Forensic Dynamics in the Interviewing Process

¶ … Alter the Forensic Dynamics during an Interviewing Process In this paper, we reveal how professional's attitudes, views, and knowledge do not necessarily match forensic research findings. Witness issues will then be discussed concerning research community. The study identifies some of the key factors that can alter or improve forensic dynamics during the interviewing process. This study focuses primarily on forensic dynamics relating to the interviewing young children and the associated challenges.

Expert knowledge and attitudes It has been proven that professionals and social researchers (biased) towards information confirming their initial beliefs by refuting established opinions. Once established, beliefs and impressions challenged to contrary proof. Thus, belief systems and generalization can create a confirmation prejudice that may result in faulty understanding and wrong presentation, adversely affecting important decisions. Regarding child victimization situations, such prejudice may result in dramatic repercussions presenting a serious risk to a person's legal rights or presenting a serious risk to a child's security (Bull, Valentine & Williamson, 2009).

Consider a professional who is requested to assess a kid in a custody case that includes accusations of child sex-related abuse. If the professional has a preconditioned idea that children hardly ever if ever lie about child sex-related abuse, the professional might ask suggestive questions or take uncertain claims or controversial behavioral signs by the kid to confirm the expert's own prejudice and thus determine that the kid is indeed a victim of sexual abuse.

This could cause for the mother or father not only to loss of legal care of the kid but also to loss of reputation and freedom, because of criminal prosecution. In contrast, if the professional has a prejudice that most such situations include false accusations, he/she might discount true reports of abuse or not sufficiently sensor. This will result in the wrong determination that the kid is safe with the mother or father when, in reality, the kid is not.

Therefore, the professional must try to remain as fairly neutral, impartial, and precise as possible. As mentioned next, studies suggest that experts' knowledge is not always accurate or impartial, or at least, not always reliable with scientific research. Experts' knowledge and beliefs Many people like to think that expert's attitude and knowledge are a reflection of scientific understanding that is based on empirical studies. However, skills are not always advised by science.

Research has proven that professionals, such as legal professionals and psychologists, are not experienced or qualified than others in properly decoding verbal claims and non-verbal behavior. However, professionals are mostly confident in their assessments than are others. When individuals show confidence that their answers are appropriate, their reactions are more likely to be recognized as appropriate, and in a legal perspective this may be decisive. I the U.S., experts tend to become dichotomized as they often serve as the prosecution or defense experts.

This triggers the risk of encouraging dichotomized perceptions of children's capabilities (Bull, Valentine & Williamson, 2009). Many medical professionals also seem to feel favorably about the use of drawings, play sessions, and dolls as potential resources for forensic work, regardless of cautions from scientists about such methods. Agreement about the stability of different evaluation techniques is still an issue among professionals themselves. In the Oberlander research, 87% of the participants considered that play sessions were useful.

Ninety percent responded that drawings were useful while 46% indicated that baby dolls were useful (Bull, Valentine & Williamson, 2009). Other reviews show that the most questionable techniques are not frequently used in the U. S although relatively new rewards in the community have called for prop-aided interviews as a new evidence collecting strategy. When questions and interventions are presented as verbal interviews and play observations, it has been shown that they offer excellent results related to the projective play findings.

This is in respect to the use of free-recall questions and prevention of deceiving questions. Witness memory, accuracy, and retrieval techniques Recent research on memory development has had a significant effect on the way kids are understood, interrogated, and believed within the judicial system. We start by talking about a common design of memory techniques because it has effects for kid's memory. Later, when talking about child memory and forensic interviews, we particularly concentrate on what is known as 'occasional memory'.

The memory framework is the most appropriate for witness psychology. The occasional memory helps to arrange the types of personal encounters of interest in the forensic perspective. Memory Scientists have suggested that memory is not a unitary process. On the contrary, it includes multiple communicating techniques, which differentially promote our capability for encoding, saving and remembering information. Based on a kid's maturity and age, the techniques may not be equally developed. The most basic memory framework, systematic memory, is thought to contain implicit information regarding physical skills, actions, and habits.

It is utilized and indicated through behavior, and recovery of such memory does not indicate verbal testing. Developmental restrictions on these memory techniques may influence the kids' abilities to recall events in ways that are acceptable in all legal frameworks (Bull, Valentine & Williamson, 2009). Accuracy Although we like to think that the human memory is highly accurate, available proof opposes this view. Episodic memory does not always reflect memories properly. Moreover, of significance, the performance of memory is both quantitatively and qualitatively age related.

Compared with young kids, teenagers and adults have a more elaborated knowledge by which to understand events and put new information into memory, employ advanced strategies to recover information, report more memories, and are less reliant on exterior identification cues to search their memories. Younger kids are more vulnerable to suggestive influence, such as that from the use of props. When integrated with other expressive techniques like reinforcement and social pressure the impact of interviewing is improved (Bull, Valentine & Williamson, 2009).

Retrieval Young kids are well-known to have trouble than teenagers and.