Having police officers practice with computer-generated child avatars improves their ability to interview child victims of abuse, according to a study published in the open access journal Frontiers in Psychology.
Professor Pekka Santtila from NYU Shanghai together with colleagues from Estonia and the UK had twenty-two Estonian police officers interview four computer generated child avatars. Half of them received feedback after these simulated interviews whereas the other half did not. Transcripts of interviews with actual child victims of abuse conducted by these police officers both before and after the training were coded for interview quality. Receiving feedback increased the proportion of recommended questions both within the simulations and, importantly, also during interviewing with actual child victims and witnesses. This study demonstrated for the first time transfer of learning from simulated interviews to actual investigative interviews.
“This is important as more open questions asked by interviewers helps us uncover what has happened to children while not introducing mistakes into their accounts”, says Professor Santtila.
This study is part of the ongoing project at NYU Shanghai into innovative training approaches to investigative interviewing. The important innovating in this project is that the computer generated child avatars’ behavior is determined by algorithms that are based on the behavior of actual children in interview situations.
To download the full article, go to
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.753111/full