Persons with mental illness may be at risk for false admissions to police and to prosecutors because of the defining characteristics of mental illness, but potentially because of heightened recidivism rates and increased opportunities. We surveyed 1,249 offenders with mental disorders from six sites about false confessions (FCs) and false guilty pleas (FGPs). Self-reports of FC ranged from 9 to 28%, and FGPs ranged from 27 to 41% depending upon site. False admissions to murder and rape were rarely reported. We also examined differences between those claiming false admissions and those not. Minorities, offenders with lengthier criminal careers, and those who were more symptomatic were more likely to have self-reported false admissions than their counterparts.

Mental health courts (MHCs) are rapidly expanding as a form of diversion from jails and prisons for persons with mental illness charged with crimes. Although intended to be voluntary, little is known about this aspect of the courts. We examined perceptions of voluntariness, and levels of knowingness and legal competence among 200 newly enrolled clients of MHCs at two courts. Although most clients claimed to have chosen to enroll, at the same time, most claimed not to have been told the court was voluntary or told of the requirements prior to entering. The majority knew the "basics" of the courts, but fewer knew more nuanced information. A minority also were found to have impairments in legal competence. Implications are discussed.

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An exploratory study was conducted to compare selected cognitive and noncognitive variables' relationships with highly intelligent ninth-grade students' ability to formulate hypotheses about realistic, ill-defined situations. Three hypotheses were tested in this study: whether boys' and girls' abilities to formulate hypotheses differed; whether significant relationships existed between hypothesis formulation ability and cognitive and noncognitive factors; and the extent to which there was a relationship between the quality and the quantity of students' responses. Results indicated that there were no differences between male and female subjects' abilities to formulate hypotheses. The results of a principal-component analysis indicated that the ability to formulate hypotheses may be independent of intelligence for high-ability students. Finally, a positive relationship was found between the quality and the quantity of subjects' responses.A great deal of research on human problem solving has been conducted over the past 60 years. In reviewing and organizing this vast body of research, Greeno (1978) developed a scheme for classifying the type of problem, problem prototypes, processes or strategies used in solving the problem, and the abilities or cognitive skills associated with each type. The majority of problem-solving research has been conducted with problems characterized as well-defined (Frederickson, 1984;Greeno, 1978). Research with these categories of problems has provided theorists with an understanding of the strategies that expert problem solvers use, such as means-end analysis and forward-working strategies. In addition, research has also been conducted on insight, design, and invention problems, which Greeno (1978) categorized as problems dealing with providing structure in less well-defined problems. These latter problems have generally been dealt with through creativity and creativity-training research and in the earlier Gestalt theories, and they have been thoroughly reviewed elsewhere (Feldhusen & Clinkenbeard, 1986; Frederikson, 1984). Problem-Finding AbilityOf particular interest for this study were those components of Greeno's (1978) sixth category for which the least amount of research has been conducted: problems of composition. Problems of composition are "the most demanding intellectual problems" consisting of problems involving "composing a piece of music, a painting, a sculpture, a poem, a novel, a theory, or sometimes, an experiment" and require a person to "create an arrangement of ideas whose structure incorpo-This research was conducted while Steven M. Hoover was on the staff at Purdue University.