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The current study evaluated the benefits of free-recall, cognitive load, and closed-ended questions on children's (ages 6 to 11; N = 147) true and false eyewitness disclosures. Children witnessed an experimenter find a stranger's wallet and were then asked to make a false denial, false accusation, true denial, or true accusation regarding an alleged theft. Overall, the free-recall question resulted in longer, more forthcoming and more detailed disclosures from older children and those who made a truthful accusation; however, children under the age of 9 and lie-tellers mostly relied on the closed-ended questions to discuss the theft. Although the cognitive load questions resulted in newly recalled information, there were no significant narrative differences between true and false statements on these questions. These findings suggest that forensic professionals should consider a child's developmental level, statement veracity, and disclosure-type (denial vs. accusation) when examining the efficacy of these commonly used questioning strategies.

Active interviewing approaches can exploit the verbal differences between truthtellers and liars, thus improving detecting deception. One such method is the Reality Interview (RI) aimed to facilitate recall from truthtellers, while increasing the difficulty for liars. This study investigated whether the RI could improve the diagnostic accuracy of the Reality Monitoring and the Criteria-Based Content Analysis. Liars and truthtellers were either asked to freely recall an event or interviewed with the RI. As hypothesized, the RI improved the discriminability of Reality Monitoring and Criteria-Based Content Analysis over Free Recall. Honest responses were longer, and the RI increased the word count difference between honest and false statements. However, after correcting for word count, results were no longer significant, showing its importance for deception detection. Nonetheless, the RI increased verbal differences between truthtellers and liars, demonstrating that using the RI with verbal credibility assessment tools is a powerful combination for investigative interviewing.

This paper extended Forced-Choice testing to the forensically relevant settings of jury selection and screening potential witnesses to mass crimes. These new applications were made possible by changing the interpretive approach from the "Worse-than-chance" model to the "Differentthan-chance" model. The jury selection sample responded either honestly or deceptively regarding their knowledge regarding a true crime from the media. The witness sample responded honestly or deceptively regarding a mock bank robbery. FC testing made it possible to determine whether each participant was responding honestly rather than hiding or faking their knowledge of the target event. Overall, approximately 93% of participants were accurately classified, with approximately 31% improvement as a result of the Different-than-Chance model rather than the Worse-than-Chance model. The Different-than-Chance model should replace the Worse-than-Chance model for situations involving an episodic memory, and provides a more sensitive and specific mechanism for evaluating statements and informing decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigators are continually faced with the task of detecting deception. Assessment Criteria Indicative of Deception (ACID) is a system of interviewing and credibility assessment that maximizes verbal cues to detect deception, and teaches content analysis that highlights attempts to withhold, distort, or manipulate information. The ACID technique has been successful in discriminating honest from deceptive statements when credibility determinations are made either by statistical methods or trained raters. Unfortunately, the training has required several hours and application has required the time-consuming process of transcription. The current study demonstrates the utility of ACID following a brief training, and compares the credibility ratings made from analysis of transcripts to the credibility ratings made from the analysis of audio recordings. Twenty-nine university undergraduate and graduate students read or listened to a series of eight transcripts. Raters were provided with accounts before training and 4 accounts after training. Prior to training, raters performed at 55% accuracy. Following training, raters performed at 71% accuracy. Additionally, there was an untrained control group that performed at 53% accuracy. Of note, the post-training performance was identical for accounts presented in written and audio formats. In sum, the ACID technique was reliable, valid, easy to train, and showed that accurate decisions can be made from simple audio recordings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a need within the criminal justice systems of many countries to create a valid and applicable system of investigative interviewing and credibility assessment. The present study assesses the general validity one such system, called Assessment Criteria Indicative of Deception (ACID). ACID comprises interviewing strategies that facilitate the detection of deception and content criteria that highlight differences in verbal behavior. Sixty university undergraduates performed a staged theft under time pressure and with incentives designed to increase external validity. The participants were interviewed and assessed using the ACID procedure. Half of them were instructed to answer honestly and the other half to deny his/her participation in the theft. Results showed that honest statements were longer, more vividly detailed, and more spontaneously structured than deceptive statements. Also, the addition of affective details as a dependent measure significantly improved the ACID system. Overall, 48 of 60 statements were accurately classified (26 of 30 honest statements and 22 of 30 deceptive statements). The ACID procedure was effective and benefited from the addition of affective details. The strengths and weaknesses of this study are discussed in light of basic research into deception and potential forensic application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]