Family therapists as front line mental health providers in war-affected regions: using reflecting teams, scaling questions, and family members in a hospital in Central Africa

This paper will illustrate the utilization of systemic family therapy services inside a hospital in a war-affected region of the Central African Republic. Through an international non-governmental organization (NGO), the author, a family therapist, provided counselling supervision and services to hospital staff and patients in an area of open conflict in the northern region of the country. In circumstances of chronic insecurity fuelled by both government and rebel forces, families displaced in this region are vulnerable to numerous health conditions and social problems. Family therapy techniques and ideas were used to work with individuals, couples and families presenting with health and social problems resulting from HIV-TB, infections, chronic malnutrition, acute poisoning and beliefs about sorcery. Case examples illustrate the systems consultation model used with the mental health team in order to expand and promote the sustainability of patient mental healthcare in this underserved region.     

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.     

The effect of long‐term training on police officers' use of open and closed questions in field investigative interviews of children (FIIC)

This study intends to assess the effect of long‐term training on police officers' use of open and closed questions in investigative interviews of children. One hundred field investigative interviews of children were divided into two groups based on the interviewers' level of competence (training and experience). The police officers' questions were classified into groups of either open or closed. In all interviews, the mean numbers were 20 open and 217 closed questions, corresponding to an open–closed question ratio of 1:10. The most competent interviewers used 22 open questions and the less competent used 19 open questions, but the difference was not statistically significant. Analyses of variance (ANOVA) showed a significant effect of question but no main effect of competence. ANOVA revealed a descending number of open questions during the interviews, whilst the distribution of closed questions showed an inverted U distribution with most frequent use of closed questions in the middle part of the interviews. Possible strategies of enhancing the use of open questions are discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Different answers to different audiences: effects of social context on the accuracy-informativeness trade-off

Research on conversational exchanges shows that people attempt to optimise their responses’ relevance when they definitely know the correct answer (e.g., “What time is it?”). However, such certainty is often unavailable while speakers may still be under social pressure to provide an answer. We investigated how social context influences the informativeness level when answering questions under uncertainty. In three experiments, participants answered difficult general-knowledge questions placed in different social contexts (formal vs. informal). Participants generated their answers, then they were presented with a given context, and decided on the number of alternative responses they wanted to provide (single, with one alternative vs. plural, with several alternatives) and whether the answer should be reported or withheld (report option). Participants reported more answers in the informal context. In the formal context, single answers were preferred, and they were more frequently reported. We conclude that social context influences the level of informativeness in a conversation, affecting achievable accuracy. Our results also show the joint influence of the confidence and the social context on willingness to share information.     

Using unexpected questions to elicit information and cues to deceit in interpreter‐based interviews

We examined whether speech‐related differences between truth tellers and liars are more profound when answering unexpected questions than when answering expected questions. We also examined whether the presence of an interpreter affected these results. In the experiment, 204 participants from the United States (Hispanic participants only), Russia, and the Republic of Korea were interviewed in their native language by a native‐speaking interviewer or by a British interviewer through an interpreter. Truth tellers discussed a trip that they had made during the last 12 months; liars fabricated a story about such a trip. The key dependent variables were the amount of information provided and the proportion of all statements that were complications. The proportion of complications distinguished truth tellers from liars better when answering unexpected than expected questions, but only in interpreter‐absent interviews. The number of details provided did not differ between truth tellers and liars or between interpreter‐absent and interpreter‐present interviews.     

The Impact of Multifaceted Questions on Eyewitness Accuracy Following Forced Fabrication Interviews

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.     

Agrammatism and the Psychological Reality of the Syntactic Tree

Syntactic trees, or phrase markers, have originally been suggested as a representation of syntax in the mind based on purely linguistic grounds. In this paper, the psychological reality of syntactic trees and hierarchical ordering is explored from another perspective—that of the neuropsychology of language breakdown. The study reported here examined several syntactic domains that rely on different nodes in the tree—tense and agreement verb inflection, subordinations, interrogatives, and verb movement, through a study of 14 Hebrew- and Palestinian Arabic-speaking agrammatic aphasics and perusal of the cross-linguistic literature. The results show that the impairment in agrammatic production is highly selective and lends itself to characterization in terms of a deficit in the syntactic tree. The complex pattern of dissociations follows from one underlying deficit—the inaccessibility of high nodes of the syntactic tree to agrammatic speakers. Structures that relate to high nodes of the tree are impaired, while lower structures are spared.     

The effects of reducing teacher questions and increasing pauses on child talk during morning news

The effects of reducing teacher questions and increasing pauses on student talk during morning news sessions were investigated. The length of student discourse was observed during random 10-min samples of the lesson, together with frequency counts of teacher questions and pauses. Concomitant measures of teacher praise, directives, control statements and student call-outs were also obtained. Within the constraints of a within-subjects reversal design (ABAB), experimentally reducing teacher questions and replacing these with pauses and/or topic-related statements was associated with an increase in child discourse. Teacher praise and directives did not systematically alter across experimental phases but both teacher control statements and child call-outs reduced during the intervention phases. Reducing teacher questions and increasing the use of pauses by the teacher was associated with increases in student discourse without adversely affecting classroom behavior. These results support the hypothesis that teacher questions foil pupil talk in morning news thereby obstructing the pedagogical value of these sessions.     

On the Logical Positivists' Theory of Truth: The Fundamental Problem and a New Perspective

The present article purports to show that the protocol sentence debate, pursued by some leading members of the Vienna Circle in the mid-1930s, was essentially a controversy over the explanation and the real significance of the concept of truth. It is further shown that the fundamental issue underlying the discussions about the concept of truth was the relationship between form and content, as well as between logic/language and the world. R. Carnap was the philosopher who most explicitly and systematically attempted to come to grips with this problem. It is shown that the form-content distinction pervades the three most important phases of Carnap's philosophical development: the structuralist (in Der logische Aufbau der Welt), the syntactical and the semantical. His final semantical stance is essentially determined by the concept of linguistic frameworks. The article purports to demonstrate that this concept cannot be dispensed with in philosophy, but that Carnap failed to work out its ontological implications. Finally, the concept of an internal ontology is briefly delineated. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The Effects of Direct Questions on Preschool Children's Responses to Indirect Requests

Indirect instructional approaches, such as responsive interaction, are common in inclusive early childhood settings. Unfortunately, young children with disabilities do not always have the skills to take advantage of these learning opportunities. Teaching children with disabilities to be more responsive to developmentally appropriate indirect instructional strategies may help them take advantage of and benefit from available learning opportunities in inclusive settings. The purpose of this research was to examine the extent to which presenting a series of direct questions increased children's attempts to respond and correct responses to indirect requests. Increased attempts to respond and correct responses to indirect requests were evident for all participants with whom the intervention was implemented. Three of the participants continued to attempt to respond and responded correctly to indirect requests when intervention procedures were removed. The contributions of these findings to literature on language instruction with young children, implications of the findings for practitioners, methodological limitations, and suggestions for future research are discussed.