Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Background and Aims: Recent research has shown that hearing-impaired infants with cochlear implants (CIs) do not prefer speech sounds over silence, as measured by looking time at a checkerboard pattern (Houston, Pisoni, Kirk, Ying, & Miyamoto, 2003). The same infants are capable of discriminating these novel speech sounds even though they do not prefer them to silence. Are infants with CIs simply uninterested in speech sounds? It is well known that young infants with normal hearing prefer the highly exaggerated characteristics of infant-directed speech to adult-directed speech. It might also be the case that implanted infants would attend more to speech over silence if the speech were presented in an infant-directed manner. The present study investigated the effects of auditory deprivation and cochlear implantation on infants’ attention to infant-directed speech, adult-directed speech, and silence.
Methods: We tested normal-hearing (NH) 4.5- to 24.5-month-old infants (N = 70) and hearing-impaired infants with CIs (N = 3). Using an infant-controlled visual preference procedure, attention was measured by infants’ looking time to a checkerboard pattern. We presented infants with three conditions: 1) ID speech, in which four women produced four sentences in an infant-directed manner, 2) AD speech, in which the same women produced the same four sentences in an adult-directed manner, and 3) silence.
Key Results: As expected, the results revealed that 4.5- and 12-month-old NH infants looked longer at the checkerboard pattern during ID speech more than AD speech and silence (p < .01). Although 6- and 24-month-old NH infants preferred speech over silence (p < .01), they did not show any preference for ID speech over AD speech. Surprisingly, all three hearing-impaired infants with CIs preferred silence to both ID speech and AD speech.
Conclusions: Most previous studies that have shown preferences for infant-directed over adult-directed speech have been conducted with infants younger than 5 months of age. Perhaps the results of the normal-hearing infants reveal a developmental trend to attend to different properties of speech as they acquire speech perception and language skills (e.g., phonology, lexicon). The unexpected results of the CI infants may be due to their unique speech therapy experiences in which they are trained to explicitly respond to sound, or may be due to other issues associated with hearing-impairment. These important new findings serve to broaden understanding of implanted infants’ abilities to perceive and understand speech.
[Supported by NIH/NIDCD Training Grant T32DC00012 and NIH/NIDCD Research Grant R01DC006235.]

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Martha Alito's emotional breakdown during her husband's 2005 Senate Confirmation Hearings indicated to many that the Senate engaged in character assassination rather than information gathering about Samuel Alito, Jr. Using the Bales' Interaction Process Analysis and other methodology, I will code eight Senate hearings spanning 8 presidents, from Justice John Harlan to Samuel Alito, Jr. for evidence to determine whether the Senate has lost its sense of civility toward Supreme Court nominees over the past 50 years.

The Bales’ Interaction process “sees the group’s activity as divided between two foci: an external component directed toward problem solution, task activity or dealing with the environment; and an internal component aimed at meeting the needs of the members, keeping the group together, and the expression of feeling” (Lutzger 1969, 143). This group-level analysis quantifies the interaction of group members using twelve categories, ranging from “giving suggestions” to “showing antagonism” where the speaker deflates the status of another or defends or asserts self. (Lutzger 1969, 144). Lutzger coded the interaction of the committee members at hearings with each other and with the hearing witness. My analysis will include the confirmation hearings of Samuel Alito (2005), Stephen Breyer (1994), Clarence Thomas (1991), Sandra Day O'Connor (1981), William Rehnquist (1971), Abe Fortas (1965) , Byron White (1962), and John Harlan (1955).

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper develops an analytical framework for understanding choices open to lawyers asked to advocate at an unfair hearing. The lawyer before an unfair hearing faces a moral dilemma: participate and be complicit or refuse and leave the client defenseless. In dealing with this dilemma, lawyers face four options: collective boycott, individual conscientious refusal, internal resistance (marshalling the legal avenues available within the confines of the law) and external resistance (putting the tribunal on trial in the court of public opinion). The paper develops each of these options using case studies from the controversy surrounding the Military Commissions in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and a few other historical examples. It considers the different models of the lawyer’s role and of political responsibility imbedded in each of these options and the costs and consequences of the lawyers’ choices.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: We discuss the state of public dialogue as it currently affects environmental policy, as well as dialogue in publicly participative settings. We examined participants encouragement and discouragement at attempts to dialogue in public hearings. To do this we looked at transcripts from a series of public hearings arranged by the Minerals Management Service regarding the Liberty Plan. Statements were coded into categories of dialogic, non-dialogic, and anti-dialogic. Statements in this paper show dialogic moments, but even more non- dialogic, and anti-dialogic moments. It is these non-dialogic and anti-dialogic moments that lead us to support Mathews’ (1999) claim that public hearings are not particularly effective.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper examines the collaborative nature of neutralization techniques (Sykes and Matza, 1957) in parole hearings. Prior research using neutralization theory has overlooked the role of other actors in the development of neutralizations, examining them through interviews or narratives where interaction is either scripted or limited and thus has little bearing on the production of accounts. In contrast, this study evaluates how parole board members propose neutralizations and modify those that are issued by inmates seeking parole. Ethnographic observations of 438 regular parole and parole revocation hearings, videotapes of 40 such hearings, and interviews with a state parole board are used to examine how neutralizations are shaped by interactions—interactions that may influence social control decision making and criminal justice outcomes.