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PURPOSE:Previous research has demonstrated that attorney question format relates to child witness' response productivity. However, little work has examined the relations between the extent to which attorneys provide temporal structure in their questions, and the effects of this structure on children's responding. The purpose of the present study was to address this gap in the literature in order to identify methods by which attorneys increase children's response productivity on the stand without risking objections from opposing counsel for "calling for narrative answers". METHODS:In the present study we coded criminal court transcripts involving child witnesses (5-18 years) for narrative structure in attorney questions and productivity in children's responses. Half of the transcripts resulted in convictions, half in acquittals, balanced across key variables: child age, allegation severity, the child's relationship to the perpetrator, and the number of allegations. RESULTS:Prosecutors and defense attorneys varied substantially in their questioning tactics. Prosecutors used more temporal structure in their questions and varied their questioning by the age of the child. These variations had implications for children's response productivity. CONCLUSIONS:Results indicate that temporal structure is a novel and viable method for enhancing children's production of case-relevant details on the witness stand.

The present study carries out a bibliometric analysis of Annual Review of Legal Psychology from 1991 to 2019. Data were collected from a database that allows for the analysis of authors, institutions, countries, gender, topics, and impact. The results enable us to observe gender discrepancies among authors, with a a higher frequency of women (50.2%), and the number of signatures (53.7% men). Over the years there is an increase in the number of authors and signatures, of co-authorship, a higher presence of international signatures, representing 23.5% between 2011 and 2019. Three collaboration groups were identified, two from Spain and one from Colombia. Categories of Legal and Forensic Psychology and Psychological Evaluation and Testimony are the most represented in the published studies. It is possible to conclude that Annual Review of Legal Psychology is a referent in its field, especially for authors and practitioners from Latin-American countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on roundtable "Angry Women and the Dramatic Monologue" on Christine Blasey Ford's testimony about her sexual assault by Brett Kavanaugh later confirmed to the U. S. Supreme Court. It mentions hearing Rebecca Traister promote her new book "Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger" on heightened emotions and extreme psychology. It also mentions dramatic monologue allows poets to think about public and stage a presentation of private relationships.

The first part of the article deals with those medical fields which are historically closest to psychology. The second, major part, brings the author's personal testimony on facts and events relevant to the development of Czech clinical psychology. This is a contribution from Prague. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Testifying to sexual assault can re-traumatize a victim-survivor. This article applies a psychoanalytic framework to existing debate to provide a new interpretation as to why this is still the case despite legal and policy reform. The trauma of testifying to sexual assault is located at the same site where a victim-survivor imagines the law understands and transforms an experience of sexual assault. The sexual assault victim-survivor's testifying voice is both a medium for fantasy and a violent disruption to it, paradoxically constituting and imposing a violence to their subjectivity. Violence is inflicted through the testifying victim-survivor's act of speaking, in directing their voice toward the law, and in the ideology associated with sexuality which coats voice and informs fantasy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In July/August 1946, American psychologist David Pablo Boder visited displaced persons (DP) camps in France, Switzerland, and Germany, where he recorded audio-interviews with recent concentration camps inmates. In 1948, Boder proposed for publication a selection of interviews recorded verbatim, together with a brief historical survey and a detailed analysis of one of the interviews from his selection. For his analysis, Boder chose the Formalist methodology of textual reading. Evidently inspired by interest in the phenomenon of the sounding word in turn-of-the-century Russian culture, he believed that the collections of victims' audio-testimonies would be perceived, using today's terminology, as multi-media art of the catastrophe. This article focuses on the aesthetic component of Boder's project, namely, his interpretation of victims' testimonies from the point of view of literature as art, while also analyzing his concept of the particular aesthetic value of the testimonies and their broader relevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the uncertain responses of 56 alleged sexual abuse victims, aged 5-17 years, testifying in Scottish criminal court trials. Don't know/remember ground rules were explained to 38% of the children and each child reported uncertainty in response to 15% of the questions on average. Uncertain responding was associated with expressions of resistance and confusion, questioning context (proportionally more regarding substantive than non-substantive issues), question content (least to disclosure-focused questions), utterance type (more to directives, particularly those posed by defense lawyers; more to recall-based than recognition prompts), and age (children in mid-adolescence were less likely to respond uncertainly than those who were either older or younger). There were no associations between expressions of uncertainty and ground rule administration, or with whether or not the question focused on central rather than peripheral details about the alleged crimes. Findings highlight concerns surrounding preparatory procedures to help witnesses, especially adolescents, indicate uncertainty when testifying. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has shown that jurors are heavily influenced by secondary confessions, and that they may attribute the informant’s motives to good character rather than to an incentive. This study investigated the role of race in this context by manipulating both defendant and informant race (Black/White), informant type (jailhouse/civic duty), and whether the informant received an incentive to testify. Participants read a trial transcript and provided a verdict, then answered questions about the informant’s reason for testifying (i.e. attributions). We observed that in the absence of informant testimony, participants convicted the White defendant more often. We also discovered an effect of incentive on verdicts when the defendant was White, such that participants voted guilty less often when the informant received an incentive; there was no effect of incentive on verdict when the defendant was Black. Informant race, defendant race, and incentive showed a combined effect on verdict, such that participants were particularly suspicious (i.e. less likely to vote guilty) when a Black informant received an incentive for testifying against a Black defendant. There were no effects of race on attributions. This research sheds light on extralegal factors that can prevent jurors from considering the role of incentives in secondary confessions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Madeleine Blaess, a British doctoral student studying at the Sorbonne, was trapped in Paris, unable to return home to York for the duration of the Occupation. In October 1940 she began a diary which she kept diligently until September 1944. This unique testimony written from the perspective of a British student at liberty to roam wartime Paris, focuses more on the civilian struggle through the everyday than on the political and military situation which Blaess, vulnerable to arrest, thinks wise to mention as little as possible. This exhaustively documented, voluminous record of the minutiae of a daily struggle with material hardship discloses a struggle with mental illness articulated and managed through the writing of the diary. That diaries can have a therapeutic purpose for writers under mental strain is axiomatic and this article examines a variety of palliative strategies both deliberate and involuntary invoked through the writing process. In so doing, the article will survey the incidence and causes of civilian mental distress on the home front over the period, an area of inquiry which, other than recent work into the psychological impact of Allied bombing of civilians, has been largely neglected in recent work foregrounding and valorising the historical importance of life-writing sources in the field of Occupation studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Court of Appeal in England and Wales held (R. v. Sardar, 2012) there had been no exceptional circumstances that justified a jury retiring with a transcript of the complainant's interview. This paper reports an investigation into the impact multiple evidence forms and use of a judicial warning has on juror evaluations of a witness. The warning focuses juror attention on placing disproportionate weight on the evidence as opposed to their general impression of it. Sixty jury-eligible participants were presented with witness evidence in transcript, video, or transcript plus video format. Half the participants in each condition received the warning. All mock jurors completed a questionnaire which assessed perceptions of witness and task. Outcomes showed that transcript plus video evidence, when accompanied by a warning, did impact on mock jurors’ global assessments of the witness. The warning made the task less clear for jurors and, in the video condition, led to higher ratings of how satisfactory and reliable the witness was. Findings support the provision of a judicial warning to jurors and show some initial support for judiciary opposition to the provision of an additional transcriptonlywhen jurors are asked to make the more usual global witness assessments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jurors often have difficulty evaluating eyewitness testimony. Counterfactual thinking is a type of mental simulation that informs causal inference. Encouraging jurors to think counterfactually about eyewitness factors may sensitize them to these factors' causal influence on eyewitness identification and testimony accuracy, improving their overall judgments (such as verdicts). One hundred twenty-one undergraduate participants were randomly assigned to read a scenario containing either high-quality or low-quality eyewitness evidence and to evaluate eyewitness factors adopting either their default or a counterfactual mindset via a question-order manipulation. Logistic regressions and analyses of variance revealed that a counterfactual mindset lowered perceptions of eyewitness accuracy and guilty verdicts (compared with the default mindset) when the evidence was poor; a counterfactual mindset, however, did not increase perceptions of accuracy and guilty verdicts when evidence was strong. We discuss possible mechanisms underlying these effects and identify several potential avenues for future research.Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In most of the sexual offence cases, the victim's testimony is a pivotal part of the evidence presented in the court. In South Africa, the admissibility of a child's evidence in criminal cases is based on the presiding officer finding the child competent to testify. This is mostly determined through cursory voir dire examinations, often using inappropriate and inconsistent procedures. Developmental and international research on the competency examinations highlights concerns regarding current practices and provides guidelines on appropriate ways to assess the competency of the child-witness (Klemfuss & Ceci, 2012). While the assessment of child-witnesses and their competency is widely practiced in South Africa, there is no standard framework or uniform procedures that guide this assessment. This qualitative research relied on the principles of grounded theory to explore existing child-witness-competency-assessment procedures with a selected group of psycho-legal practitioners in South Africa. The research documented the absence of a formal protocol for child-witness-competency testing and highlighted the lack of minimum standards. A qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews with psychologists and data obtained from supportive documentation provided information about psychological perceptions, and age- and developmentally appropriate, psychological procedures for child-witness-competency-examinations. Current procedures were analysed to develop a framework that offers a multidimensional assessment approach. This framework promotes the adoption of a uniform psycho-legal approach to child-witness-competency-assessment in South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the meanings and motivations of self-injury practices as disclosed in interviews with a small group of female former prisoners in England. In considering their testimonies through a feminist perspective, I seek to illuminate aspects of their experiences of imprisonment that go beyond the ‘pains of imprisonment’ literature. Specifically, I examine their accounts of self-injury with a focus on the embodied aspects of their experiences. In so doing, I highlight the materiality of the emotional harms of their prison experiences. I suggest that the pains of imprisonment are still very much inscribed on and expressed through the prisoner’s body. This paper advances a more theoretically situated, interdisciplinary critique of punishment drawn from medical-sociological, phenomenological and feminist scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To examine legal professionals’ knowledge of a wide range of factors that affect eyewitness accuracy in China. Methods: A total of 812 participants, including 210 judges, 244 prosecutors, 202 police officers, and 156 defense attorneys, were asked to respond to 12 statements about eyewitness testimony and 3 basic demographic questions (i.e., gender, age, and prior experience). Results: Although the judges and the defense attorneys had a somewhat higher number of correct responses than the other two groups, all groups showed limited knowledge of eyewitness testimony. In addition, the participants’ responses to only four items (i.e., weapon focus, attitude and expectations, child suggestibility, and the impact of stress) were roughly unanimous within the four legal professional groups. Legal professionals’ gender showed no significant correlations with their knowledge of eyewitness testimony. Prior experiences were significantly and negatively correlated with the item on the knowledge of forgetting curve among judges but positively correlated with two items (i.e., attitudes and exposure time) among defense attorneys and with 4 statements (i.e., the knowledge of attitudes and expectations, impact of stress, child witness accuracy, and exposure time) among prosecutors. Conclusions: The findings suggest that knowledge of the factors that influence eyewitness accuracy must be more effectively communicated to legal professionals in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent public testimony concerning sexual abuse on the part of celebrities raises the question of what happens to memories when they enter the public domain. The present paper reviews research on the effects of communication on memory and examines how the context of this communication affects its influence on memory, both in the short and long term. Specifically, we discuss how communication with the self, a small group, and the larger public affects the content and availability of different elements of both emotional and more mundane memories, in the short term and in the long term. Evidence suggests that, although forgetting is rapid in the first few years, it then levels off. Although this pattern would suggest that the effects conversational influences have on memory may be limited to the first few years, the present paper argues that the pattern will vary as the source changes.Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined whether a demonstrative (visual aid) could increase the ability of opposing expert testimony to sensitize jurors to variations in the validity of scientific evidence. Undergraduates (N = 246) viewed a videotaped reenactment of an armed robbery trial with an eyewitness identification as the key evidence. Both the validity of the defense expert’s study on eyewitness identification and the type of opposing expert testimony varied. Although participants were sensitive to the scientific quality of the defense expert’s testimony when an opposing expert addressed the defense expert’s study, regardless of the presence of a demonstrative, jurors’ verdicts were sensitive only when the opposing expert used a demonstrative to communicate about validity issues. Thus, an opposing expert who addresses a defense expert’s study with or without a demonstrative may be sufficient to improve jurors’ understanding of scientific evidence, but the addition of a demonstrative is necessary to translate this knowledge into verdict decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines a false start in the application of psychology to the law. While there had been expert testimony from physicians in criminal and civil cases in America since the nineteenth century, forensic psychology first emerged in the early twentieth century. Following European traditions of experimental psychology, Hugo Münsterberg applied the nascent science of memory research to the assessment of witness credibility. A brilliant and popular Harvard professor, Münsterberg touted his technique of word-association to determine truth. Forensic psychology's development was stalled by resistance from within legal authorities, including John Henry Wigmore, the leading expert on evidence. However, Münsterberg was a sensation in popular media. In this article, the authors examine early attempts to import experimental psychology into the courtroom and the arguments against them. Not only were Münsterberg's findings premature, they touched on a forbidden domain for witnesses: fact finding. While sincere, he learned that the determination of truth lay within the province of juries and judges, not psychologists. Thus, the application of psychology to the law was delayed. The authors review the lessons from Münsterberg's false start and comment on developments in the admissibility of scientific testimony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigated the influence of a sexual assault nurse examiner's (SANE's) testimony on mock juror perceptions of a child or adolescent victim of child sexual assault. Community members ( N = 252, 156 females) read a fictional criminal trial summary of a child sexual assault case in which the victim was 6 or 15 years old and the prosecution presented medical testimony from a SANE or a traditional registered nurse (RN), or did not present medical testimony. Mock jurors were more likely to render guilty verdicts when a SANE testified compared with the other two testimony conditions. In addition, pro-victim judgments (e.g., sympathy toward the victim) and negative defendant judgments (e.g., anger toward the defendant) mediated this relation. Finally, cognitive network representations of the case demonstrated that the RN and no-medical-testimony groups were similar and the SANE group was distinct from the other two conditions. We discuss these results in terms of the implications of SANE testimony in child sexual assault court cases. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the effects of support person presence on participants' perceptions of an alleged child sexual abuse victim and defendant. Two hundred jury-eligible community members (n = 100 males) viewed a DVD of an 11-year-old girl's simulated courtroom testimony either with or without a female support person seated next to her. Participants found the child victim to be less accurate and trustworthy, and the defendant to be less guilty and less likely to have sexually abused children, when the support person was present. Participants who viewed the female support person (n = 100) believed that she had probably coached and spent a great deal of time with the child victim before testifying. Female participants perceived the child to be more accurate, and the defendant to be more guilty and likely to have sexually abused children, than male participants. The degree to which the child victim's testimonial behavior violated participants' expectancies mediated the negative relation between support person presence and child victim accuracy and trustworthiness. Support person presence was positively associated with expectancy violation, which in turn was negatively associated with child victim accuracy and trustworthiness. These preliminary findings suggest that seating a support person next to an alleged child victim in court may have the unintended effect of decreasing the child's perceived credibility and, if replicated, suggest that alternative seating arrangements might be necessary. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lawyers will frequently use complex-question forms, such as multifaceted questions (single questions that contain both a true and a false proposition), when cross-examining witnesses, and prior research has shown that use of such questions reduces testimonial accuracy. The present study extends this research by using a forced fabrication paradigm (Chrobak & Zaragoza, 2008) to assess how multifaceted questions might affect eyewitness suggestibility after exposure to misleading post-event information. Consistent with prior studies, the use of multifaceted questions led to lower accuracy than simple questions. The novel finding was that multifaceted questions caused larger impairments in performance among fabrication participants (who had earlier been suggestively interviewed), than in control participants (who had not). We also provide preliminary evidence that the impairment caused by multifaceted questions is due to both (a) having to consider two propositions simultaneously, and (b) the shift in question focus from the fabricated event to a true event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a "testimonial triangle" legal principle which was developed by American law professor Laurence Tribe, and it mentions behavioral science research involving psychological distance, jurors, and a rule barring hearsay evidence at U.S. trials. Juror competency and procedural justice are mentioned, along with decisional accuracy and British explorer Sir Walter Raleigh's trial in 1603 for high treason and conspiracy to overthrow King James I of England.

High emotional arousal associated with witnessing a crime promotes memory error. Police are trained to use open-ended questioning (i.e., Cognitive Interview) to guard against contaminating fragile witness memory, but do they follow this protocol? We investigated whether officers' belief about arousal's impact on crime scene memory influenced their questioning procedures. Officers read crime scenarios describing the witness/victim as either emotionally distraught or calm, and then they chose among open-ended and close-ended question options for witness interviews. Results showed that emotionally aroused witnesses were asked more closed questions by officers who believed arousal did not hurt memory, while officers who believed arousal negatively impacted memory accuracy asked more open-ended questions. This relationship was not influenced by police experience. Results suggest that regardless of training and empirical findings, beliefs about the arousal-memory relationship may guide the questioning technique that officers employ, potentially contaminating already vulnerable witness memory. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the role of Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation Syndrome (CSAAS) in helping children suffering from the effects of sexual abuse and explaining their reaction to their maltreatment. It mentions categories of reactions of sexually abused children including helplessness, entrapment and recantation. It presents a survey on the U.S. cases involving CSAAS evidence and explores the weaknesses of CSAAS testimony.

Ground rules, also called interview instructions, are included in investigative interviews with children around the world. These rules aim to manage the expectations of children who are typically unaccustomed to being questioned by adults who are naive to the children's experiences. Although analog research has examined the efficacy of ground rules instruction, a systematic analysis of children's ability to respond appropriately to each of the rules has not been reported. In the current study, we scored the accuracy of children's ( N = 501, 4 to 12 years) responses to 5 ground rules practice questions (e.g., "What is my dog's name?") and 2 questions that asked whether they would follow the rules, and then assigned inaccurate responses to 1 of several error categories. Few children answered every question correctly, but their performance on individual questions was encouraging. As expected, there were marked differences in children's understanding across ground rules questions (especially among the younger children), with "Don't guess" and "Tell the truth" rules being the easiest to comprehend. Together with evidence that ground rules instruction takes little time to deliver (typically 2 to 4 min) and is associated with improved accuracy in previous research, these findings support the use of ground rules in investigative interviews of children 4 years and older. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why are some young children consistently willing to believe what they are told even when it conflicts with first-hand experience? In this study, we investigated the possibility that this deference reflects an inability to inhibit a prepotent response. Over the course of several trials, 2.5- to 3.5-year-olds ( N = 58) heard an adult contradict their report of a simple event they had both witnessed, and children were asked to resolve this discrepancy. Those who repeatedly deferred to the adult's misleading testimony had more difficulty on an inhibitory control task involving spatial conflict than those who responded more skeptically. These results suggest that responding skeptically to testimony that conflicts with first-hand experience may be challenging for some young children because it requires inhibiting a normally appropriate bias to believe testimony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the influence of communicator (child victim) and perceiver (adult participant) characteristics on expectations about witnesses' emotional displays during testimony. In total, 191 adults were asked whether or not they expected child victims who were testifying about sexual abuse to display sadness, fear, anger, disgust, happiness, or a neutral demeanor, and how intensely the adults expected each emotion to be displayed. In describing the victims, child age (5 vs. 13 years old) and child gender (female vs. male) were factorially combined as within-subject factors. Results included that victim gender predicted expectations of fear, and victim age predicted expectations of anger and disgust. There was a significant interaction of victim age and victim gender for expectations of sadness. Of participants who expected multiple emotions, a combination of negative and neutral emotions was expected more from 13-year-old female victims than from 5-year-old female victims. Child victim empathy predicted ratings of how intensely sad and fearful the child victim would look. Implications of these findings for psychological research and the legal system are discussed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current experiment was designed to assess the mnemonic consequences of false denials and forced confabulations. Children (aged 6-8 and 10-12 years) and adults viewed a video and then their memory and belief about the event were tested. Participants were then divided into three groups. In the 'cued recall' condition, participants were asked to answer true- and false-event questions, but could choose not to respond if they did not know the answer. In the 'forced confabulation' group, participants received the same set of questions, but were forced to answer all of them. In the 'false denial' group, participants were instructed to falsely deny in response to each question. One week later, participants received a source memory test, and they had to provide memory and belief ratings once more. Forced confabulations resulted in false memories in the youngest group. Moreover, our analyses showed that repeated false denials led children and adults to be highly inclined to falsely deny that they had talked to the experimenter about certain presented details, when in fact they had done so. Furthermore, false denial and non-believed memory rates were more pronounced in younger than in older children and adults. Our results imply that denying experienced events is not a good strategy in an interviewing setting, as it adversely affects memory statements about the interview. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite wide variations in child witness behavior while on the stand, little research has focused on how that behavior influences jurors' perceptions of the child's credibility or the case itself. In the current study, the impact of a child's emotional displays on credibility judgments and verdict preferences was examined in jury-eligible college students and jurors released from jury duty. No significant differences emerged in perceptions or verdicts based on whether a child was shown as crying or not while participants read a transcript of the child's testimony. However, participants who rated the child as more emotional (regardless of whether the image showed a crying child) were more likely to render guilty verdicts, were more certain of guilt, and found the child more credible and the defendant less credible than participants who rated the child as less emotional. Also, when the child was perceived as low in emotion, older children were rated as less credible than younger children. The results have implications for understanding how children's emotional displays and jurors' perceptions of children's emotionality influence decisions in sexual abuse cases. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses Canadian trial lawyers' understanding of scientific evidence concerning the potential fallibility of eyewitness testimony as of 2014, focusing on the use of DNA evidence in courtrooms, as well as information about the judicial processes in places such as Canada and the U.S. Police line-up procedures, estimator variables, and Canada's justice system are mentioned. Other topics include witness reliability, system variables, and the legal aspects of mug shots.

Giving confirming feedback to mistaken eyewitnesses has robust distorting effects on their retrospective judgments (e.g., how certain they were, their view, etc.). Does feedback harm evaluators' abilities to discriminate between accurate and mistaken identification testimony? Participant-witnesses to a simulated crime made accurate or mistaken identifications from a lineup and then received confirming feedback or no feedback. Each then gave videotaped testimony about their identification, and a new sample of participant-evaluators judged the accuracy and credibility of the testimonies. Among witnesses who were not given feedback, evaluators were significantly more likely to believe the testimony of accurate eyewitnesses than they were to believe the testimony of mistaken eyewitnesses, indicating significant discrimination. Among witnesses who were given confirming feedback, however, evaluators believed accurate and mistaken witnesses at nearly identical rates, indicating no ability to discriminate. Moreover, there was no evidence of overbelief in the absence of feedback whereas there was significant overbelief in the confirming feedback conditions. Results demonstrate that a simple comment following a witness' identification decision ("Good job, you got the suspect") can undermine fact-finders' abilities to discern whether the witness made an accurate or a mistaken identification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been acknowledged that females exhibit more smiling behaviors than males, but there has been little attention to this gender difference in the courtroom. Although both male and female witnesses exhibit smiling behaviors, there has been no research examining the subsequent effect of gender and smiling on witness credibility. This study used naturalistic observation to examine smiling behaviors and credibility in actual witnesses testifying in court. Raters assessed the smiling behaviors and credibility (as measured by the Witness Credibility Scale) of 32 male and female witnesses testifying in trials in a mid-sized Southern city. 'Credibility raters' rated the perceived likeability, trustworthiness, confidence, knowledge, and overall credibility of the witnesses using the Witness Credibility Scale. 'Smile raters' noted smiling frequency and types, including speaking/expressive and listening/receptive smiles. Gender was found to affect perceived trustworthiness ratings, in which male witnesses were seen as more trustworthy than female witnesses. No significant differences were found in the smiling frequency for male and female witnesses. However, the presence of smiling was found to contribute to perceived likeability of a witness. Smiling female witnesses were found to be more likeable than smiling male and non-smiling female witnesses. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the results of a survey of male and female psychologists with expert witness experience. The survey explored the roles of both expert witness gender and valence of the testimony to provide preliminary empirical data on whether gender in combination with the valence of testimony leads to perceived bias targeted towards female experts. The presence of such bias might diminish the credibility of the expert and subsequently the proffered testimony and, thus, undermine the legal system as effective fact-finder by leading to decision-making based on extra-legal factors. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the issues arise in relation to witnesses and victims of hate crime and response of criminal justice system (CJS) to a perceived deterioration in a witness's memory. It discusses institutional re-victimisation or institutional demands for recollection of victim's painful experiences to CJS officials of during the pre-trial and trial processes. Other topics include Crown Prosecution Service report on a racist hate crime, and the reliability of witness testimony.

The article discusses several rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court in cases such as Crawford v. Washington and Williams v. Illinois which deal with a defendant's right to confront and question the witnesses against him or her under the U.S. Constitution's Confrontation Clause as of March 2014. The reported role that a party's mental state plays in testimonial analysis is addressed, along with ambiguity and the reliability of hearsay statements. American criminal and common laws are examined.

The article discusses the capability of preschool children as witnesses in legal proceedings dealing with sexual abuse, focusing on psychological aspects that can influence the testimony of a child witness. Subjects discussed include suggestibility of children according to experimental research on preschool children, memory in children, and intellectual development. The author offers a credibility criteria to determine the difference between accounts of true and false events, such as space, time, and reproduction of conversations.

Witnesses are important and very frequent sources of evidence in criminal trial. The correct estimate the credibility of witnesses is of great significance. Therefore the judge must obtain some psychological knowledge. He must know some essential things about psychological processes and psychological features which are in relation to witness testimony. The author brings into focus such processes as. Memory, thinking, speech and emphasizes the speciality of those psychological processes by children. The author also point to some psychological features of children witnesses as suggestibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The susceptibility of eyewitnesses to verbal suggestion has been well documented, although little attention has been paid to the role of nonverbal communication in misinformation. Three experiments are reported; in each, participants watched footage of a crime scene before being questioned about what they had observed. In Experiments 1 and 2, an on-screen interviewer accompanied identically worded questions with gestures that either conveyed accurate information about the scene or conveyed false, misleading information. The misleading gestures significantly influenced recall, and participants' responses were consistent with the gestured in- formation. In Experiment 3, a live interview was conducted, and the gestural misinformation effect was found to be robust; participants were influenced by misleading gestures performed by the interviewer during questioning. These findings provide compelling evidence for the gestural misinformation effect, whereby subtle hand gestures can implant information and distort the testimony of eyewitnesses. The practical and legal implications of these findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

False sexual abuse allegations have spurred research on suggestibility, on the assumption that leading questions may produce false accusations. Most researchers, however, have not measured the likelihood that those who respond to suggestive questioning will take the next step and make a formal (false) accusation. The present study incorporates both aspects of abuse investigations: suggestibility (i.e., responsiveness to questions in a leading interview) and false accusations (i.e., signing a formal complaint against an innocent suspect). Participants ( N = 129) were observed in a laboratory session and then interviewed twice about their experiences by an interviewer who suggested that the laboratory assistant had behaved inappropriately. Although only 17% of the participants were suggestible, 39% agreed to sign the complaint. Suggestible participants were significantly more likely to make a false accusation than were non-suggestible participants. However, because of the low rate of suggestibility, most false accusations were made by non-suggestible participants. Implications for the legal system are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses anxiety among testification of children in legal proceedings as it harms children testimony and diverts justice. Topics discussed include application of methods to reduce child's anxiety by lawyers who interacts with them, participation of millions of child witnesses in the U.S. legal system for contributing in legal proceedings such as divorce, child protection and criminal proceedings and psychological health of children.

Previous studies conducted on adults and children found that closing the eyes while recalling an event increased memory accuracy for both free and cued recall. One possible explanation to this phenomenon is that eye closure increases the amount of cognitive resources devoted to the task reducing external stimulation, but it is still not clear whether the beneficial effect is only due to a better focus on the task or to a better encoding of the material leading to an advantage over time. In this study, we evaluated the effect of eye closure instruction on children memory accuracy for a short clip in an immediate and delayed recall. We observed that asking participants to close their eyes while performing a memory task helped them to remember more details and that this effect persisted after a time delay. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]