Differences in the comprehensibility of testimony : a comparative study of magistrate's credibility judgements, witnesses' ethnicity and court role

Only limited research has been undertaken regarding the effects of extralegal variables on the verdicts of lower courts. Bennett and Feldman (1981) have demonstrated that the well-formedness of the semantic structure of testimony determines its credibility. It has been shown that the comprehensibility of narrative discourse (testimony) is a reliable indicator of its well-formedness (Thorndyke, 1977). This study aims to explore the relationships between comprehensibility (well-formedness) as a dependent variable, and magistrates' credibility judgements, the ethnicity of witnesses and their court roles as independent variables. Simple three way Anovas constituted the bulk of the statistical analyses.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Department of Psychology

Year dc:date.issued

1985

Author dc:creator

• Hansson, Desirée S

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Foster, Don
• Van Zyl Smit, Dirk

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/17018

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/17018