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Minimizing Bias in Forensic Decision Making

Presented By Itiel Dror, PhD
Itiel Dror, PhD

10 hours | 10 CEs

This on-demand professional training program on Minimizing Bias in Forensic Decision Making is presented by Itiel E. Dror, PhD, in partnership with Cognitive Consultants International. This badge-earning program can be shared digitally on platforms like LinkedIn or your resume and counts towards various certificates. Enroll to earn credit and share your new digital credentials with prospective employers and colleagues. This program counts as a foundational program in the certificates:

  1. Criminal Forensic Assessment Certificate
  2. Child Custody Evaluation Certificate
  3. Civil Forensic Assessment Certificate
  4. Juvenile Forensic Assessment Certificate
  5. Violence Risk Assessment Certificate

The program covers the brain and cognitive issues relating to bias and cognitive processing and then connects the cognitive science issues to practical and specific topics in forensic decision-making. In addition to knowledge about the cognitive factors in forensic decision-making, the program also provides practical solutions to address weaknesses and best practices to enhance forensic practices.

Specific application to forensic mental health evaluation is provided through engaging discussions between Dr. Dror and Dr. Patricia Zapf, a forensic psychologist and expert in best practices in forensic mental health evaluation. In addition, Dr. Zapf provides elaboration on how the factors discussed by Dr. Dror apply to a forensic mental health evaluation.

Conducting forensic examinations is similar to other expert domains that require perception and interpretation of information, such as in the military, medical, and financial disciplines. Even in everyday life, humans constantly process information. Information is perceived, encoded, represented, transformed, stored, retrieved, compared to other details, evaluated, and assessed, to name just a few cognitive processes. The human mind is not a camera, as we actively process and compare information. It is naive to think we passively construct and experience reality and perceive the environment as 'it is.'

We engage in various cognitive processes that organize and structure the information as it comes in from the external world. Data is then further interpreted and processed in ways that highly depend on the human mind and cognitive factors. As we dynamically process information, we affect what we see, interpret, and evaluate it and our decision-making process. Thus, to enhance expert performance and understand that different factors may affect their work, especially in a highly specialized domain such as forensics, one needs to consider the role of the human mind and cognitive factors (Dror, 2015). While some education is provided to forensic experts, there is a lack of training in the psychological and cognitive elements involved in forensic decision-making. Thus, there is a lack of systematic training and professional development in the influence of human cognition on forensic work. This program is a step towards addressing training in the cognitive factors involved in forensic decision-making.

This program is California POST CPE approved for 10 CE hours.

Intended Audience

This on-demand professional training program is intended for mental health and other allied professionals

Experience Level

This on-demand professional training program is appropriate for beginner, intermediate, and advanced level clinicians.

CE / CPD Credit

APA, ASWB, CPA, NBCC Click here for state and other regional board approvals.

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this program you will be able to:

Describe background information regarding the human mind and cognitive system

Describe how information and knowledge is acquired, processed, represented, encoded, stored, utilized, retrieved, compared, and evaluated

Describe how decisions are made

Demonstrate the connection between information and a variety of forensic decision making processes that forensic examiners typically use

Describe how cognitive factors can be utilized to make forensic experts’ work more efficient

Describe the pitfalls and errors that can occur in forensic decision making

Describe the Factors / Powers that influence the mind of the forensic evaluator

Describe the Dror HEP Hierarchy of Expert Performance

Describe sources of bias and countermeasures

Describe the process of Chunking

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Presented By

Itiel Dror, PhD

Dr. Itiel Dror is a cognitive neuroscientist who received his Ph.D. at Harvard (1994) in the area of cognitive factors in human expert performance. Since his Ph.D. over twenty years ago, Dr. Dror has been researching this area, and has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles specifically looking a...

Curriculum

1. Overview of the Issue of Cognitive Bias

2. Questions & Answer Session

3. Factors - Powers that Influence the Mind

4. Cognitive Architecture

5. Perceptual Mechanisms

6. Exercise 1 - Foundational

7. Exercise 1a - Forensic

8. Interpretation, Judgement, and Decision Making - Part 1

9. Interpretation, Judgement, and Decision Making - Part 2

10. Exercise 2

Develop a Specialty Area of Practice

Transforming mental health professionals into experts

Expert Instructors

Professional training developed and delivered by the field's leading experts

CE Credit

Earn CE credit for meaningful professional training that will elevate your practice

Convenience & Flexibility

Learn at your own pace, from wherever you might be!

Program Partner

Cognitive Consultants International (CCI-HQ)

We are proud to partner with Cognitive Consultants International (CCI-HQ) for this training. CCI-HQ specializes in taking a cognitive neuroscientific approach to applied real-world consultancy and research. In a nutshell, that means that they apply knowledge and understanding of the human brain and cognitive system to resolve practical problems and human factors issues in the real world. CCI-HQ provides consultancy, scientific research, expert witness, and training that focuses on cognitive and human factors, decision making, and performance. The work is led by Dr. Itiel Dror and associate consultants, who examine areas such as continuous professional development, improving decision making, and use of technology through the scientific understanding of human cognition, applied to healthcare, business, HR, L&D, banking, forensic science, policing, and other expert domains (as well as to everyday decision-making, such as marketing and branding).

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Earn Certificates

This is badge-earning course, which means it will help you earn a certificate that can be showcased on digital platforms like Linkedin.