Facial feedback mechanisms of adolescents with Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) were investigated utilizing three studies. Facial expressions, which became activated via automatic (Studies 1 and 2) or intentional (Study 2) mimicry, or via holding a pen between the teeth (Study 3), influenced corresponding emotions for controls, while individuals with ASD remained emotionally unaffected. Thus, individuals with ASD do not experience feedback from activated facial expressions as controls do. This facial feedback-impairment enhances our understanding of the social and emotional lives of individuals with ASD.

This study demonstrates how naturalistic decision-making (NDM) can be usefully applied to study 'decision inertia'-Namely the cognitive process associated with failures to execute action when a decision-maker struggles to choose between equally perceived aversive outcomes. Data assessed the response and recovery from a sudden impact disaster during a 2-day immersive simulated emergency response. Fourteen agencies (including police, fire, ambulance, and military) and 194 participants were involved in the exercise. By assessing the frequency, type, audience, and content of communications, and by reference to five subject matter experts' slow time analyses of critical turning points during the incident, three barriers were identified as reducing multiagency information sharing and the macrocognitive understanding of the incident. When the decision problem was non-time-bounded, involved multiple agencies, and identification of superordinate goals was lacking, the communication between agencies decreased and agencies focused on within-agency information sharing. These barriers distracted teams from timely and efficient discussions on decisions and action execution with seeking redundant information, which resulted in decision inertia. Our study illustrates how naturalistic environments are conducive to examining relatively understudied concepts of decision inertia, failures to act, and shared situational macrocognition in situations involving large distributed teams. Practitioner points Researchers can use NDM to explore the cognitive processing associated with failures to act/decision inertia. Complexities in the decision-making environment of a multiteam system (e.g., non-time-bounded choice, large team size, and lack of strategic goals) are associated with decision-making failures. Barriers cause decision inertia as teams focus on redundant intra-agency information seeking rather than cooperative interagency communications. Strategic direction is especially important for shifting multiteam system communication towards interagency discussions on action execution. If the behavioural implementation of making a decision is the execution of action (Lipshitz, Klein, Orasanu, & Salas, 2001; Yates, 2003), then failing to make a decision (e.g., making an executive choice) is when action execution fails. Traditional decision-making

This paper outlines a brief history of the evolutionary trajectory of offender profiling and illustrates the three broad strands (investigative, clinical, and statistical ) that emerged in the 1970s-1990s. We then indicate how a more pragmatic, interdisciplinary practitioner-academic model has emerged in recent years and go on to describe the range of contributions that are now made across the criminal justice field. More recently termed 'behavioural investigative advice' in the UK, the paper then argues that whilst a range of potential contributions exist (from linking crimes, risk assessment, provision of bad character evidence, investigative interviewing advice, to geoprofiling), the nature of the process by which that contribution occurs is not yet well understood. The review of these potential contributions concludes with several suggestions and recommendations for further research and relevant methodologies by which to conduct that research. This includes the requirement to combine conceptual and theory-driven models alongside empirically driven statistical approaches, as well as the requirement to more precisely delineate and describe how contributions are made by behavioural experts through cognitive task analyses and associated methods.Several countries' police services regularly employ the assistance of psychologists in relation to the prevention, management, and investigation of crime (Alison, 2005).Although some of what they are engaged in might be described as offender profiling, the support from psychologists over the last 10 years, in the UK at least, might be more accurately described as behavioural investigative advice (BIA; ACPO, 2006). The older term offender profiling has developed an almost mythic status in popular literature and drama (Herndon, 2007), although, as this paper will demonstrate, in its best understood but narrow definition, it has failed to make much operational impact.

The present study sought to describe police officers' decision processes in simulated counter-terrorism events. Based on previous phase models of decision making and existing police policy in dealing with critical incidents of this nature, a descriptive SAFE-T (Situation Assessment, Formulate a plan, Execute a plan and Team learning) model was applied to team decision processes. Proximity and Lag Sequential analyses tested the occurrence of the predicted decision phases set out in the model; these results indicated that the model did not fully capture the complexity of the process. Specifically, further qualitative analyses (and comparisons to a 'Gold Standard' set of subject matter expert decisions, conducted with the benefit of removing ambient and time pressure stressors) illustrated that a complex combination of ambient (uncertainty), cognitive (accountability pressures) and organizational (an existing blame culture and lack of policy) factors 'derailed' officers from making 'save life' decisions. Instead, albeit in a minority of cases, they either made errors of omission by failing to make any decision at all or inappropriate choice deferrals (by insisting another agency made the decision or that the decision could be made later). The potential benefits of making the SAFE-T decision process and how derailment can occur explicit in police critical incident training events are discussed.

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