A Validation Study of the Langley et al. (2017) Decision Tree Model for Sex Estimation

Garvin, Heather M.; Klales, Alexandra R.

doi:10.1111/1556-4029.13688

Cited by 23 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…The posterior probability of 0.73 indicated female sex of the Zlatý kůň skull. As emphasized by Garvin and Klales [ 95 ], the decision tree model produces a strong sex bias, with females correctly classified in 94% and males only in 49% of the test sample.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Virtual reconstruction of the Upper Palaeolithic skull from Zlatý Kůň, Czech Republic: Sex assessment and morphological affinity

et al. 2018

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The incomplete cranium discovered at the Zlatý kůň site in the Bohemian Karst is a rare piece of skeletal evidence of human presence in Central Europe during the Late Glacial period. The relative position of cranial fragments was restored and missing parts of the cranium were virtually reconstructed using mirroring and the Thin-plate splines algorithm. The reconstruction allowed us to collect principal cranial measurements, revise a previous unfounded sex assignment and explore the specimen’s morphological affinity. Visual assessment could not reliably provide a sexual diagnosis, as such methods have been developed on modern populations. Using a population-specific approach developed on cranial measurements collected from the literature on reliably sexed European Upper Palaeolithic specimens, linear discriminant analysis confirmed previous assignment to the female sex. However, caution is necessary with regard to the fact that it was assessed from the skull. The Zlatý kůň specimen clearly falls within the range of Upper Palaeolithic craniometric variation. Despite the shift in cranial variation that accompanied the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), the Zlatý kůň skull exhibits a morphological affinity with the pre-LGM population. Several interpretations are proposed with regard to the complex population processes that occurred after the LGM in Europe.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Virtual reconstruction of the Upper Palaeolithic skull from Zlatý Kůň, Czech Republic: Sex assessment and morphological affinity

et al. 2018

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“…These results show that mastoid volume measures can be valuable in a multi-factorial approach to sex estimation (Garvin and Klales, 2017;Langley et al, 2017), and even used alone if only fragmented parts of the temporal bone are available. The sex estimation accuracy of 70.6 % obtained for the Croatian population using Vol-2 is higher than the classifications achieved using traditional mastoid measurements for some African (Jaja et al, 2013), Brazilian (Galdames et al, 2008), Indian (Sumati et al, 2010), Saudi (Madadin et al, 2015), and white European and American (Bernard, 2008;Kemkes and Gobel, 2006;Spradley and Jantz, 2011) populations, but worse than the classification results achieved for Brazilian (de Paiva and Segre, 2003), other Indian (Gupta et al, 2012), Japanese (Nagaoka et al, 2008), Jordanian (Amin et al, 2015), and Thai (Manoonpol and Plakornkul, 2012;Sujarittham et al, 2011) groups.…”

Section: Sex Estimation Accuracymentioning

confidence: 80%

Sexual dimorphism in mastoid process volumes measured from 3D models of dry crania from medieval Croatia

Petaros

Sholts

Čavka

et al. 2021

Preprint

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ABSTRACT3D analysis of skeletal volumes has become an important field in digital anthropology studies. The volume of the mastoid process has been proposed to display significant sexual dimorphism, but it has a complex shape and to date no study has quantified the full mastoid volume for sex estimation purposes. In this study we compared three different ways to isolate the volume of the mastoid process from digital 3D models of dry crania, and then evaluated the performance of the three different volume definitions for sex estimation purposes. A total of 170 crania (86 male, 84 females) excavated from five medieval Croatian sites were CT-scanned and used to produce 3D stereolitographic models. The three different isolation techniques were based on various anatomical landmarks and planes, as well as the anatomy of the mastoid process itself. Measurements of the three different mastoid volumes yielded different accuracies and precisions. Interestingly, anatomical structures were sometimes more useful than classical landmarks as demarcators of mastoid volume. For all three volume definitions, male mastoid volumes were significantly larger than female volumes, in both relative and absolute numbers. Sex estimation based on mastoid volume showed a slightly higher precision and better accuracy (71 % correct classifications) than visual scoring techniques (67 %) and linear distance measurements (69 %) of the mastoid process. Sex estimation based on cranial size performed even better (78 %), and multifactorial analysis (skull size + mastoid volume) reached up to 81% accuracy. These results show that measurements of the mastoid volume represent a promising metric to be used in multifactorial approaches for sex estimation of human remains.

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“…Moreover, older individuals were more prone to antemortem tooth loss and edentulous mandibles. However, no data are available so far on the changes of the site of interest (i.e., the mental eminence) in case of tooth loss [ 47 ], and further analyses are needed in the future that use samples that also include young individuals to clarify this statement. Another limitation is represented by the intrinsic subjectivity of the tested method, as it is a method based on morphological features.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sexual Dimorphism of Cranial Morphological Traits in an Italian Sample: A Population-Specific Logistic Regression Model for Predicting Sex

Cappella

Bertoglio

Maso

et al. 2022

Biology

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Although not without subjectivity, the cranial trait scoring method is an easy visual method routinely used by forensic anthropologists in sex estimation. The revision presented by Walker in 2008 has introduced predictive models with good accuracies in the original populations. However, such models may lead to unsatisfactory performances when applied to populations that are different from the original. Therefore, this study aimed to test the sex predictive equations reported by Walker on a contemporary Italian population (177 individuals) in order to evaluate the reliability of the method and to identify potential sexual dimorphic differences between American and Italian individuals. In order to provide new reference data to be used by forensic experts dealing with human remains of modern/contemporary individuals from this geographical area, we designed logistic regression models specific to our population, whose accuracy was evaluated on a validation sample from the same population. In particular, we fitted logistic regression models for all possible combinations of the five cranial morphological traits (i.e., nuchal crest, mastoid process, orbital margin, glabella, and mental eminence). This approach provided a comprehensive set of population-specific equations that can be used in forensic contexts where crania might be retrieved with severe taphonomic damages, thus limiting the application of the method only to a few morphological features. The results proved once again that the effects of secular changes and biogeographic ancestry on sexual dimorphism of cranial morphological traits are remarkable, as highlighted by the low accuracy (from 56% to 78%) of the six Walker’s equations when applied to our female sample. Among our fitted models, the one including the glabella and mastoid process was the most accurate since these features are more sexually dimorphic in our population. Finally, our models proved to have high predictive performances in both training and validation samples, with accuracy percentages up to 91.7% for Italian females, which represents a significant success in minimizing the potential misclassifications in real forensic scenarios.

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A Validation Study of the Langley et al. (2017) Decision Tree Model for Sex Estimation

Cited by 23 publications

References 21 publications

Virtual reconstruction of the Upper Palaeolithic skull from Zlatý Kůň, Czech Republic: Sex assessment and morphological affinity

Virtual reconstruction of the Upper Palaeolithic skull from Zlatý Kůň, Czech Republic: Sex assessment and morphological affinity

Sexual dimorphism in mastoid process volumes measured from 3D models of dry crania from medieval Croatia

Sexual Dimorphism of Cranial Morphological Traits in an Italian Sample: A Population-Specific Logistic Regression Model for Predicting Sex

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