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This study examined the effect of a child passing or failing the UK truth and lies discussion (TLD) compared with the Canadian promise to tell the truth on mock jurors' decisions regarding witness credibility and truthfulness and defendant guilt. Ninety-two participants read a vignette that described a child witnessing his father physically attacking his mother. The vignette was manipulated for witness age (age 4 years and age 8 years) and TLD performance/promise. Supporting the hypotheses, participants rated the witness's credibility and truthfulness significantly higher after a witness passed a TLD and after promising to tell the truth. The age of the child witness did not significantly affect jurors' decision making. The results are discussed in relation to arguments regarding the abolition of the UK's TLD in favour of introducing a promise to tell the truth.

Children generally fail to reject target-absent line-ups correctly as not containing the “perpetrator”. This experiment aimed to investigate this issue of higher rate of choosing behaviour in children by offering an alternative selection choice. One hundred and forty-eight children aged six to seven years actively participated in live craft events conducted by an adult male who later became the target to be identified. Supporting the hypotheses, the use of the alternative procedure was found to be significantly associated with the children's ability to reject the line-up correctly when the target was absent. Importantly, this was not accompanied by reduced performance in target-present conditions. Also supporting the hypothesis, children made correct decisions faster than incorrect decisions. The implications of these findings to applied forensic practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All investigative interviews are dialogues set within a legal context specific to an individual country or jurisdiction. Nevertheless, the need to ask questions appropriately is common to every interview, if reliable information is to be obtained. Despite this fact, published research has frequently reported a lack of skill in both the types of questions used by interviewers and the manner in which they are asked. However, during a recent quantitative evaluation of an advanced interview training programme in the UK, it was observed that graduates of this programme, in contrast to previous research, appeared to employ highly structured questioning strategies, methodically covering relevant subject matter across the complete time-span of an interview. The current study is a follow-up study using an alternative qualitative methodology for a deeper exploration of the rationale behind the formation of these questioning strategies. Using 'think-aloud' techniques, two independent groups of police officers (n=9) with advanced training in interviewing of either suspects or witnesses were individually interviewed about how they had structured their questioning during two phases of a simulated interview conducted on a training course. The results confirm, first, the high level of conscious decision-making employed by the advanced interviewers in formulating their question strategies, but secondly, identify excessive levels of control evident in some interviews with compliant witnesses. Finally, the results confirm the complex nature of real-life investigative interviewing, even for highly trained interviewers. The results are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]