Science‐based interviewing: Information elicitation

This article describes an ethical and effective science‐based model of interviewing. An initial planning phase assists the investigative team in separating facts from inferences, decreases the likelihood of errors based on cognitive biases, and prompts careful preparation of the environment. The interview begins with an explanation of why the subject is being questioned. The interviewer then metaphorically hands the interview over to the subject, making him the talker and the interviewer the listener. The interviewer engages in active listening, soliciting as much information from the subject as possible by deploying tactics that enhance memory based on science, including elements of the cognitive interview. Cues to deception are found in the details of the story, rather than in signs of anxiety or nonverbal behaviours, and by deploying Strategic Use of Evidence. This model has been shown to increase cooperation, decrease resistance, and provoke useful information in real‐world criminal interviews.     

Psychodynamische Diagnostik

The paper describes the development and objectives of psychoanalytic diagnostics. It shows that one of the key tasks of psychoanalytic/psychodynamic interviews is to initiate the doctor-patient relationship and that the patient’s motivation for treatment is to be examined and promoted in the interview. Different sources of information for the interview are then described; following a presentation of various systematic approaches of psychodynamic diagnostics, the principles of biographic history-taking are also explained. Modern psychodynamic diagnostics provides complex access to the patient, covering both elements of open interviewing and more exploratory approaches. Options for integrating these various methodological approaches are highlighted. Finally, more recent approaches in psychodynamic diagnostics that have a stronger relation to treatment planning are presented. These include the Structural Interview developed by Kernberg and Operationalised Psychodynamic Diagnostics (OPD).     

Effects of information type on children’s interrogative suggestibility: is Theory-of-Mind involved?

This research was aimed at learning more about the different psychological mechanisms underlying children’s suggestibility to leading questions, on the one hand, and children’s suggestibility to negative feedback, on the other, by distinguishing between interview questions concerning different types of information. Results showed that, unlike the developmental pattern of children’s suggestibility to leading questions, the developmental pattern of children’s suggestibility to negative feedback differed depending on whether the interview questions concerned external facts (physical states and events) or internal facts (mental states and events). This difference was not manifested in response to questions concerning central versus peripheral facts. Results are interpreted in terms of the hypothesis that children’s suggestibility to negative feedback is differently affected by “Theory-of-Mind” abilities than children’s suggestibility to leading questions. Further research is needed in order to test this hypothesis.     

Systems for multivariate monitoring of behavioral status over time

Decision-theoretic criteria are presented for optimizing the information gathered from a series of interviews over time. It is shown that the optimum interviewing strategy depends strongly on assumptions about the covariation of behavior over time. Standard interviewing strategies, including the major-problem/target-complaints approach, are optimal only under extreme assumptions about behavior. An interviewing strategy based on dynamic programming is presented that will provide optimal information return from a series of interviews under assumptions that are realistic for mental health applications. A system using this approach can tailor its interviewing strategy to adapt to differences in interview content, item importance, and individual response patterns, selecting the optimally informative questions to ask each subject at each point in time. Simulation results show that this approach achieves a 34% reduction in the false negatives obtained with the major-problem/target-complaints method, and, depending on the acceptable error rate, a reduction of 47 % or more in the questions that are needed in standard interviewing.     

Reducing Suggestibility in Child Witness Interviews

This study set out to test the prediction that a Cognitive Interview may increase resistance to subsequent misleading suggestions in child witness interviews. The misleading information was presented in the form of questions both prior to, and after, a cognitive or structured interview to 8- and 9-year-old witnesses to a video-taped event. Use of the cognitive interview resulted in more correct responses to post-interview questions than did the structured interview even though there was not quite a significant effect of the cognitive interview on information recalled during the actual interview. On the basis of their interview performance, the children were classified as ‘intruders’ or ‘non-intruders’ (i.e. those children who intruded pre-interview misleading items into the subsequent interview and those who did not). The ‘non-intruders’ made significantly fewer errors on the post-interview questions, indicating lower vulnerability to misleading information. Moreover, those children who selected the ‘don't know’ option made fewer errors in the interview and were more accurate in their responses. Theoretical and practical implications of the data are discussed in the context of group differences in vulnerability to suggestion and techniques for increasing resistance to suggestion.     

The flawed interview of a psychopathic killer: what went wrong?

The flawed interview of convicted killer Christopher Porco illustrates what occurs when a suspect's psychopathic traits are not considered in formulating an interview strategy. Specific areas of the dialogue between Christopher Porco and law enforcement demonstrates that traditional methods of interviewing may not produce a confession or valuable information when it comes to psychopathic suspects. Although the traditional goal of an interview is to obtain a confession or valuable information, law enforcement will have to display flexibility in the interview process by implementing alternative interview strategies and redefining what a successful interview is composed of when these suspects are unwilling to confess to their crimes. Failure to remain flexible, as displayed in the Christopher Porco case, which yielded neither a confession nor valuable information, can jeopardise the strength of a homicide case that ultimately may go to trial. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A computer interview language: Programming the on-line interactive computer

Seven computer interview and two disk file commands are executed by a computer program to display multiple-choice questions on a CRT video screen, to record clients’ answers, and to branch to various sets of questions. The program interpreting these commands uses little computer memory and does not require change each time the interview is altered or expanded. It can be written in almost any general-purpose programming language.     

Data,Dreams, and Drives: Interpersonal and Relational Innovations in Perspective

My fundamental approach is to first explore the most concrete understanding of any clinical phenomenon. Only after this consideration of the concrete do I go on to consider metaphoric or symbolic meanings. I assume there are specific facts to be discovered about our patients and that those facts are significant in the patient’s psychology. With patients experiencing panic attacks, a detailed interview may reveal a life situation in which the patient should be afraid but does not connect the danger with the symptom. With dreams, this approach endorses a combined intersubjective and objective approach, searching for how a dream may depict a real problematic situation for the dreamer that is being dissociated. Finally, disagreeing with Greenberg and Mitchell that combined drive-relational models do not work, I propose a model of multiple drives that can each be connected with different self-states.     

Methods and aims of investigative interviewing of adult witnesses: An analysis of professional practices

Eyewitnesses provide crucial evidence for the investigation of criminal cases. We analysed professional police interviewers’ behaviour by conducting a literature review. Our results indicate that the interviewing techniques used by untrained and trained investigators are predominantly inappropriate and harmful to memory recall. The way investigators curtail and select witnesses’ responses suggests that they look for specific information. As a subsequent step, we analysed investigative interviewing in terms of professional objectives, identifying the types of information that the police inquire about during the interview. Based on our results, we conclude future research should perform a fine-grained analysis of professional interviewing procedures with the aim of producing effective interviewing techniques that meet investigators’ real-world objectives.     

New approaches to the design of computerized interviewing and testing systems

Most computer interviewing and testing systems have adopted paper-and-pencil approaches to information gathering with little modification. However, computer technology offers two fundamental advantages over paper-and-pencil technology for psychological information gathering: (1) A computer can record ancillary data such as latencies and pressure on response keys during an interviewing session, and (2) A computer can react adaptively to special events as these arise during a session. Ways to capitalize on these advantages are outlined. A pilot study of interviewee behavior during a computer problem-screening interview is described, and the implications of the results for future research in the area are discussed. Passive and active computer testing systems occupy positions on a continuum between paper-based psychological testing and the flexible, but less well controlled, technology represented by the human. With its unique capabilities, computer technology has a special role to play in the future of psychological measurement.     

Hypnotic interviewing: the best way to interview eyewitnesses?

It has been suggested that hypnosis techniques may have the potential to enhance eyewitness memory in forensic investigations. However, laboratory research shows that increases in recall with hypnosis techniques are often associated with decreases in accuracy, false confidence in incorrect information, and increased suggestibility to leading questions and misleading post-event information. These problems limit the usefulness of hypnosis as an interviewing procedure. However, in practical investigations, many factors associated with hypnosis, apart from the hypnotic induction itself, might lead to memory enhancement compared with standard police interviews. For example, hypnotic interviewers, because of their psychological, clinical, and interpersonal skills, may be better interviewers than police officers. They may use effective interviewing strategies such as those associated with the “cognitive interview”; a procedure which has the potential to enhance recall by approximately 35% without the problems of memory distortion associated with hypnosis. It is concluded, therefore, that a cognitive interview procedure should be used in preference to hypnosis. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Collective interviewing: A transactive memory approach towards identifying signs of truthfulness

Group interviewing has been neglected in the deception literature, yet it coincides with recent collective memory research. The present experiment applied the transactive memory theory to a collective interviewing situation and explored whether signs of truthfulness emerged through measuring joint memory recall. Truth-tellers were real couples who had been in a relationship for at least one year and cohabiting. Lying pairs were friends who pretended to be in a relationship for at least one year and cohabiting. All couples were interviewed in their pairs about their ‘real’ or ‘fictitious’ relationships. It was found that truth-telling pairs posed questions to one another, provided cues to one another, handed over remembering responsibility, and finished each others’ sentences significantly more than lying pairs, supporting the idea that real couples have a transactive memory system, unlike pretending couples. Implications for a collective interview approach that considers memory within deception detection are discussed.     

Explaining Underrepresentation: A Theory of Precluded Interest

What processes best explain women’s underrepresentation in science, math, and engineering fields in the U.S.? Do they also explain men’s underrepresentation in the humanities? Two survey studies across two U.S. West Coast universities (N?=?62; N?=?614) addressed these questions in the context of two fields: one male-dominated (computer science) and the other female-dominated (English). Among a set of social predictors—including perceived similarity to the people in the field, social identity threats, and expectations of success—the best mediator of women’s lower interest in computer science and men’s lower interest in English was perceived similarity. Thus, changing students’ social perceptions of how they relate to those in the field may help to diversify academic fields.     

RELATIVISM AND NORMATIVE NONREALISM: BASING MORALITY ON RATIONALITY

Normative nonrealism denies (a) that some things are good or bad or right or wrong independently of facts about the attitudes of moral agents, and (b) that attitude-independent normative facts determine what is rational. An influential nonrealist approach to rationality comes from Richard Brandt's account of rationality in terms of “full information.” Using Brandt's account as illustrative, this paper identifies a serious problem for nonrealist normative theories based on theories of rationality. The paper argues that nonrealist accounts of rationality that oppose relativism cannot successfully handle the most serious threat from relativists: namely, a threat from a ‘Why care?’ open-question argument that stems from the question why one should care about being rational in a certain respect or sense. The paper identifies the bearing of ‘Why care?’ questions on the conflict between internalism and externalism regarding practical reasons. The main lesson is that ‘Why care?’ questions wreak havoc for nonrelativist nonrealist approaches to rationality and reason-based morality.     

Timing moderates the effects of repeated suggestive interviewing on children's eyewitness memory

The relative role of the timing and repetition of misinformation on the accuracy of children's recall was examined in two experiments. Kindergarten children participated in a magic show and about 40 days later had a memory test. Between the magic show and the memory test, the children were suggestively interviewed either one time in a relatively ‘early’ interview (temporally closer to the magic show than the memory test) or a relatively ‘late’ interview (closer to the memory test than the magic show), or in both suggestive interviews. The timing of the suggestive interviewing was manipulated so that the interview was temporally distant from the event or memory test or temporally close to the event or memory test. Repeated interviewing heightened misinformation effects only when the children received the two interview sessions temporally close to the event and memory test. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Qualitative Research in Marriage and Family Therapy: Who is in the Interview?

Qualitative interviews are a rich means of gathering information from families. The qualitative interviewer has a choice of interviewing individual family members, multiple family members at the same time, or a combination. The configuration of interviewees is a choice guided by the epistemology of the researcher, research aims, and questions. This article reviews the literature on interviewing different configurations of family members. A content analysis was conducted on articles in the marriage and family therapy literature from 1990 to 2005. Over half of the articles were conducted with individual family members separate from their families. This finding is discussed in the context of the decision regarding whom to interview.     

The relationships between child and forensic interviewer behaviours and individual differences in interviews about a medical examination

This study examined the interviewing process between professional forensic interviewers and their “mock” child witness. Fifty-eight preschool children participated in a medical examination, and were later interviewed by an experienced forensic interviewer (n = 15) about this event. Interviews were coded with mutually exclusive and exhaustive coding schemes that captured interviewers and child behaviours in a temporally organized manner. To evaluate the relationship between interviewers' and children's individual differences measured prior to the interview and the interview outcomes (i.e., questions asked, child interview behaviour), all child participants were tested with relevant cognitive and behavioural measures, and all adult interviewers were tested with personality measures. Results showed that leading questions were more often followed by simple assents and denial than expected. Interviewers did not remain consistent from question to subsequent question, but children's response type was predictable from response to subsequent response. Children's and adults' individual differences measured prior to the interview predicted some of the adults' interviewing behaviours and some of children's own response behaviours during the interview. Mediation modelling evinced that more self-controlled interviewers posed more recommended questions and elicited more assents with details from the children. We discuss the results in relation to established views of recommended interview practice and to theories of suggestibility.     

干扰任务对说谎影响的研究

摘要:本文将干扰任务对记忆的影响同测谎结合起来,试图运用这一方法来对求职者的真实学历和虚假学历进行区分。实验采用模拟面试的方式,对被试在有或无干扰任务条件下进行两次提问,结果发现,四种任务条件对被试真实经历和虚假经历都具有区分度,其中双双条件的区分度是最高的。并且,被试在双双任务条件下虚假经历的得分显著低于其他三种任务条件。     

Development of Standard Anchors for Scoring Generic Past-Behaviour Questions in Structured Interviews

A structured interviewing system was developed which included an item bank of pre-written past-behaviour questions. Scoring anchors for each of 168 questions in the item bank were created from analysis of protocols from individual assessments. A concurrent validation study was conducted, focusing on the job of highway patrol sergeant. Job knowledge experts used a job analysis tool to select a subset of twelve questions from the item bank. Panel interviews were conducted with 32 highway patrol sergeants as subjects. Average inter-rater reliability was 0.65 and interview validity was 0.42 for group consensus scores and 0.44 for panel average scores. Discussion focused on practical issues affecting the interviewing system.