Doctoral Dissertations (FSSH)

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10155/1166

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Development of the Interview and Interrogation Assessment Instrument
(2023-04-01) Kaplan, Jeffrey; Leach, Amy-May; Cutler, Brian; Eastwood, Joseph
Confession evidence factors heavily in judicial decision making, and courts may call an expert social scientist to assess the coercive pressures of an interrogation and risk factors for false confession. At present, there exists no standardized methods for performing this task, and each expert uses their own unstructured professional judgment. To address this lack of standardization, we have developed a psychological instrument for evaluating videotaped interrogations: the Interview and Interrogation Assessment InstrumentTM. We begin with a discussion of the benefits of standardized measurement and proceed to an overview of the conceptualization and initial development of our instrument. In Study 1, we established the bases for the instrument’s items and scoring by surveying expert populations. In Study 2 we assessed interrater reliability and explain our instrument refinements based on our results. In Study 3, we examined convergent validity. Social science experts reviewed interrogation videos and rated the coercive pressures along multiple dimensions. We correlated the expert ratings with our instrument’s measures. We conclude that the newly developed instrument demonstrates preliminary reliability and convergent validity and appears to be a promising tool for future research and expert consultation in contested confession cases.
The impact of individual differences on the interviewing success and post-training performance of investigative interviewers
(2019-08-01) Akca, Davut; Eastwood, Joseph
In this thesis, whether and how personality characteristics affect the performance in investigative interviewing and the efficacy of training was examined in a three-step research design. In Study 1, the structure of a 50-item aptitudes scale, a modified and extended version of the Police Interviewing Competences Inventory (PICI), was assessed using a general population sample (N = 300), and a four-dimensional aptitudes scale was created. The four dimensions found were named as Humane (13 items), Communicative-Insisting (13 items), Self-controlled (9 items), and Careful-Tenacious (10 items). In Study 2, student participants (N = 154) completed the aptitudes and the Five Factor Model (FFM) scales, and then interviewed witnesses who watched a mock robbery crime video. Interviewer performance was assessed based on the amount of details they could elicit, the perception of the witness, and researcher ratings of behaviours and question usage. Three dimensions of the FFM were correlated with the success measures: Agreeableness with witness perception and appropriate questioning, Extraversion with researcher ratings and inappropriate questioning, and Openness with researcher ratings. Only the Communicative-Insisting dimension of the aptitudes scale predicted high researcher ratings. In Study 3, we used a policing student sample (N = 38) to investigate the impact of training on the interview performance and also to analyze how training effect interacts with personality measures when predicting the performance of participants. Overall, training increased the performance of participants in most of the success measures. The Humane dimension of the aptitudes scale and the Openness/Intellect dimension of the FFM predicted training efficacy. The post-interview performance of the participants was predicted by the Openness/Intellect, Agreeableness, Extraversion, and Neuroticism (negatively) dimensions of the Big Five and the Careful-Tenacious and Communicative-Insisting dimensions of the aptitudes scale. Findings might help police departments to identify potential successful interviewers and develop new training policies.
Negative emotion and eyewitness memory
(2022-12-01) Snow, Mark D.; Eastwood, Joseph
Witnessing or being the victim of a crime is often emotionally distressing, and this emotional distress reaction can influence the storage and retrieval of event-related memory. Eyewitness memory, therefore, cannot be adequately understood without an account of the memorial effects of negative emotion. On this point, however, there remains a considerable degree of inconsistency in both the methods and findings of existing research. In this dissertation I sought to clarify the nature of this effect. Across two experiments, participants (N = 204, N = 132) viewed either a Negative or Neutral version of a video of a staged social interaction. Either immediately or after a one-week delay, participants reported their memory for the video. I assessed participants’ recall (Study 1 and 2) and lineup identification (Study 1) performance. In both studies, those who viewed the Negative version of the video demonstrated superior recall performance for central event details than did those who viewed the Neutral version, though this did not appear to extend to lineup identification performance (Study 1). The Negative video group also reported more subjective and vague information than did the Neutral group. The current results, together with that of a growing number of studies, provide grounds for doubting the prevailing view among eyewitness researchers – that emotional distress causes generalized impairment of eyewitness memory. The current findings speak in favor of a pattern of selective memory enhancement. I end with a discussion of several practical and theoretical issues that were brought to the fore in the present work.
Toward assessing and improving the protective efficacy of Canadians’ interrogation rights: misinformation and caution comprehension
(2022-08-01) Connors, Christina J.; Eastwood, Joseph
The right to silence and right to counsel serve to protect detainees facing the power imbalance of police interrogation. Unfortunately, research indicates people are misinformed about their rights and struggle to comprehend the police cautions which explain them. This reduces the protective efficacy of rights in practice. Three inter-related studies sought to address these issues within a Canadian-specific context. First, Canadians’ (N = 212) interrogation rights knowledge was assessed through open-ended, vignette, and true/false measures. Many Canadians (72-95%) were misinformed about important aspects, and limitations, of their interrogation rights. Next, to improve knowledge and increase caution comprehension, a widely used Canadian police caution (RCMP) was modified to create a 1) “Simplified” caution with reworked wording, structure, and added explanations, and 2) an “Informative” (simplified) caution, with added content about rights limitations. Cautions were assessed for readability and complexity, then tested in a 4-condition low-stakes online experiment with Canadians (N = 200) using measures from Study 1. Despite most Canadians self-reporting caution comprehension (94-98%), and Informational condition participants demonstrating higher average scores, comprehension was low overall and group differences were not significant. However, average correct knowledge scores and key rights limitation scores were significantly higher for the Informative caution participants compared to those in the RCMP or no caution conditions. Finally, to increase test validity of the modified cautions, Ontario Tech undergraduates (N = 90) participated in a 3-condition higher-stakes mock-interrogation, guised as a “convincing alibi” study. Students prepared an alibi, heard 1 of 3 cautions, provided their alibi under mild duress, and completed Study 2 measures. Results mirrored Study 2: all students self-reported caution understanding, but comprehension scores were low overall. Students hearing the Informative caution demonstrated higher average correct rights knowledge, followed by the Simplified, then RCMP caution, however, differences were only significant for the right to counsel. This research indicates that - although Canadians are misinformed about their interrogation rights - knowledge of rights can be improved by altering the wording and structure of, and adding critical information to, Canadian police cautions. Through improving knowledge and comprehension, we can enhance the protective efficacy of interrogation rights for Canadians.

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Browsing Doctoral Dissertations (FSSH) by Author "Eastwood, Joseph"