Interpreters in law enforcement contexts: Practices and experiences according to investigators

Interpreters play an important role in the criminal justice system, yet little is known about the way interpreters are used. This survey of U.S. law enforcement (N = 299) assessed practices and perceptions regarding interpreter use during interviews with nonnative English speakers. Investigators reported using colleagues more often than professional interpreters, using interpreters more often with suspects and in certain crimes (e.g., domestic violence), and that interpreters are usually at least partially informed about case facts prior to translating. Investigators responded to experimental vignettes, and results indicated they were more likely to seek and obtain interpreters when an interviewee has lived in the United States for fewer years; however, the language spoken and the interviewee's role (e.g., witness vs. suspect) did not affect decisions to request an interpreter. Several avenues for future experimental research are identified and discussed, including interpreting over the phone and interpreter susceptibility to biases.     

A Matter of Context: A Meta‐Analytic Investigation of the Relative Validity of Contextualized and Noncontextualized Personality Measures

The empirical evidence that has accumulated in support of the notion that personality is a valid predictor of employee performance is vast, yet debate on the matter continues. This study investigates frame‐of‐reference effects as they relate to the validity of self‐report measures of personality. Specifically, we compare the validities of general, noncontextualized personality measures and work‐specific, contextualized measures. The findings suggest that personality measures are a more valid predictor of performance when the scale items or instructions are framed specifically so as to reference work‐specific behaviors. We found that the validities for noncontextualized measures of personality ranged from .02 to .22, with a mean validity of .11. The validities for contextualized measures ranged from .14 to .30, with a mean of .24 . Additional moderator analyses were conducted in an effort to examine several alternate explanations for these validity differences. Specifically, we examined differences between the developmental purpose (general use vs. workplace use) and reliabilities of each type of personality measure. We also compared the validities from published studies to those from unpublished studies. Results suggest that these moderators did not have an impact on the validity differences between noncontextualized and contextualized measures.     

Blind(fold)ed by science: A constant target-heading angle is used in visual and nonvisual pursuit

Previous work investigating the strategies that observers use to intercept moving targets has shown that observers maintain a constant target-heading angle (CTHA) to achieve interception. Most of this work has concluded or indirectly assumed that vision is necessary to do this. We investigated whether blindfolded pursuers chasing a ball carrier holding a beeping football would utilize the same strategy that sighted observers use to chase a ball carrier. Results confirm that both blindfolded and sighted pursuers use a CTHA strategy in order to intercept targets, whether jogging or walking and irrespective of football experience and path and speed deviations of the ball carrier during the course of the pursuit. This work shows that the mechanisms involved in intercepting moving targets may be designed to use different sensory mechanisms in order to drive behavior that leads to the same end result. This has potential implications for the supramodal representation of motion perception in the human brain.     

Childhood Emotional Abuse and Young Adulthood Dating Violence: The Moderating Role of Stress Reactivity

Dating violence has been linked to past experiences of childhood emotional abuse; however, little research has explored how stress reactivity functions within interpersonal relationships to amplify or attenuate these associations. The present study investigated the moderating effects of cortisol stress reactivity on associations between retrospective self-reported childhood emotional abuse and later self-reported interpersonal violence in young adult dating relationships. The current sample consisted of 57 young adult heterosexual dating partners (46 females, 11 males) between the ages of 18 and 24. Salivary cortisol samples were collected before and after a stress task to measure stress reactivity. Moderation analyses were conducted through the PROCESS macro in SPSS version 22. The relation between childhood emotional abuse and dating violence varied depending on cortisol reactivity, such that the association between childhood emotional abuse and young adult dating violence was stronger for those who demonstrated low levels of cortisol reactivity. The association between childhood emotional abuse and dating violence was not significant for those who demonstrated high cortisol reactivity. Findings underscore the importance of studying physiological mechanisms that may confer risk in the relationship between child emotional abuse and later interpersonal consequences.     

Bidirectional Relations between Parenting Practices and Child Externalizing Behavior: A Cross-Lagged Panel Analysis in the Context of a Psychosocial Treatment and 3-Year Follow-up

In the current study, we examined longitudinal changes in, and bidirectional effects between, parenting practices and child behavior problems in the context of a psychosocial treatment and 3-year follow-up period. The sample comprised 139 parent–child dyads (child ages 6–11) who participated in a modular treatment protocol for early-onset ODD or CD. Parenting practices and child behavior problems were assessed at six time-points using multiple measures and multiple reporters. The data were analyzed using cross-lagged panel analyses. Results indicated robust temporal stabilities of parenting practices and child behavior problems, in the context of treatment-related improvements, but bidirectional effects between parenting practices and child behavior were less frequently detected. Our findings suggest that bidirectional effects are relatively smaller than the temporal stability of each construct for school-age children with ODD/CD and their parents, following a multi-modal clinical intervention that is directed at both parents and children. Implications for treatment and intervention are discussed.     

The dimensional structure of people's fears,threats, and concerns and their relationship with right‐wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation

Most theories addressing the topic have proposed that threat and fear underlie right‐wing authoritarianism (RWA), and many empirical findings have been consistent with this proposition. Important questions, however, remain unanswered, such as whether RWA is associated with fear and threat in general or only specific kinds of fear and threat. Theories of RWA generate markedly different predictions on this issue, particularly with respect to social or personal fears, and whether the association would also hold for the closely related construct of social dominance orientation (SDO). We investigated the issue by asking 463 undergraduate students to rate their feelings of fear, concern, and anxiety to a comprehensive 93‐item list of potential fears and threats, which were formulated as either personal or social. Exploratory factors analysis identified five distinct fear–threat factors: Harm to Self, Child, or Country; Personal and Relationship Failures; Environmental and Economic Fears; Political and Personal Uncertainties; and Threats to Ingroup. All the fear–threat factors were correlated with RWA, with the strongest correlations being for Threats to Ingroup, and with stronger effects for social than for personal fears. None of the fear factors correlated with SDO. These relationships were not affected by controlling for Social Desirability or Emotional Stability (EMS). When the intercorrelations between fear factors and EMS were controlled using ridge regression, only Threats to Ingroup predicted RWA. Structural equation modeling indicated good fit for a model in which low levels of EMS had a significant path to Threats to Ingroup, which in turn had a significant path to RWA, and EMS having a significant though weak indirect (fully mediated) inverse effect on RWA. Implications of these findings for theories of authoritarianism and future research are discussed.     

To see or not to see: effects of visual feedback on performance and intuitions of quarterbacks in American football

We investigated the ability of quarterbacks in American football to intercept a moving receiver with a football in occluded and normal viewing conditions, and whether they can accurately predict their own success. Quarterbacks were successful in almost 80% of the trials in the occlusion condition, statistically as successful as in the normal viewing condition. Quarterbacks' predictions of their own success accounted for little variance in actual success. We propose that quarterbacks may attempt to generate a constant target-heading angle between where the football is thrown and the receiver, which may explain the high success rate in the occlusion condition.     

Women’s Precollege Sports Participation, Enjoyment of Sports, and Self-esteem

This study tested a model that specifies that the psychosocial impact of women’s precollege sports participation depends on the quality of their sports experience, that is, on participants’ enjoyment of sports and the benefits derived from athletic pursuits. A sample of 245 college women (mean age?=?19.9 years) provided retrospective reports of their precollege sports involvement as well as assessments of their enjoyment of sports, perceived physical competence, body image, gender role orientation, and self-esteem. Consistent with past research, women students’ precollege sport participation was a modest predictor of their self-esteem in bivariate analyses. Follow-up analyses revealed that enjoyment of sports mediated the sports participation/self-esteem relationship and implied that female participants who find sports less enjoyable may be at risk of experiencing declining self-esteem. However, enjoyment of sports explained little unique variance in global self-esteem after we controlled for the influence of other sports-related benefits (e.g., improved physical competence). Implications for those who hope to help more girls reap psychosocial benefits from sporting activities are discussed.     

The visual perception of lines on the road

The present work demonstrates that observers grossly underestimate the length of lines parallel to their line of sight. In Experiment 1, observers, working from memory, estimated the length of a dashed line on the road to be 0.61 m. This result is consistent with observers' using an average visual angle converted to the physical length of visible lines on the road to estimate their length. In Experiment 2, observers gave verbal and matching estimates that significantly underestimated the length of a 3.05-m line on the ground that was parallel to their line of sight. In Experiment 3, observers significantly underestimated the length of dashed lines on the road while in a moving car. The results of Experiments 1 and 3 are described well by Euclidean geometry, whereas the tangle model that utilizes an increasing function of the visual angle to describe perceived extent best describes the results of Experiment 2.