Keynote speakers
We are delighted to introduce the Keynote Speakers of EAPL2023!
To revitalize the traditional keynote format, we challenged our presenters to include their Outstanding questions for the field, inviting the audience to engage in an interactive discussion on these controversial topics during the keynote.
Professor Galit Nahari
website: https://criminology.biu.ac.il/en/nahariga/
Professor Galit Nahari is the head of the Department of Criminology at Bar-Ilan University, Israel. She currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Legal and Criminological Psychology. Her research covers a variety of topics in deception, investigative interviewing, and decision-making. A prime contribution of her work is the Verifiability Approach to lie detection. She works closely with practitioners, promoting fruitful cooperation in high education, research, and training. She advises, lectures, and conducts workshops on verbal lie detection nationally and internationally.
Keynote lecture: Verbal lie detection: When memory and strategy meet
Decades of research established the notion that liars and truth-tellers differ in their verbal utterances. In this keynote, Prof. Nahari will introduce two leading factors involved in shaping the utterance of liars and truth-tellers – strategy and memory. By discussing the roles of each factor alone as well as the dyad between them, Prof. Nahari will further demonstrate that in given conditions, it is not only liars that act strategically, and it is not only truth-tellers that are affected by the quality of their memory. Finally, she will discuss lie detection approaches and techniques developed in her research lab within the strategy-memory interplay and further elaborate on their applicability in different contexts and the challenges involved in applying them. In the course of it, Prof. Nahari will also share her perspectives on the optimal process and the initial conditions required for a successful implementation of tools that were developed in academia.
Professor Ray Bull
website: www.raybullassociates.co.uk
Ray Bull is (part-time) Professor of Criminal Investigation at The University of Derby and Emeritus Professor of Forensic Psychology at The University of Leicester. In 2022 he was informed that he had become a "Distinguished Member" of the American Psychology-Law Society for his "unusual and outstanding contribution to psychology and Law". In 2008 he received from the European Association of Psychology and Law the ‘Award for Lifetime Contribution to Psychology and Law’. He has authored/co-authored a large number of research publications, regularly acts as an expert witness and has conducted workshops/training on investigative interviewing in over 35 countries.
Keynote lecture: The PEACE method of investigative interviewing
In 1992 the police in England (with contributions from psychologists) developed a new yet ethical method for the interviewing of suspects (and of witnesses/victims). They called this innovative method 'PEACE', which stands for the five phases of Planning/Preparation, Explain/Engage, Account, Closure, and Evaluation. Assessments of this method were first conducted in England, finding that interviewers who demonstrated good levels of the 'PEACE' skills obtained more relevant information from suspects. Since then, studies in a variety of countries have also found 'PEACE' skills to be effective. More recently, essential components of the 'Engage' phase (i.e., rapport and cognitive empathy) have been found to be associated with real-life sex crime suspects choosing to provide more investigative relevant information. Such research assisted the United Nations ‘Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment’ to advocate the development of a worldwide document for non-coercive interviewing methods and he noted that "The essence of an alternative information-gathering model was first captured by the PEACE model of interviewing ".
Professor Victoria Talwar
website: http://talwarresearch.com/staff/victoria-talwar-ph-d/
Dr. Victoria Talwar is a James McGill Professor and Chair of the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology at McGill University, Canada. She is a leading expert on children’s verbal deception. She has published numerous articles on children's honesty and lie-telling behaviours, as well as child witness credibility. She works with practitioners (educators, social workers, legal professionals) on research, training, and knowledge mobilization. Among other distinctions, she is a Fellow of American Psychological Association (Division 7), Fellow of Association for Psychological Science, and member of the College of the Royal Society of Canada.
Keynote lecture: Liar, Liar Pants on Fire! The development of children’s verbal deception and the implications for child witness testimony
Honesty is a virtue that is highly valued in our society. It is viewed as a moral obligation, encouraged by parents and educators, and required by clinicians, social workers, and legal professionals. For the courts, the veracity of child witness testimony is central to the justice system, where there are serious consequences for the child, the accused, and society. Dr. Victoria Talwar will discuss research examining children’s developing lie-telling abilities and the cognitive, social, and motivational factors that influence their behaviour. She will also discuss the influence of coaching on children’s reports and factors that influence their truthful disclosures. She will discuss the implications for child witness testimony and professionals who wish to ensure the veracity of children’s reports.
Professor Irit Hershkowitz
Professor of Social Work, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel. Irit is one of the founders of the NICHD protocol, and more recently, of the Revised NICHD protocol. For three decades, she has conducted field research on best practice concerning child interviews and has specifically focused on the value of protocol-guided interviews. She has been largely involved in domestic and international training for child investigators. Irit is co-author of the book 'Tell me what happened: structured investigative interviews of child victims and witnesses' (Chichester, UK and Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2008; 2018) and author of many scientific articles and book chapters.
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Keynote lecture: The NICHD-R investigative interviewing protocol: recent updates
Because forensic interviewers often have difficulty adhering to recommended child interview practices in the field, the NICHD interview Protocol was designed to translate professional recommendations into operational guidelines. This structured Protocol included techniques for maximizing the amount and quality of information elicited from alleged victims. Effectiveness tests demonstrated convincingly that interviewers using the Protocol better applied best practice recommendations, and that the children, in turn, provided much more forensically relevant information that was more likely to be accurate.
However, whereas the Protocol initially emphasized cognitive factors affecting the retrieval and reporting of experienced events, recent research has focused on the emotional and motivational factors that affect the willingness to disclose abuse and describe it in detail. Accordingly, a Revised Protocol (the NICHD-R) has been developed, tested, validated, and implemented in various sites globally, including in Romania.The NICHD-R Protocol is designed to help interviewers establish the cognitive and emotional conditions that together maximize the likelihood that abused children will disclose and describe their experiences of maltreatment when formally interviewed. In this talk, recent updates, applications and empirical tests of the NICHD-R protocol will be described.
Assoc. Prof. Timothy J. Luke
website: https://www.gu.se/en/about/find-staff/timothyluke
Dr Timothy J. Luke is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Gothenburg, where he is the director of the Master’s Programme in Psychological Science. His research mainly focuses on interviewing, interrogation, and deception. Alongside work in legal psychology, he is interested in research methods, replication, and open science. He also serves as an associate editor at the journal Psychology, Crime and Law.
Keynote lecture: The Foggy Woods Between Science and Practice: Theoretical and Methodological Challenges in Applying Psychological Research on Deception
Psychological research on deception has advanced considerably in the last several decades, and science-based methods of detecting deception offer substantial benefits over pseudoscientific and untested approaches. But someone has to deliver the bad news, too. The existing literature on deception and its detection features methodological and theoretical issues that problematize the implementation of science-based practices. Researchers lack consensus on theoretical understandings of deception and on what behaviours distinguish between truthful and deceptive messages. Additionally, we have inadequately studied heterogeneity across people, situations, and time. In short, right now, we don’t agree on what happens and why it happens, and we don’t know enough about how well our general conclusions apply at an individual level. This lecture examines these issues and more, as well as potential paths forward.