Brewer, N., Harvey, S., & Semmler, C. (2004). Improving comprehension of jury instructions with audio-visual presentation. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 18(6), 765-776.

Brewer, N.; Harvey, S.; Semmler, C.

2004

Brewer, N., Harvey, S., & Semmler, C. (2004). Improving comprehension of jury instructions with audio-visual presentation. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 18(6), 765-776.

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This study examined whether mock-jurors' comprehension of judicial self-defence instructions improved when an audio-visual instructional format involving computer animations and a flow chart was used. In a mock-juror paradigm, 90 law students (experts) and 90 legally untrained adults (novices) were randomly allocated to one of three instructional conditions (audio, audio-elaborated, audio-visual). Dependent measures of self-defence comprehension included verdict delivery, multiple-choice (recognition), paraphrasing (recall) and novel scenarios (transfer). Law students performed better on self-defence comprehension tests than novices in the audio-only conditions. The audio-visual format significantly enhanced novices' comprehension, with their comprehension scores matching those of law students

There were four major findings. First, very poor comprehension was shown by a community sample of jury-eligible participants when provided with a judge’s verbal (audio) instructions. Second, the audio-visual format produced a marked improvement in comprehension that we demonstrated (via the audio-elaborated control condition) was not attributable to the extra detail available in the audio-visual presentation. Third, although expert mock-jurors displayed superior performance to novicesunder the standard (i.e. audio) instructions, their performance was nowhere near the ceiling on any of the four measures, a finding that re-emphasizes the difficulties associated with understanding judges’ instructions. Fourth, the performance superiority of the experts was no longer in evidence in the audio-visual condition, with experts failing to improve and novices matching experts’ performance levels.

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