Impact of Repeated Questioning on Interviewers: Learning From a Forensic Interview Training Project

Forensic interviewers have a difficult job with high risk for career burnout and secondary trauma. Few studies have addressed how new forensic interviewers or trainees experience repeated questioning and multiple interviews. This study simulated the process of training new forensic interviewers through the creation of two interview videos in which social work graduate students participated as actors portraying the roles of interviewer and child. These films served as instructional aids preparing graduate social work students for professional child welfare roles while promoting research-based approaches to interviewing children about sexual abuse allegations. Qualitative data from two cohorts of student actors were collected to analyze interviewers’ perspectives on repeated questioning and interviews in child sexual abuse cases. Two themes were extracted from the subjects’ experiences: “It is emotionally taxing” and “Navigating the interviewer role is unexpectedly complex.” Exposure to repeated questions and multiple interviews affected the performance and confidence of the interviewers.     

Measuring the Dynamics of Interactional Synchrony

Past research has revealed that natural social interactions contain interactional synchrony. The present study describes new methods for measuring interactional synchrony in natural interactions and evaluates whether the behavioral synchronization involved in social interactions is similar to dynamical synchronization found generically in nature. Two methodologies, a rater-coding method and a computational video image method, were used to provide time series representations of the movements of the co-actors as they enacted a series of jokes (i.e., knock?Cknock jokes). Cross-spectral and relative phase analyses of these time series revealed that speakers?? and listeners?? movements contained rhythms that were not only correlated in time but also exhibited phase synchronization. These results suggest that computational advances in video and time series analysis have greatly enhanced our ability to measure interactional synchrony in natural interactions. Moreover, the dynamical synchronization in these natural interactions is commensurate with that found in more stereotyped tasks, suggesting that similar organizational processes constrain bodily activity in natural social interactions and, hence, have implications for the understanding of joint action generally.     

Interactional Synchrony in Conversations about Emotional Episodes: A Measurement by “the Between-Participants Pseudosynchrony Experimental Paradigm”

Interactional synchrony refers to the coordination of movements between individuals in both timing and form during interpersonal communication. Most previous studies in Western culture used a coding methodology and concluded that interactional synchrony occurred for positive episodes but not for negative episodes (e.g., Charny, E. J. (1966). Psychosomatic Medicine, 28, 305–315). In this study, we examined interactional synchrony using a between-participants pseudosynchrony experimental paradigm (Bernieri, F. J., & Rosenthal, R. (1991). In R. S. Feldman & B. Rime (Eds.), Fundamentals of nonverbal behavior (pp. 401–432). New York: Cambridge University Press). Sixty Japanese female university students viewed interaction clips and judged the level of perceived synchrony. The results show that interactional synchrony was perceived in negative episodes as well as in positive episodes. The degree of perceived synchrony was higher in positive episodes than in negative episodes.

Automatically Detected Nonverbal Behavior Predicts Creativity in Collaborating Dyads

In the current study we administered a creative task in which two people collaboratively generated novel strategies to conserve resources. During this task, the nonverbal behavior of 104 participants in 52 pairs was tracked and recorded using the Kinect computer vision algorithm. We created a measure of synchrony by correlating movements between the two dyad members, and showed that synchrony occurred—that is, correlations decreased when we increased delay between the recorded movements of pair members. We also demonstrated a link between nonverbal synchrony and creativity, as operationalized by the number of new, valid ideas produced. Linear correlations demonstrated a significant relationship between synchrony and creativity. Finally, models using synchrony scores as input predicted whether dyads were high or low in creativity with a success rate as high as 86.7 % in the more exclusive subsets. We discuss implications for methodological approaches to measuring nonverbal behavior and synchrony, and suggest practical applications which can leverage the current findings.     

Effects of Interview Mode on Assessments of Erectile and Ejaculatory Dysfunction among Men with Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH)

In a randomized experiment (N = 249; age 50 + years), this study examined if self-reports of erectile dysfunction (ED) and ejaculatory dysfunction (EjD) symptomatology were influenced by the mode of interview administration (computer-assisted self-interview [CASI], audio computer-assisted self-interview [ACASI], or computer-assisted personal interview [CAPI; involving an interviewer]). This study also examined if mode moderated person variables hypothesized to impact self-reports (social desirability, age, or depressive mood). No main or moderating effects of mode were found for self-reports of EjD symptoms. However, mode effects on reports of ED symptoms were observed, and these moderated age and social desirability effects on self-reports. Significantly more older (relative to younger) men reported high levels of ED symptoms when interview administration was by a live interviewer (CAPI) than with self-administration. Alternatively, significantly more younger men reported high levels of ED symptoms when administration was by an interviewer (CAPI) or by ACASI (vs. CASI). The Mode × Social Desirability effects were complex (see the Discussion section), showing hypothesized effects under ACASI and CAPI conditions, but an opposite effect under the CASI condition. The stability of self-reported ED symptoms did not vary by mode (based on test–retest comparisons); test–retest was significantly higher for EjD symptoms within the ACASI condition. The impact of mode of administration on self-reports of ED/EjD symptoms is less predictable and dramatic than one might conclude from prior research with other types of self-report outcomes. The findings are consistent with a small, but growing, body of studies that illustrate highly situational effects of interviewing, which may depend on a complex interplay between modes, person variables, and the interview topic/target items. Self-administered methods, in particular, may not be a universal solution to response bias.     

Comparison of Daily and Retrospective Reports of Vaginal Sex in Heterosexual Men and Women

This study examined the agreement between daily and retrospective reports of vaginal sex over a two-month period in a sample of 376 heterosexually active men and women. We also examined whether gender, age, or method of daily data collection (self-administered vs. interviewer administered) were related to agreement between daily and retrospective reports. Both counts and categorical measures of frequency of the behaviors were examined. There were no gender, age, or data collection method effects. When measured as a count, participants reported more instances of vaginal intercourse in the retrospective reports than on the daily reports. In contrast, comparison of retrospective categorical measures of frequency to daily reports showed considerable variability. Possible reasons for the over-reporting of counts of vaginal sex in retrospective reports are explored.     

Sympathetic Nervous System Synchrony in Couple Therapy

The aim of this study was to test whether there is statistically significant sympathetic nervous system (SNS) synchrony between participants in couple therapy. To our knowledge, this is the first study to measure psychophysiological synchrony during therapy in a multiactor setting. The study focuses on electrodermal activity (EDA) in the second couple therapy session from 10 different cases (20 clients, 10 therapists working in pairs). The EDA concordance index was used as a measure of SNS synchrony between dyads, and synchrony was found in 85% of all the dyads. Surprisingly, co‐therapists exhibited the highest levels of synchrony, whereas couples exhibited the lowest synchrony. The client–therapist synchrony was lower than that of the co‐therapists, but higher than that of the couples. A Video Abstract is available next to the online version of this article on the JMFT web site .     

Evaluation of high and equal status male and female touchers

Henley's theory of touch and status was explored in a study where male or female subjects spoke to a male or female interviewer with equal or higher status who either touched or did not touch them. Men were relatively less favorable toward equal status and female interviewers who touched them. Status and sex of the touching interviewer did not influence reactions of women. Female interviewers who touched were evaluated more favorably when they had high rather than equal status. Evaluations of touching male interviewers were not moderated by status. Ratings of interviewer status were not influenced by interviewer touch. This finding contrasts with results from studies showing that higher status was ascribed by observers to people initiating touch in photographs and videotapes. It will be necessary in future research to determine the conditions under which touchers can achieve status in the eyes of people they touch.The authors express appreciation to Bruno M. Kappes for his helpful suggestions on the study and to Susan Johnson for her assistance with graphics.     

Honesty and Dishonesty Don’t Move Together: Trait Content Information Influences Behavioral Synchrony

Emerging evidence revealed that honesty and trustworthiness are important drivers of the impression-formation process. Questions remain, however, regarding the role of these moral attributes in guiding real and concrete behaviors. Filling this gap, the present study investigated the influence of honesty on a nonverbal behavior that regulates social interactions: behavioral synchrony. Movements were recorded while participants interacted with a partner who was depicted as honest (versus dishonest) or as friendly (versus unfriendly). Results showed that synchrony was affected only by the honesty of the partner. Specifically, the more the interaction partner lacked honesty, the lower the perceived similarity between the self and the interaction partner, which in turn diminished the promptness to engage in behavioral synchrony. Our findings connected the literature on behavioral synchrony with that on the implication of morality for social perception, revealing the key role of the honesty facet of moral character in shaping nonverbal behaviors.     

A TALE OF TWO QUESTIONS: BENEFITS OF ASKING MORE THAN ONE QUESTION

In the last two months have you had a physical examination?The ability of 660 people to accurately report on their ownrecent health procedures was assessed by comparing the recollectionsof patients to information extracted from their medical records.A major finding was that when people were asked whether theyhad a specific procedure in a given reference period (e.g.,physical exam within the last two months), overreporting occurred.A simple technique reduced overreporting: The technique entailedasking people about the procedure twice, first in connectionwith a different reference period (e.g., physical exam withinthe last six months) and then in connection with the referenceperiod of interest (e.g., physical exam within the last twomonths). Our data support a "Precision" hypothesis: The advantageof the two–time frame questioning procedure is that itconveys to the respondent that the interviewer wants greaterprecision in dating than the single–time frame questionimplies.     

Changing Relationships through Interactions: Preliminary Accounts of Parent–Child Interactions after Undertaking Individual Parent Training

Parent and child interaction training has been increasingly investigated over recent years. However, the mechanisms of change within individual training programmes are not well understood. To explore the factors that can facilitate or inhibit meaningful changes in interactions and ultimately relationships, the current study employed semi-structured interviews to obtain first person accounts from parents who had undertaken an individualised parent-training programme. Three participants provided accounts of the training programme and their perceived impact upon interactions with their children were analysed using inductive thematic analysis. The analysis resulted in three themes, which illustrate how participants adjusted their interactional style with their child to varying degrees through enhanced personal awareness, increased understanding of their child’s emotional and interactional needs, and accepting the reciprocity of interactional accountability. Changes in interactional style enabled participants to alter their perceptions of their own behaviours, their child’s behaviours, and how they influenced one another through interactions. Recommendations for future research and therapeutic practice are discussed in the context of the findings and the existing evidence base.     

Effects of Cognitive Demand and Judgment Strategy on Person Perception Accuracy

The present study examined the effects of cognitive demand and judgment strategy in performance on the Interpersonal Perception Task (Costanzo & Archer, 1989). The Interpersonal Perception Task (IPT) contains 30 brief, real-life scenes on videotape for which there are objectively correct answers to questions about status, intimacy, kinship, competition, and deception. A total of 142 participants were run in a 2 (high vs. low cognitive demand) × 2 (first impression vs. nonverbal cues strategy) × 2 (audiovisual vs. visual only modality) design. A significant Cognitive Demand × Judgment Strategy interaction supported the hypothesized benefit of a first impression strategy when participants experienced high, rather than low, cognitive demand. In contrast, participants receiving the nonverbal cues strategy had higher accuracy under low, rather than high, cognitive demand. The conditional effects of cognitive demand on person perception are considered and the larger role of cognitive resources in interaction is discussed.     

Victim of and witness to violence: an interactional perspective on mothers' perceptions of children exposed to intimate partner violence

This article reports a study of how mothers perceive the effects of intimate partner violence (IPV) during pregnancy and children's exposure to IPV: (a) Do interactional aspects of IPV have a negative impact on the fetus during pregnancy or on the newborn baby? and (b) Is there a relationship between interactional aspects of IPV and (a) children's risk of being exposed to IPV and (b) the age of the child when at risk for exposure to IPV? A representative sample of 137 IPV help-seeking mothers in Norway was interviewed. Severity of physical IPV and injury from sexual IPV increased the risk of consequences to the fetus. Frequency of physical and psychological IPV increased the likelihood of children's exposure. Duration of the partnership increased the risk of children's exposure to physical and sexual IPV. Finally, there was a negative linear association between children's age when exposed for the first time and frequency of physical and psychological IPV.     

Encouraging interactional processes with couples in therapy

The complexities of clinical social work with couples involve interactional and intrapsychic processes of all three participants: the partnersand the therapist. Highlighted in this paper are the social interactional processes of the three-person therapeutic system when the couple are seen conjointly. Examined are the general effort of the therapist, the treatment stages or procession, and delicate processes and balances monitored and facilitated by the clinical social worker.     

Processes of Sexual Orientation Questioning among Heterosexual Women

Because very little is known about heterosexual identity development, this study assesses and describes sexual orientation questioning processes of heterosexual-identified women and offers a comparison of these processes with those employed by their sexual-minority counterparts. Participants included 333 female college students (ages 18–23; M = 19.2): 228 participants primarily identified as “exclusively straight/heterosexual,” and 105 participants indicated a sexual-minority identity. Sixty-seven percent of exclusively heterosexual respondents (n = 154) indicated having thought about or questioned their sexual orientation. The processes by which heterosexual participants described questioning their sexual orientation were coded for the presence of five emergent categories using an inductive thematic coding methodology. These five categories included unelaborated questioning (19%), other-sex experiences (16%), exposure to sexual minorities (26%), assessment of same-sex attraction (48%), and evaluations of same-sex behavior (26%). Several unifying and differentiating themes emerged between sexual orientation groups. Results from this study suggest that contemporary young women's heterosexuality is not necessarily an unexamined identity; indeed, the large majority of young women in this sample were deliberately identifying as heterosexual after contemplating alternative possibilities.     

Quantifying Facial Expression Synchrony in Face-To-Face Dyadic Interactions: Temporal Dynamics of Simultaneously Recorded Facial EMG Signals

Human social interaction is enriched with synchronous movement which is said to be essential to establish interactional flow. One commonly investigated phenomenon in this regard is facial mimicry, the tendency of humans to mirror facial expressions. Because studies investigating facial mimicry in face-to-face interactions are lacking, the temporal dynamics of facial mimicry remain unclear. We therefore developed and tested the suitability of a novel approach to quantifying facial expression synchrony in face-to-face interactions: windowed cross-lagged correlation analysis (WCLC) for electromyography signals. We recorded muscle activations related to smiling (Zygomaticus Major) and frowning (Corrugator Supercilii) of two interaction partners simultaneously in 30 dyadic affiliative interactions. We expected WCLC to reliably detect facial expression synchrony above chance level and, based on previous research, expected the occurrence of rapid synchronization of smiles within 200 ms. WCLC significantly detected synchrony of smiling but not frowning compared to a control condition of chance level synchrony in six different interactional phases (smiling: d _z s = .85–1.11; frowning: d _z s = .01–.30). Synchronizations of smiles between interaction partners predominantly occurred within 1000 ms, with a significant amount occurring within 200 ms. This rapid synchronization of smiles supports the notion of the existence of an anticipated mimicry response for smiles. We conclude that WCLC is suited to quantify the temporal dynamics of facial expression synchrony in dyadic interactions and discuss implications for different psychological research areas.     

Variation within households in consent to link survey data to administrative records: evidence from the UK Millennium Cohort Study

This study expands our knowledge of consent in linking survey and administrative data by studying respondents’ behaviour when consenting to link their own records and when consenting to link those of their children. It develops and tests a number of hypothesised mechanisms of consent, some of which were not explored in the past. The hypotheses cover: parental pride, privacy concerns, loyalty to the survey, pre-existing relations with the agency holding the data, and interviewer effects. The study uses data from the longitudinal Millennium Cohort Study to analyse the correlates of consent in multiple domains (i.e. linkage of education, health and economic records). The findings show that respondent’s behaviour vary depending on the consent domain and on the person within the household for whom consent is sought. In particular, the cohort member’s cognitive skills and the main respondent’s privacy concerns have differential effects on consent. On the other hand, loyalty to the survey proxied by the longitudinal response history has a significant and strong impact on consent irrespective of the outcome. The findings also show that interviewers account for a large proportion of variations in consent even after controlling for the characteristics of the interviewer’s assignment area. In total, it is possible to conclude that the significant impact of some of the correlates will lead to sample bias which needs to be accounted for when working with linked survey and administrative data.     

Interviewer Effect in a Survey of Drinking Practices*

This study investigates the relationship of interviewer characteristics to the responses of their interviewees in a survey in a relatively sensitive area—drinking practices. Generally, respondents seem to have reacted to easily ascertainable characteristics of the interviewers, such as sex, status (as measured by education, occupation, and clothing), and religion. The attitudes of the interviewer toward his interviewing were also related to respondents' reported drinking. It is concluded that interviewing is a social relationship of brief duration in which the respondent's performance reflects norms that tend to emerge based on the information each of the participants is able to learn about the other.     

Social Effects of Movement Synchrony: Increased Infant Helpfulness only Transfers to Affiliates of Synchronously Moving Partners

Interpersonal synchrony increases cooperation among adults, children, and infants. We tested whether increased infant helpfulness transfers to individuals uninvolved in the movement, but shown to be affiliates of a synchronously moving partner. Initially, 14‐month‐old infants (N = 48) watched a live skit by Experimenters 1 and 2 that either demonstrated affiliation or individuality. Infants in both groups were then randomly assigned to be bounced to music either synchronously or asynchronously with Experimenter 1. Infant instrumental helpfulness toward Experimenter 2 was then measured. If the two experimenters were affiliates, infants from the synchronous movement condition were significantly more helpful toward Experimenter 2 than infants from the asynchronous movement condition. However, if the two experimenters were not affiliated, synchrony effects on prosociality did not transfer to Experimenter 2. These results show the importance of musical synchrony for social interaction and suggest that infants may use an understanding of third‐party social relationships when directing their own social behaviors.