The inner witness

The inner witness is a mechanism that develops in response to a reasonable experience of infantile helplessness, the resulting maternal impingement and the presence of a sufficient experience of a third. Being crucial to the subject's capacity to shift between the first person and the third person of experience, it also has an essential role in coping with trauma. Three types of testimonial narrative are differentiated in terms of the presence of the inner witness in their syntax. The first mode is one in which the inner witness is accessible, enabling the imaginary shift between the voice of the victim and the voice of the witness. The second mode, which remains a 'first-person' mode of report, preserves and enacts the traumatic memories and the traumatic features. The third, psychotic mode attacks both the first and the third person, separating the subject from both his memories and his sense of selfhood. This mode can evolve as a reaction to an adult massive trauma, but is more likely to emerge as a result of early traumatization. The above ideas and their implications for recovery are illustrated by a case study and through a reading of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot.     

Empathy and the expert witness

This paper argues that the expert witness who offers empathic testimony may significantly assist the trial lawyer in defending certain personal injury cases. The author considers his own congenital deformity from a subjective and objective analysis of experience. He then uses this deformity and the analysis to illustrate empathic testimony. A courtroom example is given. The conclusion argues the importance of permitting the experience of psychic trauma to speak for itself. It is also concluded that such experience and its analysis cannot be easily refuted as psychological projection. Trial lawyers could find the use of empathic testimony and its analysis of experience an effective tactic.     

On the witness stand:

Abstract

The family therapist is frequently called upon to testify as an expert witness. For many family therapists, the courtroom is an unfamiliar environment with different ground rules and basic assumptions. Testifying can be a difficult experience as the mental health professional faces different situational role demands than those encountered in usual therapeutic settings. If the family therapist can transfer to the court context the art of influencing interpersonal situations, the effectiveness of his/her testimony will be enhanced. This paper describes predictable legal behaviors and suggests to the family therapist strategic responses to improve skills as an expert witness.     

亲历伪气功

伪气功的起源与吕炳奎 话说前北戴河气功疗养院首任院长刘贵珍,在五十年代将古人流传下来的吐呐、导引、静坐养生等诸多锻炼方法统一命名为气功,上报给卫生部并得到卫生部表彰,将气功锻炼推广到全国后,曾经掀起了第一次全国性群众学练气功的热潮。然而,好景不     

Rapport-building: Chat versus in-person witness interviews

Tactics recommended for rapport-building consist of verbal (e.g., finding common ground or shared experiences) and non-verbal (e.g., affirmations, displaying empathy) behaviours. Most of the research on rapport, however, has examined it in in-person contexts, where both verbal and non-verbal behaviours are present. In this study, we were interested in the effectiveness of rapport-building when conducting online witness interviews via chat, which de-emphasises the use non-verbal rapport behaviours, compared to traditional in-person interviews. Participants (N = 131) experienced a virtual reality (VR) scenario depicting a mock crime and were interviewed either in person or online via the chat function in Skype. Participants perceived rapport more positively when interviewed in person for three measures: attentiveness, trust and respect and expertise. Two other measures, cultural similarity and connected flow, were not perceived differently across interview medium. Participants interviewed online via chat disclosed similar amounts of crime-related information and were just as accurate as participants interviewed in person. We found that in-person interviews yielded better rapport ratings than interviews via chat but were equally productive in terms of the quality of information obtained, as measured by crime-related details and accuracy. If witnesses are to be interviewed via chat, investigators must carefully consider how to compensate for the lack of those non-verbal rapport tactics that influence witnesses' perceptions of attentiveness, trust/respect and investigator's expertise.     

Non‐blind lineup administration biases administrators' interpretations of ambiguous witness statements and their perceptions of the witness

Administering lineups “blind”—whereby the administrator does not know the identity of the suspect—is considered part of best practices for lineups. The current study tests whether non‐blind lineup administrators would evaluate ambiguous eyewitness statements, and the witness himself or herself, in a manner consistent with their beliefs. College students (n = 219) were told the identity of the suspect or not before administering a lineup to a confederate‐witness who made an ambiguous response (e.g., “it could be #3 but I'm not sure”). When ambiguous witness statements matched administrators' beliefs regarding the suspect (compared with when they mismatched administrators' beliefs, or administrators had no belief), administrators (a) were significantly more likely to record the statement as an identification (as opposed to a “not sure” response); (b) were significantly less likely to make statements that might lead the witness away from the suspect; and (c) evaluated the witness's viewing conditions significantly more positively.     

The influence of lawyers' questions on witness accuracy,confidence, and reaction times and on mock jurors' interpretation of witness accuracy

Two studies demonstrate the influence of lawyers' complex questions on mock‐witness accuracy, confidence, and reaction times and on the interpretation of witness accuracy by mock jurors. In study one, 32 mock witnesses were shown a short film and then questioned either with lawyers' complex questions or simple alternatives. In Study 2, 20 mock jurors viewed video footage of the mock witnesses assigned to each of the two previous conditions and were asked to rate their confidence in the witnesses' answers. The findings of the two studies indicated that lawyers' use of confusing questions reduce not only accuracy but also speed of response and both witnesses' and jurors' ability to determine accuracy. The implication of these findings is straightforward, lawyers should ask simple questions wherever possible. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Calibration trumps confidence as a basis for witness credibility

Confident witnesses are deemed more credible than unconfident ones, and accurate witnesses are deemed more credible than inaccurate ones. But are those effects independent? Two experiments show that errors in testimony damage the overall credibility of witnesses who were confident about the erroneous testimony more than that of witnesses who were not confident about it. Furthermore, after making an error, less confident witnesses may appear more credible than more confident ones. Our interpretation of these results is that people make inferences about source calibration when evaluating testimony and other social communication.     

关于证人证词可靠性的研究

证人的错误证词是导致错误判案的重要原因,因此如何鉴定证人证词的可靠性,从中去伪存真,对司法实践具有非常重大的意义。为此本文从情境、个体心理、社会心理三个方面分析影响成年证人证词可靠性的因素,并在此基础上探究应该采取何种措施来提高证词的可靠性与准确性。     

The role of human memory processes in witness reporting

Obtaining information, from witnesses, about a crime is a key element inits investigation. As the quality and quantity of that information may becritical the quality of the interview is very important. This paper reviewsdevelopments in research into interviewing skills and describes researchbeing undertaken, with detectives, in The Netherlands.     

A comfortable witness is a good witness: rapport‐building and susceptibility to misinformation in an investigative mock‐crime interview

Major investigative interviewing protocols such as the Cognitive Interview recommend that investigators build rapport with cooperative adult witnesses at the beginning of a police interview. Although research substantiates the benefits of rapport‐building on the accuracy of child witness reports, few studies have examined whether similar benefits apply to adult witnesses. The present study investigated whether verbal rapport‐building techniques increase adult witness report accuracy and decrease their susceptibility to post‐event misinformation. One‐hundred eleven college adults viewed a videotaped mock‐crime, received post‐event misinformation (or correct information) about the crime, and were subsequently interviewed by a research assistant who built rapport (or did not build rapport) before recalling the mock‐crime. Results indicated that rapport‐building increased the quality of witness recall by decreasing the percentage of inaccurate and misinformation reported, particularly in response to open‐ended questions. We discuss implications and recommendations for law enforcement. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Co‐witness feedback in line‐ups

The aim of the current study was to establish whether feedback from a co‐witness concerning their choice of suspect could influence an individual witness' certainty and other testimony‐relevant judgements. Eighty‐two university students and members of the general public viewed a film of a staged mugging in pairs and then made an identification of who they thought was the suspect from a culprit‐absent line‐up (i.e. identification parade). The participants were then required to tell their partner whom they had identified and to fill out a questionnaire with testimony‐relevant questions (e.g. How good a view did you get of the person in the line‐up?). When the pairs of participants agreed on their choice of suspect, their scores on the testimony‐relevant questions tended to be higher than when the pairs did not agree. This shows that co‐witnesses can influence each others' memory reports when giving each other feedback after the identification process. The implications of these findings are discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The school psychologist as expert witness in due process hearings

As a consequence of the Consent Agreement reached between the Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Children and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, school of psychologists are finding themselves increasingly in the role of expert witness in due process hearings. The paper identifies a number of problems regarding the witness behavior of psychologists in these hearings and proposes some recommendations and resolutions.