Legal Writing by English Courts

Dr. Alexandra Braun of St. John’s College, Oxford University, has published Burying the Living? The Citation of Legal Writings in English Courts, 58 American Journal of Comparative Law 27 (2010). Here is the abstract:

Until recently English judgments were characterized by a dearth of references to academic legal writing. This is often ascribed to the existence of a professional convention preventing judges and counsel from citing living authors. While there is generally no doubt that such a convention did exist, it is not certain whether and to what extent it actually involved and affected legal academics and their role within the English legal system. This Article examines the claims that have been made about the genesis and the nature of the convention and attempts to shed light on the true reasons for its emergence, as well as its impact on the status of legal writing in England and the relationship between judges and legal academics.

Ginsburg on Originalism & Economic Analysis: Two Case Studies of Consistency and Coherence in Supreme Court Decision Making

Circuit Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, has published Originalism & Economic Analysis: Two Case Studies of Consistency and Coherence in Supreme Court Decision Making, 33 Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 217 (2010). “This article is based on the Gauer Distinguished Lecture in Law and Public Policy delivered at the American Enterprise Institute Legal Center for the Public Interest on September 23, 2008.” Here is a summary:

“[J]udges have looked … for methodologies to promote consistency and coherence in judicial decision making. In this Essay, I discuss two such methodologies—one fully achieved and the other still in the making. I refer respectively to the influence of economic analysis in remaking antitrust law and of historical originalism in shaping constitutional law.”

WebLaws.org: What’s Next for This New Resource from Robb Shecter?

WebLaws.org is a new, free legal information resource — with added functions available for a fee — providing access to the statutes of multiple U.S. states, and created by Robb Shecter.

Robb is well known as the developer of OregonLaws.org, the free access to law site for Oregon statutes, legal news, and Web services that improve access to those sources, including research trails, a corpus search, a legal glossary, and a “Law Robot” that automatically retrieves full text of statutes in response to a citation number.

Robb accepts suggestions for developing the site here, and discusses his development approach in his post The Recipe for Better Legal Information Services, at the VoxPopuLII blog, published by Cornell’s Legal Information Institute.

Currently, WebLaws.org features the following content and services:

• All of the content and services of OregonLaws.org;
• New York statutes and legal news, with a research trail;
• An archive/public repository, that currently contains five editions of the Oregon Revised Statutes; and
• An API.

Last week, Robb kindly shared with me his plans for further development of WebLaws.org. In the coming months, he hopes to add the following content and functions to the site:

• Cross-jurisdiction searching via an LCSH [Library of Congress Subject Heading]-based ontology. Each jd [jurisdiction] will have a mapping or adapter between its terms and the LCSH allowing meaningful semantic searches across many states. There’ll also be an optional LCSH-centric view of the site for people browising jd’s that they’re not familiar with.
• Adding LCSH’s to the legal glossary to allow subject-based filtering, and context for the result.
• Finishing the NY site ["New York laws, statutes, and news"] to the same level of quality as Oregon [OregonLaws.org].
• Figuring out a way to adequately present CA [California] laws even though the legislature doesn’t provide “leadlines” (titles) of the actual sections.
• Creating a feed for NY listing upcoming changes to the statutes.
• Creating an archive of older NY statute revisions.
• Creating 3–4 iPhone apps: legal glossary, Oregon statutes, NY statutes, etc. I’ll post a couple screen shots to my blog.
• Developing more web APIs to give access to the content. (I currently have one available, which I’ve listed at Programmable Web: http://www.programmableweb.com/api/weblaws.
• Creating subject-area micro-sites (e.g., Oregon bicycle law) which would be edited by attorneys and cull together references to legal resources.
• Better automate the inclusion of relevant secondary sources.
• Visualization of the structure of laws — this is something I got started with, but it hasn’t been a necessity. I’ve got the ontologies fully OO modeled; I just need to find some good vis. libraries.

Many thanks to Robb for sharing these exciting plans, with which we wish him much success.