The effects of an intensive training and feedback program on investigative interviews of children

In the present study, we assessed the effectiveness of an extensive training and feedback program with investigative interviewers of child victims of alleged abuse and neglect in a large Canadian city. Twelve investigative interviewers participated in a joint training initiative that lasted eight months and involved classroom components and extensive weekly verbal and written feedback. Interviewers were significantly more likely to use open-ended prompts and elicited more information from children with open-ended prompts following training. These differences were especially prominent following a subsequent ‘refresher’ training session. No negative effects of training were observed. Clear evidence was found of the benefits of an intensive training and feedback program across a wide variety of investigative interviews with children. Although previous research has found benefits of training with interviewers of child sexual assault victims, the current study extends these findings to a wide range of allegations and maltreatment contexts

Using Spaced Learning Principles to Translate Knowledge into Behavior: Evidence from Investigative Interviews of Alleged Child Abuse Victims

The present study assessed the progress of 13 investigative interviewers (child protection workers and police officers) before, during, and after an intensive training program (n = 132 interviews). Training began with a 2-day workshop covering the principles of child development and child-friendly interviewing. Interviewers then submitted interviews on a bi-weekly basis to which they received written and verbal feedback over an 8-month period. A refresher session took place two months into training. Interestingly, improvements were observed only after the refresher session. Interviews conducted post-refresher training contained proportionally more open-ended questions, more child details in response to open-ended questions, and proportionally fewer closed questions than interviews conducted prior to training and in the first half of the training program. The need for ‘spaced learning’ may underlie why so many training programs have had little effect on practice

Children’s episodic and generic reports of alleged abuse

With the present data, we explored the relations between the language of interviewer questions, children’s reports, and case and child characteristics in forensic interviews. Results clearly indicated that the type of questions posed by interviewers – either probing generic or episodic features of an event – was related to the specificity of information reported by children. Further, interviewers appeared to adjust their questioning strategies based on the frequency of the alleged abuse. Children alleging single instances of abuse were asked more episodic questions than those alleging multiple abuses. In contrast, children alleging multiple incidents of abuse were asked a greater proportion of generic questions. Given that investigators often seek forensically-relevant episodic information, it is recommended that training for investigators focus on recognition of prompt selection tendencies and developing strategies for posing non-suggestive, episodically focused questions

Primacy (and recency) effects in delayed recognition of items from instances of repeated events

Open Access via the T&F AgreementPeer reviewe

The effects of an intensive training and feedback program on investigative interviews of children

In the present study, we assessed the effectiveness of an extensive training and feedback program with investigative interviewers of child victims of alleged abuse and neglect in a large Canadian city. Twelve investigative interviewers participated in a joint training initiative that lasted eight months and involved classroom components and extensive weekly verbal and written feedback. Interviewers were significantly more likely to use open-ended prompts and elicited more information from children with open-ended prompts following training. These differences were especially prominent following a subsequent ‘refresher’ training session. No negative effects of training were observed. Clear evidence was found of the benefits of an intensive training and feedback program across a wide variety of investigative interviews with children. Although previous research has found benefits of training with interviewers of child sexual assault victims, the current study extends these findings to a wide range of allegations and maltreatment contexts

Research on Elementary, Middle, and Secondary Earth and Space Sciences Teacher Education

In order to fully engage with the vision of the Framework for K-12 Science Education and the NGSS, our nation needs a diverse and well prepared K-12 science teacher workforce. And in order for ESS to gain equal status with other sciences, the geoscience community must ensure that the K-12 science teacher workforce is adequately prepared to teach ESS core knowledge and practices. This is a challenging endeavor and complicated by the fact that the K-12 teacher education landscape is highly variable across institutions in terms of how much ESS content is included, how programs are structured, and how ESS fits into the larger institutional context. Teacher education exists in a complex landscape that involve many domains of research. This theme chapter focuses on teacher education research that most directly aligns to the undergraduate teaching and learning experience. Three grand challenges emerged from discussion and reflections on the existing literature and are poised to guide future research on undergraduate K-12 teacher education

Suspect-filler similarity in eyewitness lineups: A literature review and a novel methodology

Abstract Eyewitness lineups typically contain a suspect (guilty or innocent) and fillers (known innocents). The degree to which fillers should resemble the suspect is a complex issue that has yet to be resolved. Previously, researchers have voiced concern that eyewitnesses would be unable to identify their target from a lineup containing highly similar fillers; however, our literature review suggests highly similar fillers have only rarely been shown to have this effect. To further examine the effect of highly similar fillers on lineup responses, we used morphing software to create fillers of moderately high and very high similarity to the suspect. When the culprit was in the lineup, a higher correct identification rate was observed in moderately high similarity lineups than in very high similarity lineups. When the culprit was absent, similarity did not yield a significant effect on innocent suspect misidentification rates. However, the correct rejection rate in the moderately high similarity lineup was 20% higher than in the very high similarity lineup. When choosing rates were controlled by calculating identification probabilities for only those who made a selection from the lineup, culprit identification rates as well as innocent suspect misidentification rates were significantly higher in the moderately high similarity lineup than in the very high similarity lineup. Thus, very high similarity fillers yielded costs and benefits. Although our research suggests that selecting the most similar fillers available may adversely affect correct identification rates, we recommend additional research using fillers obtained from police databases to corroborate our findings. Keywords: Eyewitness, Identification, Lineup, Similarity, Filler SUSPECT-FILLER SIMILARITY 3 Suspect-filler similarity in eyewitness lineups: A literature review and a novel methodology When constructing a lineup for eyewitness identification, investigators have been advised to ensure fillers -lineup members who are known to be innocent -do not bear too strong a resemblance to the lineup member suspected of the crime. The not-too-similar recommendation is grounded in the idea that selecting fillers who closely match the suspect's appearance will essentially result in a lineup of 'clones' and make correct identifications too difficult For example, the question of whether lineup members should be presented simultaneously or sequentially has been the subject of lively debate (e.g., Lindsay, Mansour, Beaudry, We suspect the not-too-similar recommendation has not been subjected to the same degree of rigor as other proposed lineup reforms because the similarity-difficulty relation is both intuitive and well-established in other domains within cognitive psychology. An eyewitness lineup is ultimately a multiple-choice recognition test. Cognitive psychologists have used strong language to describe similarity's effect on such tests, noting that "we can make any recognition test as difficult as we want simply by making distractors similar to SUSPECT-FILLER SIMILARITY 4 the correct alternative" (Glass, Holyoak, & Santa, 1979, p. 65). Psychometricians have also emphasized the association between similar distractors and item difficulty Defining Similarity The resemblance between two persons is best conceptualized within the framework of a similarity continuum. However, eyewitness researchers have traditionally conceptualized similarity in categorical terms. Police typically do not have the resources to generate fillers on a continuously defined scale of similarity, so the categorical approach is necessary for formulating lineup construction recommendations that can be practically implemented. For our literature review, we make a distinction between three categories of lineups: biased, moderate similarity, and high similarity. Biased lineups are those which contain fillers who are highly dissimilar to the suspect or fillers who, for some reason, make the suspect stand out. Moderate similarity lineups are those which contain fillers who match a general description of the target, but have not been closely matched to the suspect's appearance. High similarity lineups contain fillers who have been closely matched to the appearance of the suspect/target. Note that the distinction between categories should be considered in relative terms. For example, researchers have demonstrated greater similarity in the high relative to moderate similarity SUSPECT-FILLER SIMILARITY 5 lineups, but these 'high' similarity fillers have typically yielded similarity ratings near the midpoint of any given scale Empirical Research on Lineup Member Similarity At some level, less similar fillers make correct identifications easier. Numerous empirical investigations reveal that correct identification rates are higher for lineups with very dissimilar fillers relative to lineups with similar fillers (e.g., Although a relatively substantial literature on lineup member similarity has been established, the wide variety of methods used to manipulate similarity has made a parsimonious interpretation of the findings elusive. Most commonly, researchers have manipulated similarity through filler selection strategies or by using similarity ratings to guide lineup construction; however, alternative methods can also be found in the literature. Given the potential influence of the type of similarity manipulation on the pattern of identification responses, we have organized our literature review according to the method by which similarity was manipulated. In addition to our primary interest in the effect of high similarity fillers on correct identification of a guilty suspect, we also review their effect on false identification of an innocent suspect. SUSPECT-FILLER SIMILARITY 6 Filler search procedure: Match-to-description vs. match-to-appearance. Wells, Rydell, and Seelau (1993) conducted the first empirical comparison between the match-to-description and match-to-appearance procedures. As Luus and Wells (1991) predicted, the two procedures did not differ in false identifications and the correct identification rate was substantially reduced in appearance-matched lineups. However, subsequent comparisons of the two procedures revealed no significant differences in correct identifications (see The overview of all comparisons between the match-to-description and match-to-appearance procedures in Subjective similarity ratings. In many of the comparisons between appearance-and description-matched lineups, researchers obtained ratings to measure the similarity between the suspect and the fillers. When such ratings have been obtained, suspect-filler similarity has been consistently higher for appearance-matched lineups than for description-matched lineups. Thus, the differences associated with similarity ratings in these studies can be inferred by examining In contrast to indirectly manipulating similarity through filler selection procedures, Brewer and Wells (2006) used subjective ratings to manipulate suspect-filler similarity. Brewer and Wells administered two lineup identification tasks, one for a thief and one for a waiter. In both lineups, some fillers from a high similarity lineup were replaced with fillers who matched a description of the target, but were rated to be of lower similarity to the target. This similarity manipulation yielded mixed results. For the thief lineup, the correct identification rate was higher for the high similarity lineup (.40) than for the moderate similarity lineup (.34). The opposite was true for the waiter lineup, which yielded a higher correct identification rate for the moderate similarity lineup (.66) than for the high similarity lineup (.57). False identifications were comparable across similarity conditions. Given the small and contradictory effects on correct identifications and null effects on false identifications, this manipulation of similarity seems to have had minimal impact on identifications. Sauer, Brewer, and Weber (2008) used subjective ratings to manipulate similarity in lineups for male and female targets. All lineup members were consistent with a general SUSPECT-FILLER SIMILARITY 8 description of the target person, but similarity ratings were higher for the high similarity lineup members. In one condition, participants were instructed to respond to the lineup with a traditional identification response (binary condition). For these participants, increasing similarity led to small, nonsignificant reductions in correct identification rates (6% decrease for female lineups; 16% decrease for male lineups). These trends were also observed for participants in another condition who were instructed to rate their confidence that a lineup member was the target rather than actually picking a lineup member. When collapsed across conditions, increasing similarity yielded a small but significant decrease in accuracy for target-present lineups and had virtually no effect on accuracy for target-absent lineups. More recently, researchers have used subjective ratings to manipulate similarity in lineups for child witnesses SUSPECT-FILLER SIMILARITY 9 Tredoux's E'. Effective size represents the number of lineup members who are plausible alternatives to the suspect Tredoux (1998) describes a similar measure, E', which retains the favourable properties of effective size and also utilizes a known sampling distribution. Both effective size and E' are positively associated with suspect-filler similarity Carlson and colleagues Euclidean distance. Tredoux (2002) used a technique to manipulate similarity that is radically different than any of the previously described methods. Building on SUSPECT-FILLER SIMILARITY 11 Computer-generated faces. In contrast to each of previously-described experiments, which used photographs of real faces, Flowe and Ebbeson (2007) used a software program (FACES) to generate simulated faces that differed in similarity to a simulated target face. In the 'random similarity' condition, fillers were pseudo-randomly selected from a database of 1000 faces (eye colour was required to match; all other facial features were required to mismatch). In the 'matched similarity' condition, the lineup faces were matched on one facial feature. In two experiments, this manipulation yielded no significant differences in correct identifications. Consistent with the trend observed by Summary of empirical findings. We reviewed 16 studies comparing lineups of moderate and high similarity to the target. Although concerns that highly similar fillers woul

Dietary nitrate increases arginine availability and protects mitochondrial complex I and energetics in the hypoxic rat heart

This is the final version. It was first published by Wiley in The Journal of Physiology at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1113/jphysiol.2014.275263/abstract.Hypoxic exposure is associated with impaired cardiac energetics in humans and altered mitochondrial function, with suppressed complex I-supported respiration, in rat heart. This response might limit reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation, but at the cost of impaired electron transport chain (ETC) activity. Dietary nitrate supplementation improves mitochondrial efficiency and can promote tissue oxygenation by enhancing blood flow. We therefore hypothesised that ETC dysfunction, impaired energetics and oxidative damage in the hearts of rats exposed to chronic hypoxia could be alleviated by sustained administration of a moderate dose of dietary nitrate. Male Wistar rats (n=40) were given water supplemented with 0.7 mmol/L NaCl (as control) or 0.7 mmol/L NaNO3, elevating plasma nitrate levels by 80%, and were exposed to 13% O2 (hypoxia) or normoxia (n=10 per group) for 14 days. Respiration rates, ETC protein levels, mitochondrial density, ATP content and protein carbonylation were measured in cardiac muscle. Complex I respiration rates and protein levels were 33% lower in hypoxic/NaCl rats compared with normoxic/NaCl controls. Protein carbonylation was 65% higher in hearts of hypoxic rats compared with controls, indicating increased oxidative stress, whilst ATP levels were 62% lower. Respiration rates, complex I protein and activity, protein carbonylation and ATP levels were all fully protected in the hearts of nitrate-supplemented hypoxic rats. Both in normoxia and hypoxia, dietary nitrate suppressed cardiac arginase expression and activity and markedly elevated cardiac L-arginine concentrations, unmasking a novel mechanism of action by which nitrate enhances tissue NO bioavailability. Dietary nitrate therefore alleviates metabolic abnormalities in the hypoxic heart, improving myocardial energetics

Pharmacological Evidence Suggests That the Lysozyme/PACAP Receptor of \u3cem\u3eTetrahymena thermophila\u3c/em\u3e is a Polycation Receptor

Pituitary adenylate cyclase activating polypeptide (PACAP) is a peptide hormone that exists in two biologically active forms: PACAP-38 and PACAP-27. Several types of PACAP receptors have been characterized, and these have been classified into three families: the VPAC1, the VPAC2, and the PAC1 receptors. In this study, we used in vivo behavioral assays along with pharmacological inhibitors to investigate the behavior of the lysozyme/PACAP receptor in Tetrahymena. This receptor behaves like a PAC1 receptor in some respects; however, PACAP 6-38 serves as an agonist, rather than an antagonist, for this receptor. These results are consistent with the existence of a generalized polycation receptor rather than a PACAP-specific receptor