Forensic Topics – Arizona Forensic Services, LLC

Common topics

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ADD / ADHD and Executive Function

This resource compiles abstracts and summaries of research on adult ADHD and neuropsychological functioning. The included topics span attention, memory, executive functions, differences across adult ADHD groups, diagnostic approaches, and mindfulness-based interventions, with studies using varied methods and samples.

ADD/ADHD and Violence

This article reviews proposed connections between ADHD, executive-function and impulse-control difficulties, anger, and violence, followed by summaries of research on ADHD and intimate-partner or other violent behavior. It also discusses risk-taking and intense-stimulation accounts and provides citations and study abstracts.

ADHD: Violence and Antisocial Behavior

This overview discusses research linking ADHD, executive-function difficulties, impulsivity, and anger with antisocial or violent behavior. It cites studies and authors describing associations with later aggression, arrests, and other risky behaviors, while presenting these as research claims about risk patterns rather than outcomes for every person with ADHD.

Aggression and Alcohol

This collection reviews research linking alcohol with aggression, including physical and verbal aggression, intimate partner violence, and sexual aggression. The included review describes proposed roles for reduced behavioral inhibition and individual or situational factors, while noting that the evidence concerns a complex relationship rather than a single explanation for any particular act.

ALCOHOL: Memory (non-blackout)

This resource reviews laboratory research on alcohol’s acute effects on memory in healthy adults, including working, episodic, and semantic memory. The cited experiments report that effects differ by task and timing: alcohol can impair encoding and some forms of recall while leaving implicit memory or priming relatively unaffected, and findings vary across the blood-alcohol curve.

Arousal Habituation

This compilation presents the arousal-habituation theory and reviews research on responses to repeated and novel sexual stimuli. The cited laboratory studies generally report declining subjective or physiological arousal with repeated familiar material and renewed responses to novel stimuli in men and women, while the review notes differences across methods and findings.

BDSM

This page collects abstracts and citations on BDSM, consent, and distinctions between consensual practices and abuse. The referenced works discuss relationship dynamics, media depictions, consent frameworks, and clinical or educational approaches.

Bipolar Disorder and Substance Abuse

This collection reviews research on the co-occurrence of bipolar disorder and substance use, including how the combination may affect diagnosis and illness course. The studies discuss high comorbidity, possible roles for impulsivity, and limited controlled treatment evidence, with one review describing integrated medication and psychosocial approaches as promising but in need of further study.

Blackout as Criminal Defense or Mitigation

This 2013 evidence-based review evaluates scientific research cited when defendants claim alcohol-induced blackout as a criminal defense or mitigating factor. The authors report that studies do not provide an objective way to verify a blackout and argue that memory loss alone does not establish impairment of planning, attention, or other functions relevant to criminal intent.

Blackout: Problems with Memory and Suggestibility (Nash, 2011)

This 2011 article considers how alcohol-induced blackouts affect later attempts to remember and describe events. Reviewing evidence on memory reconstruction, the authors discuss how cues, questioning, and post-event information may shape recollections, making reports about blackout periods vulnerable to distortion and suggestion.

Borderline Personality and Cutting

This compilation brings together research abstracts on borderline personality disorder and self-injury, including cutting. The studies address prevalence and patterns across age groups, clinical and nonclinical samples, functions and correlates of self-injury, diagnostic questions, and treatment or research implications.

Borderline Personality and False Allegations of Sexual Assault

This topic paper reviews diagnostic features of borderline personality disorder and literature addressing false sexual-assault allegations, including proposed pathways discussed by cited authors. It also summarizes research on false-report definitions, prevalence, motives, and investigative classification, and notes that people with BPD may themselves have histories of sexual or physical assault.

Borderline Personality and Memory

This article reports a meta-analysis comparing autobiographical-memory performance in adults with borderline personality disorder and healthy controls. The authors found substantial differences on several memory measures and interpret overgeneral recall through the CaR-FA-X model, which includes rumination, functional avoidance, and limits in executive control.

Child Forensic Interviewing: Best Practices

This United States Department of Justice bulletin consolidates guidance on conducting forensic interviews with children in alleged abuse cases. It discusses interview purpose, preparation, rapport, open-ended questions, interview stages, and team coordination, while emphasizing that children’s accounts and needs differ and that repeated or overly focused questioning can create problems.

CHILD: Age-Discordant Sexual Relationships and Adolescent Girls

The cited research examines age-discordant sexual relationships involving adolescent girls and adult men. One study considers girls’ recalled explanations for entering these relationships and contextual factors in the United States, while related research considers sexual motives, relationship settings, and links with sexual risk-taking.

CHILD: Bias in Forensic Child Interviews

The study investigates how evaluator attitudes may contribute to bias in forensic child sexual abuse assessments. It surveyed child-maltreatment professionals and identified attitudes related to sensitivity, specificity, and skepticism toward children’s reports, finding that these attitudes helped explain differing credibility judgments across decision exercises.

CHILD: Conduct Disorder

Conduct disorder is described as a pattern of behavior that violates others’ rights or age-appropriate rules and norms. The resource outlines diagnostic symptoms and onset, associated risk factors and comorbid conditions, effects on functioning, differential diagnosis, and treatment approaches.

CHILD: Delayed Disclosure

Research on delayed disclosure describes disclosure as potentially unfolding over time rather than occurring in a single, immediate account. The resource reviews studies of children’s disclosure patterns, including findings on prior disclosure, age, interview context, tentative statements, denial, recantation, and later reaffirmation.

CHILD: False Child Abuse Allegations

False allegations of child abuse are considered through a compilation of studies and clinical literature. The material reviews reported frequency estimates and exonerations, then presents a clinical typology covering allegations in custody disputes, psychological disturbance, conscious manipulation, and suggestive or other iatrogenic influences.

CHILD: False Indicators of Child Abuse

This article challenges the use of behavioral signs or proposed “syndromes” as proof that child sexual abuse occurred or did not occur. It reviews studies on children’s sexualized behaviors and abuse disclosure, emphasizing that such behaviors have varied causes and that neither their presence nor absence alone establishes whether abuse took place.

CHILD: Forensic Interviewing

Principles of child forensic interviewing include preparation, developmentally appropriate practice, and careful attention to how information is elicited. The DOJ bulletin summarizes interview stages and cautions about repeated or duplicative questioning, while a research review addresses assumptions about children’s testimonial accuracy.

CHILD: Memory and Delay Effects

Delayed recall can affect how much information children remember about witnessed events. The source reviews a study comparing children and adults over a five-month interval, then discusses broader research on children’s suggestibility and the implications for investigative interviews.

CHILD: Suggestibility

Children’s suggestibility can be shaped by factors such as age, prior knowledge, interviewer bias, repeated questions, and exposure to misinformation. The resource reviews research on children’s memory and forensic interviews, including findings that changing details of an experienced event may differ from planting or erasing an event memory.

CHILD: Testimony

The collection reviews research on children’s testimony and the factors that shape its reliability. The studies address children’s eyewitness accounts, memory, suggestibility, interviewing, and credibility, including factors associated with false allegations and jurors’ responses to education about child sexual abuse misconceptions in trial settings.

CONFESSIONS: An Overview of False Confessions

This resource compiles explanations of false confessions, interrogation practices, and proposed safeguards, drawing on psychological research and legal commentary. It distinguishes voluntary, compliant, and internalized false confessions; describes pressure tactics such as minimization and false evidence; and includes recommendations in cited materials for recording custodial interrogations and barring fabricated evidence.