marcus boccaccini, ph.d.

Associate Professor of Psychology

Research interests include mental retardation in death penalty cases, test construction, witness testimony, and jury research.

Research Program

My research program focuses broadly on the intersection of clinical psychology and the legal system. In general, I am interested in conducting research that provides useful information for practitioners, attorneys, and consultants. If you would like to know more about the full range of topics on which I conduct research, please review my C.V. Below are brief descriptions of interests in the areas of mental retardation and witness testimony.

One overarching goal of my research program is to provide research that applies to the practice of forensic psychology.  All too often, most of our research on a particular topic or procedure comes from "optimally" designed research studies which show that a procedure CAN have good reliability and validity in well-controlled studies. Because clinical-forensic practices often differs from the context of well-controlled studies, these findings may or may not apply to actual practice.  Currently, several of my graduate students are working on projects focusing on the field reliability and validity of measures used in risk assessment, especially those used in sexually violent predator evaluations. Several colleagues and I are also examining the importance of field reliability and validity for others areas of forensic evaluation, including competency to stand trial and mental state at the time of the offense.

Mental retardation in death penalty cases:

My work in the area of mental retardation focuses on how psychologists go about conducting evaluations of capital defendants and death row inmates. I'm especially interested in how psychologists assess and make decisions about adaptive behavior (day-to-day living skills) in capital cases. Current tests for assessing adaptive behavior were not developed with capital case issues in mind and the validity of these tests for capital case evaluations is not known. I'm interested in how psychologists use these existing tests and in conducting research within criminal populations to provide an empirical foundation for making conclusions about the appropriate use of these tests.

I'm also interested in laypersons' perceptions of the types of impairment in adaptive behavior that are associated with mental retardation. Thus far, my students' work in this area suggests that laypersons expect persons with mental retardation to demonstrate excessively severe levels of impairment, which has important implications for how attorneys and experts communicate information about adaptive functioning to judges and jurors. Several of my graduate students are conducting a systematic review of trial transcripts from death penalty cases to determine a) how well attorneys question experts about adaptive behavior, and b) how well experts communicate information about adaptive behavior in response to attorney questions.

Please e-mail me if you would like to know more about my research program.

boccaccini@shsu.edu

(936) 294-1179

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