A Preliminary Exploration of the Multimedia Principle's Applicability for Improving Comprehension of Youth Interrogation Rights.

We examined the extent to which presenting youth interrogation rights using different combinations of three multimedia elements (Animation, Audio, and Caption) improved comprehension. A 2 (Animation: Present, Absent) × 2 (Audio: Present, Absent) × 2 (Caption: Present, Absent) between-participants design was employed using samples of adults (Experiment 1: = 207) and youth (Experiment 2: = 193). Participants in both experiments were shown one of eight multimedia presentations and asked about their understanding of the presented youth interrogation rights.

Quality vs. quantity: the effect of relationship and number of corroborators on alibi assessments.

The effect of the suspect-corroborator relationship and number of corroborators on alibi assessments was examined across two experiments. In both experiments, we explored the effect of relationship type and number of corroborators on believability, likelihood of guilt, and decision to retain the suspect as the primary suspect; we increased the social distance between the alibi provider and suspect and the size of difference between the number of corroborators in Experiment 2. Collectively, our results support Olson and Wells' taxonomy of alibi believability as (a) any form of person evidence mitigates pre-alibi judgments of guilt (although there is a ceiling effect), and (b) alibis corroborated by non-motivated others were judged more favourably than those corroborated by motivated others.

An Evaluation of Interrater Reliability Measures on Binary Tasks Using .

Many indices of interrater agreement on binary tasks have been proposed to assess reliability, but none has escaped criticism. In a series of Monte Carlo simulations, five such indices were evaluated using , an unbiased indicator of raters' ability to distinguish between the true presence or absence of the characteristic being judged. and, to a lesser extent, coefficients performed best across variations in characteristic prevalence, and raters' expertise and bias.

Language style matching and police interrogation outcomes.

This research examined the coordination of interrogator and suspects' verbal behavior in interrogations. Sixty-four police interrogations were examined at the aggregate and utterance level using a measure of verbal mimicry known as Language Style Matching. Analyses revealed an interaction between confession and the direction of language matching.

The effect of listenability factors on the comprehension of police cautions.

We examined the extent to which modifying a police caution using three listenability factors (Instructions, Listing, and Explanations) improved comprehension. A 2 (Instructions vs. No Instructions) × 2 (Listing vs.

Simply criminal: predicting burglars' occupancy decisions with a simple heuristic.

Rational choice theories of criminal decision making assume that offenders weight and integrate multiple cues when making decisions (i.e., are compensatory).

Comprehending Canadian police cautions: are the rights to silence and legal counsel understandable?

Comprehension of a Canadian police right to silence caution and a right to legal counsel caution was examined. Each caution was first presented verbally in its entirety, followed by its sentence-by-sentence presentation in written format. Participants (N = 56) were asked to indicate, after each presentation, their understanding of the caution.

Validities and abilities in criminal profiling: a critique of the studies conducted by Richard Kocsis and his colleagues.

In a recent issue of this journal, Kocsis reviewed the criminal profiling research that he and his colleagues have conducted during the past 4 years. Their research examines the correlates of profile accuracy with respect to the skills of the individual constructing the profile, and it has led Kocsis to draw conclusions that are important to the profiling field. In this article, the authors review the contributions of the Kocsis studies and critique their methodological and conceptual foundations.

Recognizing National Hockey League greatness with an ignorance-based heuristic.

This study examined whether people adhered to the recognition heuristic (i.e., inferred that a recognized hockey player had more total career points than an unrecognized player) and whether using this heuristic could yield accurate decisions.

Predicting the home location of serial offenders: a preliminary comparison of the accuracy of human judges with a geographic profiling system.

The accuracy with which human judges, before and after 'training', could predict the likely home location of serial offenders was compared with predictions produced by a geographic profiling system known as Dragnet. All predictions were derived from ten spatial displays, one for each of ten different U.S.