Police Interviews (police + interview)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Alibi Believability: The Effect of Prior Convictions and Judicial Instructions

JOURNAL OF APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 5 2010
Meredith Allison
Undergraduates (N = 339) listened to a simulated police interview with a defendant concerning his alibi. We studied the impact of (a) the strength of the alibi evidence; (b) defendant's prior convictions; (c) judge's instructions on prior conviction evidence; and (d) perceivers' need for cognition (NFC) on alibi believability and defendant guilt ratings. Defendants previously convicted of the same crime as the current charge were seen as more likely to be guilty than defendants previously convicted of a different crime. Judge's instructions did not affect guilt ratings. NFC was less influential than anticipated, but did affect participants' understanding and recall of judicial instructions. Strong alibis were seen as more believable and led to lower guilt ratings than weak alibis. [source]


The Performance of Volunteer Appropriate Adults: A Survey of Call Outs

THE HOWARD JOURNAL OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE, Issue 3 2001
Harriet Pierpoint
The ,appropriate adult' is intended to safeguard the interests of the young suspect in the police interview. This article discusses the criticisms of social workers' and parents' performance of the role and then considers the findings from a survey that explores volunteers' performance. The findings suggest that, when the volunteers surveyed contributed in the interview, they fulfilled the role as intended. This article also examines the implications of employing the survey method as a means of data collection in this field. The author concludes that further research is required in order for the survey findings to be considered conclusive and generalisable and suggests two further methods. [source]


Enhancing the recall of young, young,old and old,old adults with cognitive interviews,

APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 1 2007
Allison M. Wright
Two studies examined whether a Cognitive Interview improves older witnesses' recall. Study 1 compared the quality and quantity of older adults' recall when given a typical UK police interview, the Enhanced Cognitive Interview (ECI), or a modified version of the Cognitive Interview (MCI). The MCI was identical to the ECI except that the change perspective technique was omitted. Old,old (75,95-years) adults' recall was less complete and less accurate than that of young,old (60,74-years) adults, which was less complete and accurate than that of young (17,31-years) adults. The ECI and MCI increased the number of correct Person, Action, Object and Surrounding details reported across every age group, without increasing the number of incorrect or confabulated details recalled. In Study 2, it was found that these effects remained when interviews were re-scored using a system that reflected police officers' decisions about the investigative relevance of details. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Delayed disclosure and disrupted communication during forensic investigation of child sexual abuse: a study of 47 corroborated cases

ACTA PAEDIATRICA, Issue 12 2002
RL Sjöberg
Aim: To study factors of relevance for the understanding of disclosure of child sexual abuse. Methods: Cases from a Swedish district court involving 47 children in which allegations of child sexual abuse had been corroborated by a confession from the defendant were studied. Results: Delayed disclosure was related to a close relationship with the perpetrator and young age at the first experience of abuse. Disrupted communication during the police interview was related to less violent abuse. Conclusion: The findings highlight the importance of social factors in children's disclosure of sexual abuse. [source]


Typology in action: applying typological insights in the study of translation

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS, Issue 1 2008
Luna Filipovi
tipología; camino y manera de movimiento; transcriptos; traducción This paper provides arguments in favour of using Talmy's cognitive typology in the study of translation. I contrasted English motion expressions with those in Spanish and Serbo-Croatian. English and Spanish belong to two opposing types in the typology, and Serbo-Croatian is classified as the same type as English. I illustrate the effects that different lexicalization patterns can have in a specific context of translation, namely that of translating police interviews with witnesses and suspects from Spanish into English. I also explain the intratypological contrasts that affect translation in the case of English vs. Serbo-Croatian. I propose a number of underlying principles to be used in translation and foreign language teaching. Este articulo se trata de la importancia que una tipología lingüística tiene en el análisis de traducción. Hemos comparado los originales de dos libros en serbo-croato y dos en ingles y correspondientes traducciones de estos textos en ingles y serbo-croato. Otros materiales que hemos usado en nuestra discusión son los transcriptos originales de los interrogaciones de testigos que hablan español como lengua madre y las traducciones en inglés hechos por la parte de los intérpretes. Español e ingles marcan los dos puntos más extremos en la clasificación semántica de idiomas, mientras serbo-croato estaba clasificado en el mismo grupo con ingles. Esta clasificación tipológica es basada sobre la manera en que se lexicalizan los campos universales de experiencia humana. En este caso, hablamos de la manera de movimiento. Los resultados muestran que en español, siguiendo las predicciones de la tipología, las construcciones con los verbos de dirección son los típicos y la frecuencia y la variedad de los verbos de manera de movimiento es marginada y limitada. En ingles, que "prefiere" el uso de los verbos de manera de movimiento, las traducciones a veces tienen la información de la manera que no existe en los textos originales. Así se cambia el contenido original de las descripciones que han presentado los testigos en español. Serbo-croato tiene puntas in común con ingles y español, y por eso, que nosotros mostramos, se puede posicionar entre los otros dos idiomas en la tipología. Otros temas presentes en la nuestra discusión son la diferencia entre las construcciones sintácticos en los tres idiomas que crean problemas en la traducción y los excepciones en el uso de los verbos de movimiento que se encuentran en serbo-croato. La conclusión es que este tipo de investigación aplicada interdisciplinaria puede ayudar a entender la importancia que tiene el idioma en contextos varios. En esa manera tal vez se puede mejorar el proceso de traducción e interrogación de testigos en una comunidad multilingual y facilitar el proceso de comunicación en general. [source]


The role of visual imagery in the enhanced cognitive interview: guided questioning techniques and individual differences,,

JOURNAL OF INVESTIGATIVE PSYCHOLOGY AND OFFENDER PROFILING, Issue 1 2004
Michael R. Davis
Abstract The cognitive interview utilises mnemonics and other techniques to facilitate obtaining information from victims and witnesses. Research has indicated superior recall to standard police interviews. However, there has been minimal research regarding the role of individual differences. One area that has generated spirited theoretical debate is imagery ability, as guided imagery questioning is an important part of the enhanced cognitive interview. Imagery is also arguably an integral part of several mnemonics employed in the technique. The present study investigated the role of individual differences in imagery ability, as well as the effect of explicit instructions to image, on recall performance. Participants completed the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ), witnessed a film of a simulated crime, and were interviewed using the cognitive interview or a structured interview. While recall in the cognitive interview was superior, VVIQ scores had little relationship with recall of information. Further, recall elicited by guided imagery differed only minimally from that obtained using standard questioning in the structured interview. These results suggested that the relaxation and rapport building common to questioning in both interview conditions may evoke spontaneous imagery that is comparable to explicit instructions to image, regardless of individuals' inherent imagery ability. Future directions are discussed, including research focused on individual differences and a practical emphasis on context reinstatement and social facilitative techniques. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Forensic interviews with children in CSA cases: A large-sample study of Norwegian police interviews

APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 7 2009
Christian Thoresen
The study was designed to investigate changes in how children are interviewed in cases of child sexual abuse over a fairly long period of time. The interviewers' utterances were analysed in a large sample of forensic interviews conducted in Norway during the period of 1990,2002. The results indicate that interviewer strategies have improved during this period; there is a decrease in the proportion of suggestive, yes/no and option-posing utterances, accompanied by a comparable increase in directive utterances. However, the frequency of open-ended utterances is low, and has not changed much over time. An index of the overall quality of the interviews likewise showed a positive trend, with an increase in the proportion of interviews that were labelled ,good'. However, even in recent years, interviews rated as ,inadequate' or ,poor' constituted half of the interviews conducted. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


See no lies, hear no lies: differences in discrimination accuracy and response bias when watching or listening to police suspect interviews

APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 8 2008
Samantha Ann Mann
In the present experiment, police officers attempted to detect truths and lies told by suspects in their police interviews in three different ways: They either saw the suspects (visual condition), only heard the suspects (audio condition) or both saw and heard the suspects (control condition). Research has demonstrated that vocal and speech-related cues are better diagnostic cues to deceit than visual cues. Therefore, we predicted that participants in the visual condition would perform worst in the lie detection task. Having access only to visual cues may encourage observers to be more reliant on stereotypical beliefs when attempting to detect truths and lies. Since these stereotypes are related to the behaviour of liars, rather than to the behaviour of truth tellers, we further predicted that being exposed only to visual cues may result in a lie bias. The findings supported these hypotheses, and the implications are discussed. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Police officers ability to detect deception in high stakes situations and in repeated lie detection tests

APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 6 2006
Aldert Vrij
Thirty-seven police officers, not identified in previous research as belonging to groups that are superior in lie detection, attempted to detect truths and lies told by suspects during their videotaped police interviews. In order to measure consistency in their ability, the officers each participated in four different tests, each of which was on a different day. They were asked to indicate their confidence in being able to distinguish between truths and lies prior to the first test and after completing all four tests. We predicted that accuracy rates would be higher than those typically found in research with police officers; that good or poor performances on an individual test would be partly caused by luck, and, consequently, participants' accuracy scores were likely to progress towards the mean if their performance on all four tests was to be combined; and that officers would underestimate their own performance. These hypotheses were supported. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Murderers' and sexual offenders' experiences of police interviews and their inclination to admit or deny crimes,,

BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES & THE LAW, Issue 1-2 2002
Ulf Holmberg M.D.
This research concerns murderers' and sexual offenders' experiences of Swedish police interviews and their attitudes towards allegations of these serious crimes. The explorative study is based on a questionnaire answered by 83 men convicted of murder or sexual offences. Results show that when police officers interview murderers and sexual offenders, the individuals perceive attitudes that are characterized by either dominance or humanity. Logistic regression shows that police interviews marked by dominance are mainly associated with a higher proportion of denials, whereas an approach marked by humanity is associated with admissions. When suspects feel that they are respected and acknowledged, they probably gain more confidence and mental space, allowing them to admit criminal behaviour. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]