Offender interviewing in custodial settings: Understanding validity,value and veracity issues

The purpose of this scoping literature review was to identify trends regarding validity, value and veracity issues when conducting (qualitative) interviews with offenders in custodial settings. We selected for review works from electronic databases in SAGE, Springer, and Taylor and Francis by using e-journals, Google Scholar and the behavioural science database, PsycINFO. The inclusion criteria for our studies were based on whether sources addressed offender interviewing as a wellspring of information, but excluded those that focused solely on the acquisition of clinical information (at the expense of focusing on validity, value and veracity issues). We utilised the content analysis approach to identify themes/ patterns in the research findings. Key findings suggest that offenders with impression management motivations deceive and manipulate in their research interview presentations. When gathering data from inmates in custodial care settings, best practice includes cross-checking offender interview data against other sources of evidence and taking into account the context in which they are serving their sentences.     

Directing wayfinders with maps: the effects of gender, age, route complexity, and familiarity with the environment

The participants were 360 Canadian undergraduates. After receiving written scenarios involving a campus visitor seeking direction to a nearby destination (simple route) or a distant destination (complex route), they drew maps to that destination. The authors varied the visitor's gender, age, and familiarity with campus. They analyzed the content of the students' maps in terms of cardial indicators (compass grid, correct north-south orientation), landmarks, labeled buildings, directional arrows, and supplemental written directions. The men tended to provide more cartographically complete maps than the women, though there were no gender differences in use of landmarks or labeled buildings. The men were significantly more inclined than the women to take visitor characteristics into account, providing more complete maps to visitors navigating complex routes, to newcomers, and to older visitors who were unfamiliar with the campus. The men had more confidence that their maps would successfully lead visitors to their destinations. Route complexity led to greater use of landmarks, labeled buildings, and cardinal indicators. The participants' self-reported familiarity with campus had little effect on their direction giving, except for a greater use of labeled buildings in maps.     

Segmentation and speech perception in relation to reading skill: a developmental analysis

The present paper examines the processing of speech by dyslexic readers and compares their performance with that of age-matched (CA) and reading-ability-matched (RA) controls. In Experiment 1, subjects repeated single-syllable stimuli (words and nonwords) presented either in a favorable signal-to-noise ratio or with noise masking. Noise affected all subjects to the same extent. Dyslexic children performed as well as controls when repeating high-frequency words, but they had difficulty relative to CA-controls with low-frequency words and relative to both CA- and RA-controls when repeating nonwords. In Experiments 2 and 3, subjects made auditory lexical decisions about the stimuli presented in Experiment 1. Dyslexics performed less well than CA-controls, gaining similar scores to RA-controls. Thus, their difficulty in repeating low-frequency words could be reinterpreted as a difficulty with nonword repetition. Taken together, these results suggest that dyslexics have difficulty with the nonlexical procedures (including phoneme segmentation) involved in verbal repetition. One consequence is that they take longer to consolidate "new" words; verbal memory and reading processes are also compromised.