Dr. Sheffield is a clinical psychologist who specializes in treating pathological gambling. Pathological gambling is defined as
being unable to resist impulses to gamble. Bothered by not having a good measure that he can give to clients to determine whether they are suffering from this condition, he creates a new measure of pathological gambling. The measure has 15 questions, and it takes 20 minutes to complete. To test his measure, Dr. Sheffield gives his measure to a group of people in Gamblers Anonymous (GA) and another group of people in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). He finds that people in the GA group have higher scores on his new measure than people in the AA group. This procedure is known as a prediction paradigm. test-retest paradigm. group evaluation paradigm. known-groups paradigm.
Dr. Sheffield already knows the traits of each of the two groups - the gamblers and the alcoholics. What he is doing is establishing the validity of his measure by applying it to a group that has a certain trait - the gamblers - and to a group that does not have a certain trait - the alcoholics. This procedure is an example of known-groups paradigm. It is important to note that this type of procedure can also be applied to two groups that do possess the same trait, but with the purpose to verify which one will score higher on it.
One of the first instances when the “not guilty by reason of insanity” defenses was used involved the following defendant:
Daniel M’Naughten
M’Naughten was put on trial in 1843 on charges of murder for killing the Prime Minister’s secretary Edward Drummond (it is believed that he thought Drummond was the Prime Minister). This case established the “M’Naughten Rules” in law that pertain to the insanity defense.
