Background This paper investigates whether state legislators find testimony influential, to what extent testimony influences policy-makers’ decisions, and defines the features of testimony important in affecting policy-makers’ decisions.   Methods We used a mixed method approach to analyze responses from 862 state-level legislators in the United States (U.S.). Data were collected via a phone su...

BACKGROUND This paper investigates whether state legislators find testimony influential, to what extent testimony influences policy-makers' decisions, and defines the features of testimony important in affecting policy-makers' decisions. METHODS We used a mixed method approach to analyze responses from 862 state-level legislators in the United States (U.S.). Data were collected via a phone su...

Although fingerprint experts have presented evidence in criminal courts for more than a century, there have been few scientific investigations of the human capacity to discriminate these patterns. A recent latent print matching experiment shows that qualified, court-practicing fingerprint experts are exceedingly accurate (and more conservative) compared with novices, but they do make errors. He...

By age 3, children track a speaker's record of past accuracy and use it as a cue to current reliability. Two experiments (N=95 children) explored whether preschoolers' judgements about, and trust in, the accuracy of a previously reliable informant extend to other members of the informant's group. In Experiment 1, both 3- and 4-year-olds consistently judged an animated character who was associat...

“sources of knowledge” is one of the significant topics in contemporary epistemology. epistemologists accept five sources of knowledge: perception, reason, introspection, testimony, and memory. this paper compares introspection, testimony and memory in mulla sadra and descartes’ philosophical systems. the two philosophers accept introspection, testimony and memory as the sources of knowledge. b...

background this paper investigates whether state legislators find testimony influential, to what extent testimony influences policy-makers’ decisions, and defines the features of testimony important in affecting policy-makers’ decisions.   methods we used a mixed method approach to analyze responses from 862 state-level legislators in the united states (u.s.). data were collected via a phone su...

We tested whether an opposing expert is an effective method of educating jurors about scientific validity by manipulating the methodological quality of defense expert testimony and the type of opposing prosecution expert testimony (none, standard, addresses the other expert's methodology) within the context of a written trial transcript. The presence of opposing expert testimony caused jurors t...

Experimental psychologists increasingly are asked to give expert testimony in court, especially with regard to issues of eyewitness reliability. Whether or not experimental psychologists should give expert testimony on these matters is a controversial issue. The empirical literature suggests that potential jurors do not have a good understanding of the variables influencing eyewitness accuracy ...