Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Effects Of Using A Scripted Or Unscripted Interview In Forensic Interviews With Interpreters, Nicole Pruss

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The current study set out to replicate and expand the results of a study by Pruss (2007) which found that information is lost when interviews are conducted through interpreters. In the present study, Viewers (i.e., mock eyewitnesses) fluent in Spanish watched a video of a burglary and then were interviewed in Spanish about what they had seen. Half of Viewers were randomly assigned to be interviewed by an English-speaking Interviewer through a bilingual Interpreter (Interpreter condition), and the other half were randomly assigned to be interviewed directly by a Spanish speaking Interviewer with no Interpreter (No Interpreter condition). Within each …