The University of Nottingham Libraries’ Learning Development (Academic Skills) team started hosting ‘Study With Us’ (online study community utilising the Pomodoro® Technique) sessions in response to ...the COVID-19 pandemic as a means to provide an online community and a connection to the University for students during lockdown periods. Post-pandemic, these sessions continue to be hosted once a week during term time with an average attendance of 12 (minimum 4, maximum 23, between October 2022 and January 2023). There has been a demand for an increase in the frequency of the sessions from the existing participants. The team have limited resources and would struggle to host any additional sessions on a regular basis.
Following some initial research with the current ‘Study With Us’ community to discern the actual requirements for additional sessions, there was some demand for faculty-specific sessions to be hosted. Therefore, we teamed up with the Faculty of Engineering to work with their peer mentors to establish the efficacy of running a regular peer-led Pomodoro® online study community specifically for engineering students with the aim of establishing if this model was suitable to be rolled out across all five faculties and hence cater for the increase in demand for the study sessions. The aim of the session is to share: the research so far; an evaluation of the process of setting up the initiative with the faculties and the peer mentors; some initial analysis of the experiences of the session participants to establish the success, demand for and future direction of ‘Study With Us’ at the University.
We examined how observers' impressions of nonnative speakers and their cues to deception affected decision-making. Native and nonnative English speakers lied or told the truth about having committed ...a transgression, and then observers attempted to detect their lies. Observers were better able to discriminate between lie- and truth-telling native speakers than nonnative speakers. They also held more positive impressions of native speakers than nonnative speakers. Unlike observers, trained coders identified a multitude of differences in interviewees' presentation of cues to deception across proficiency groups. Overall, nonnative speakers appear to be at a significant disadvantage in lie-detection contexts.
Nous avons examiné la façon dont les impressions d'observateurs au sujet de locuteurs non natifs et leurs indices de tromperie a influé sur leur prise de décisions. Les locuteurs anglophones natifs et non natifs ont menti ou dit la vérité au sujet d'avoir commis une transgression, et les observateurs essayaient de déceler leurs mensonges. Les observateurs ont mieux réussi à faire la distinction entre les mensonges et les vérités exprimés par les locuteurs natifs que par les locuteurs non natifs. Ils ont aussi eu plus d'impressions positives au sujet des locuteurs natifs qu'au sujet des locuteurs non natifs. Contrairement aux observateurs, les encodeurs ont repéré de multiples différences parmi les présentations des indices de tromperie des personnes interviewées chez les groupes aux niveaux de compétence variés. Dans l'ensemble, les locuteurs non natifs semblent désavantagés dans les contextes de détection de mensonges.
Public Significance Statement
A decade of research on lie detection and language proficiency has revealed that a person's proficiency affects people's biases and their abilities to discriminate between lie-tellers and truth-tellers. We found that nonnative (vs. native) English speakers were viewed more negatively and exhibited different behaviours. These findings have significant implications for scholarship and practice given that this was the first study to examine the underpinnings of proficiency effects on deception detection.
Purpose
The first of two experiments investigated the effect that speaking in a non‐native language has on interviewees’ perceptions of their interview experience. A second experiment investigated ...evaluators’ perceptions of the credibility of interviewees who spoke in their native or non‐native language.
Method
For the first experiment, 52 participants told the truth or lied about their identity during a mock border control interview. All of the participants were interviewed in English, for half of the sample this was their native language, and for the other half of the sample English was not their native tongue. Post‐interview, all participants completed a self‐report questionnaire relating to their perceptions of their interview experience. For the second experiment, 128 participants evaluated the credibility of interviewees from the first experiment. The modality of presentation of interview clips was varied and included ‘Visual and Audio’, ‘Visual Only’, ‘Audio Only’, and ‘Transcript Only’.
Results
Non‐native speakers were more likely than native speakers to report being nervous and cognitively challenged during their interviews and were more likely to monitor their own behaviour. Overall, evaluators were better able to distinguish between truth tellers and liars who were speaking in their native language than between truth tellers and liars who were non‐native speakers. Relative to native speakers, there was a smaller truth bias for evaluations of non‐native speakers. When evaluators were considering the non‐native speakers, they achieved higher discrimination accuracy when they were exposed to ‘Visual Only’ or ‘Transcript Only’ presentations than when they were shown the ‘Visual and Audio’ or ‘Audio Only’ interview clips.
Conclusions
Self‐reported experiences of a mock border control interview differed dependent on whether interviewees were speaking in their native or non‐native language. Discrimination accuracy was better for native speakers than it was for non‐native speakers and was at its worst when evaluators heard the accents of the non‐native speakers.
There is a long-standing belief that confidence is not useful at discriminating between accurate and inaccurate deception decisions. Historically, this position made sense because people showed ...little ability to discriminate lie-tellers from truth-tellers. But, it is now widely accepted that, under certain conditions, people can discriminate between lie-tellers and truth-tellers. Nevertheless, belief that confidence does not discriminate between accurate and inaccurate responses persists. This belief is somewhat paradoxical because, to the extent that people can discriminate between lie-tellers and truth-tellers, signal detection theory naturally predicts a positive relationship between confidence and accuracy. In line with our signal-detection-based predictions, we show that, among decisions about whether someone is lying, those made with high confidence are more accurate than those made with low confidence. This important relationship has gone unnoticed in past work because of a reliance on inappropriate measures. Past research examining the confidence–accuracy relationship in deception research relied on correlating average confidence with proportion of correctly identified lies. These correlations provide information on whether more confident judges tend to be more accurate but remain silent on the arguably more important question of whether higher confidence decisions are more accurate than lower confidence decisions. We show that confidence–accuracy characteristic analyses are uniquely suited to measuring the confidence–accuracy relationship in deception research.
Communication is the most powerful tool we have to challenge the plague of invisibility impacting our Indigenous communities. As we continue to challenge the diversity, equity, and inclusion ...initiatives touted by our institutions, we need to move beyond mission statements to motion, i.e., action required for meaningful transformation to take place (Qassataq, Iñupiaq, 2022). To call attention to and name the silencing of language and knowledge systems outside of western mainstream english (WME), the present paper proposes the concept of Communication Action Statements (CAS). Based on place and space, CASs recognize, label, and affirm the negative effects of WME, as well as call attention to the silencing associated with the reinforcement of WME as the ideal form of communication. Moreover, CASs normalize other knowledge systems outside of the rigid western model that defines higher education. In conjunction with CASs, to initiate motion, we provide four strategies to take action to move beyond acknowledgment and challenge the Communication discipline to continue working to decenter whiteness.
We examined the impact of interviewees' language proficiencies on observers' lie detection performance. Observers (N = 132) were randomly assigned to make deception judgments about interviewees (N = ...56) from Four proficiency groups (i.e., native, advanced, intermediate, and beginner English speakers). Discrimination between lie- and truth-tellers was poorest when observers judged beginner English speakers compared to interviewees from any other proficiency group. Observers were also less likely to exhibit a truth-bias toward nonnative than native English speakers. These results suggest that interviewing individuals in their nonnative languages can create inequalities in the justice system.
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 Instrument. 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.
Summary
We examined whether observers' beliefs about deception were affected by a speaker's language proficiency. Laypersons (N = 105) and police officers (N = 75) indicated which nonverbal and ...verbal behaviors were predictive of native versus non‐native speakers' deception. In addition, they provided their beliefs about these speakers' interrogation experiences. Participants believed that native and non‐native speakers would exhibit the same cues to deception. However, they did predict that non‐native speakers would likely face several challenges during interrogations (e.g., longer interrogations and difficulties understanding the interrogator's questions). Police officers and laypersons also differed in their beliefs about cues to deception and interrogation experiences.
When confessions are entered into evidence in criminal courts, issues of coercion and voluntariness are important and often contested matters. Occasionally, defense attorneys proffer expert witnesses ...to testify about the coercive pressures of an interrogation and the risk of a false confession. Such testimony is often ruled inadmissible on the grounds that it does not inform the jury beyond its common knowledge. In our effort to test this judicial assumption about common knowledge, we surveyed jury-eligible laypeople (n = 67) and social scientists specializing in interrogation and confessions (n = 54) regarding their opinions about the coerciveness of prohibited interrogation tactics, maximization techniques, minimization techniques, and suspect risk factors and compared their ratings with a set of independent t tests. Laypeople gave lower ratings to the coerciveness of all sets of items representing interrogation techniques, and lower ratings to the vulnerabilities associated with suspect risk factors, as compared to social science experts. The disparities between laypeople's and experts' perceptions of coercion in interrogations demonstrate that such issues are not fully within the common knowledge of prospective jurors, and suggest the need to provide jurors with expert witness guidance when tasked with evaluating confession evidence.
Purpose
Although it is easy to assume that individuals who have been wrongfully convicted are stigmatized, research has not systematically examined this issue. This research compares perceptions of ...individuals who have been wrongfully convicted to perceptions of offenders to investigate the stigma that wrongfully convicted persons report.
Method
Participants were randomly assigned to complete surveys regarding their attitudes, stereotypes, and discrimination tendencies towards one of three different groups: individuals who were wrongfully convicted of a crime, actual offenders, or people in general (control).
Results
Results suggested contemptuous prejudice towards offenders and wrongfully convicted persons. In comparison to the control group, individuals who had been wrongfully convicted were stereotyped more negatively, elicited more negative emotions, and were held at a greater social distance. Although participants did report greater pity for wrongfully convicted persons than others, this pity did not translate into greater assistance or support.
Conclusions
Perceptions of wrongfully convicted persons appear similar to negative, stigmatized views of offenders. Individuals faced stigma and discrimination even after exoneration.
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