It Takes Two to Make an Interview Go Right: Round-Robin Designs to Demonstrate Interviewer and Witness Variance

Purpose: Investigative interviews are complex, dyadic, activities typically studied by focusing on developing techniques to improve witness performance. However, in field settings, interviewers are known to vary in their presentation of good interviewing practice. Thus, it is important to conduct research reflective of complex idiosyncrasies in witnesses, interviewers and unique pairings of both. This study explores such sources of variation in an by making use of a 'round-robin' design. Such methodology allows the statistical demonstration of individual difference and unique partner-generated variance in interview performance. Methods: In our study, a total of 45 witnesses were questioned about five real crime videos. After witnessing each event, witnesses were interviewed by a different interviewer (or a computer self-administered interview). In total, nine 'rounds' of interviews occurred, with five new witnesses being interviewed in the same five interview settings (resulting in 225 interviews). After each interview both interviewers and witnesses were asked to complete subjective interview experience ratings. The quality (grain size) and quantity of information in the statements was coded to index witness report accuracy. Results: Principally, the results demonstrate the degree to which witnesses and interviewers affect statement quality, and highlight the influence of unique interviewer-witness pairs. (Participant personality and interviewer behaviour were also analysed, but with limited effects). Conclusion: This study presents the useful round-robin methodology for studying interviewer-witness behaviour. Whilst the current personality and behavioural measures do not account for these individual differences, we advocate this methodology be adopted more widely to better understand interview performance.

A DRM Interoperability Architecture Based on Local Conversion Bridge with Proxy Re-Cryptography

Various DRM standards curb users freedom to transfer and share digital contents among rendering devices. Several interoperability schemes that accommodate devices DRM compatibility have been raised through content distribution or sharing channel, these approaches are usually implemented by domain management or third party transformation services. Most of these schemes emphasize their advantages over others on trust level, security, cost, efficiency and flexibility. Our proposal integrates previous work to maintain the basic requirement of DRM system, we stick to local third party as the foundation for interoperability, we also use proxy re-encryption scheme to protect raw content from disclosure during content translation. And we try to enhance the system by bringing in three principles: security of content encryption key, fewest participants in conversion and minimum calculation requirements for end device. Finally, Statistical demonstration is presented with comparison to other schemes in our analysis to prove performance improvements.

Acoustic structure and contexts of emission of vocal signals by black lemurs

We investigated the vocal repertoire of a Malagasy primate: the black lemur (Eulemur macaco macaco). The first study allowed the characterization of 16 different vocal signals on the basis of acoustic parameters. Black lemurs emit sparse harmonic sounds, dense harmonic sounds, spectrally structured noise (Beeman, 1998) and a wide variety of grunts. The second study focused on the behavioral context of emission of these signals and used the pre- and post-event histogram method (Douglass and Sudd, 1980; Preuschoft, 1995a). It provides statistical demonstration of the association between a signal and other behaviors of the emitter, thus giving insight into the latter’s motivations. Four signals are linked to affiliative and agonistic interactions. Three signals express a state of alarm, and two appear related to discomfort. Most grunts are linked to contact and signal precisely the emitter’s level of vigilance. Other interdisciplinary communication studies could benefit from methodology and software used here.