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Rapport building is central to effective interviewing. However, previous research outlines that rapport is difficult tooperationalize, assess, and train partly due to inconsistent definitions and varying methods of measurement. Asmore international policing organizations embrace humane information gathering approaches, definitions andassessment of rapport must be adapted across cultures and languages to enhance training and professionalpractice. The present study outlines the cross-cultural adaptation of an established tool for measuring rapport inpolice interviews; specifically, the translation of dimensions of rapport-building behaviors from English to Swedish,in combination with adaptation for use within the Swedish culture and legal system. The cultural validation processfollowed the International Test Commission guidelines which involved translation, expert focus groups, interraterreliability tests, and pilot testing with experts. The findings of this process highlighted that aspects of rapportbuilding rely on pragmatic word usage within cultural contexts. For accurate assessment of rapport-buildingbehaviors, compromises on lexical and semantic translations are required when adapting definitions andoperationalizations across languages and cultures. The findings of this study can support researchers and teachersin the assessment and training of rapport-building behaviors, as well as inform future cross-cultural studies ofrapport within investigative interviewing.

Using interpersonal skills is an important part of humane and effective investigative interviewing for police. Training police in these skills varies in its contents and amount between countries and police forces. This review explores how interpersonal skills are defined and assessed in the context of interview training for police. A systematic evaluation resulted in 26 studies meeting the inclusion criteria. The most trained interpersonal skills were rapport (n = 18 studies), and active listening (n = 2 studies). Studies also evaluated training environments (n = 3 studies), and adherence to or knowledge of specific interviewing protocols (e.g. PEACE, n = 1; Whole Story framework, n = 1, procedural justice, n = 1). The reported effects of training vary with half of the included studies (n = 13) reporting positive effects while the other half (n = 13) reported limited or no effects. We discuss how conceptual definitions and study designs affect assessment of training outcomes. Aspects of training assessments (e.g. use of mock-interviews, self-reports, and lack of long-term follow-ups in the field) are discussed. We also discuss the need for more systematic research on training interpersonal skills for interviewing. Our findings should guide and inform further research on the topic.

Physical activity in general, and a single bout of exercise in particular, has been found to have a positive effect on memory and learning. However, findings have shown different results for declarative memory (explicit knowledge) and procedural memory (implicit knowledge). The aim of this interventional study was to investigate the effects of a single bout of moderate-to-vigorous exercise during memory consolidation on both memory types compared to physical inactivity. A between-within group study design consisted of two test sessions with 24 hours in between. Forty-four participants were randomized into an exercise group (18 males, 4 females, M = 24 years) or a control group (18 males, 4 females, M = 25.2 years). Both groups underwent memory testing the first day, with the exercise group afterwards performing a single bout of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (cycling) for approximately 30 minutes. Memory tests were repeated the second day. Results showed that the improvement for the exercise group was significantly better compared to the control group on measures of procedural memory. No differences were found regarding declarative memory.

A core component of criminal investigation is the investigative interview where investigators rely onan interviewee’s willingness to disclose information. This willingness to share can be heavilydependent on the interviewee’s trust in the interviewing officer and perceptions of law enforcement. Establishing and maintaining trust during an interview thus becomes a vital part of effectiveinvestigative interviewing. Swedish police are currently implementing a new model for investigativeinterviewing which utilizes building trust and maintaining conversational rapport with theinterviewee. Previous research has highlighted that facilitating trust and rapport yields more detailedand truthful accounts than interviews using more dominant styles. However, rapport-focusedinterviewing has proven to be difficult to operationalize and teach to recruits. Our study aimed tounderstand what Swedish police teachers value as important interpersonal skills for investigativeinterviewing as well as what strategies and struggles these teachers face when teaching recruits.Semi-structured interviews were conducted with six experienced interviewing teachers at Swedishpolice training programs. The teachers described that taking the interviewee's perspective, acceptingresponsibility to build rapport, as well as social and situational flexibility were important skills forinterviewers to process. When describing their strategies and struggles in teaching, the teachersdescribed the need to: bridge theory and practice; train flexibility through diverse scenarios; adjustto students’ social maturity and ability to self-reflect; and work with limited resources. This study alsohighlights how interviewing teachers express a need for adequate time and resources to help recruitsdevelop the necessary skills for interviewing. This study contributes perspectives on building trustduring information-gathering procedures and highlights what challenges instructors might faceduring training.

Retrieval practice is a learning strategy that has repeatedly been found to have positive effects on memory and learning. However, studies indicate that students rarely use retrieval practice on a voluntary basis. The objective of the present study was to examine students’ self-regulated use of retrieval practice, and to determine whether sex and individual differences in cognitive and non-cognitive aspects are related to optional use of practice testing. A classroom study was conducted with 146 upper-secondary school students taking courses in mathematics and Swedish. An ABAB design was used to compare students’ optional and non-optional use of retrieval practice (i.e., repeated online quizzing). Students performed cognitive tasks to assess working memory capacity and fluid intelligence and completed self-reports of non-cognitive factors related to school achievement, such as grit, need for cognition (NFC), conscientiousness and openness. Quiz use was then compared using paired- and independent-samples t-tests, and hierarchical linear regression analyses explored relations to individual differences. The results showed that students completed significantly fewer quizzes in the optional sections than in the non-optional sections, and that females completed significantly more optional quizzes than males in Swedish, but not in mathematics. Further, the results showed that conscientiousness predicted optional quiz use in mathematics, whereas sex, NFC, conscientiousness, and openness predicted quiz use in Swedish. To conclude, although the findings show a relatively low optional/self-regulated use of practice testing, in line with earlier research, they suggest that sex and non-cognitive factors, such as personality characteristics, can predict optional use of practice testing.

Swedish police are implementing a new model for investigative interviewing. Previous research has highlighted that investigative interviewing is difficult to operationalize and teach to recruits. This study aimed to understand what Swedish police teachers value as important interpersonal skills for investigative interviewing as well as what strategies and struggles these teachers face when teaching recruits. Interviews were conducted with six experienced interviewing teachers at Swedish police training programs. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. The teachers described that taking the interviewee’s perspective and accepting responsibility to build rapport, as well as social and situational flexibility were important skills for interviewers to process. When describing their strategies and struggles in teaching, the teachers described the need to bridge theory and practice, train flexibility through diverse scenarios, adjust to students’ social maturity and ability to self-reflect, and work with limited resources. This study also highlights how interviewing teachers express a need for adequate time and resources to be able to help recruits develop the necessary skills for interviewing.

In many educational programmes preparing students for professions where human interaction is central, the development of empathic ability is of importance. The aim of this study was to explore attitudes towards the importance of empathy in police work among police students. The intention was also to investigate if attitudes would change over time during education, and whether gender differences could be observed. A modified version of the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy was administered to 355 Swedish police students in a mixed method design, including both between- and within-groups comparisons. Attitudes toward the importance of empathy were measured before and after a practical internship. The result showed that the students in general found empathic ability important, but also that they did not change their attitudes over time .The results were conflicting when it came to gender differences. There was no significant result for the between-group sample, but female students reported significantly higher compared to male students in the between-within group. This research is valuable in the discussion on how “soft skills” such as empathic ability can be assessed and developed in students in preparation for professional practice, and can also be useful in educational evaluation and planning.

As Swedish law enforcement embraces interviewing techniques that rely on psychological concepts and interpersonal skills, the teaching of these main ideas needs to be a central part of police education. This presentation willdiscuss how concepts familiar in psychology are understood and taught within Swedish police education today. Usingmaterials from the Swedish police authority, teaching resources, and the scientific literature, this presentation aimsto show how police education is adopting psychological perspectives and how psychological research and educationcan benefit in training police. We will also present future studies to further develop and incorporate psychologicalperspectives in educating law enforcement.

A crucial part of the crime investigation process is the investigative interview. Each interview is aninstance of law enforcement and the public meeting to exchange information. Interviews thus carry a great deal of weight in both the investigation and public relations. Although the main goal of interviewing is often to get information related to an investigation, interviews are also an opportunity for law enforcement to offer support, give information, gain trust, and connect with individuals in the community. Previous research has found that a humane interviewing style that focuses on building trust, good communication, and remaining objective while listening to the otherperson’s account has advantages such as eliciting more detailed accounts and more truthfulinformation. This style of interviewing has also been shown to be strategically beneficial regardless ofif the interviewee is a suspect, witness, or victim. However, researchers are still debating how toimplement empathy and rapport-building behaviors in interviews. There is a great need for researchon how police officers acquire the core skills needed for good communication, building rapport, andestablishing trust during interviews. The aim of this project is to better understand how humane and empathetic interviewing is implemented in Swedish police education in order to achieve a larger emphasis on building and maintaining rapport, empathy, and emotion regulation. This project will use both quantitative and qualitative methods to approach the research questions. The goal is to help the police both in getting as much information as possible, as well as improve the experiences ofthe interview for both the police and the interviewee. Understanding and implementing a morehumane approach to interviewing could help individual officers de-escalate tense situations andnavigate their own stress responses, as well as help strengthen community trust in policing when interacting with interviewees.

Purpose: Empathy has been widely theorized as an important ability in professions such as policing, in which to perform well individuals require multiple and interacting abilities, not least when resolving conflict situations. Even so, there are few studies investigating how subconstructs of empathy relate to other constructs such as general cognitive ability. The purpose of this paper is to establish, after evaluating psychometric properties, relationships among measures of empathy and cognitive ability in a sample of Swedish police students (n = 157).

Design/methodology/approach: Multiple latent variable models of how the different measures work to predict tasks that can be seen as proxies for the ability to understand another person’s situation and intentions are evaluated to determine the most robust relationship(s) within the data.

Findings: We find support for the psychometric properties reported in previous studies with the used instruments. We also find support for perspective-taking, a cognitive empathy subconstruct predicting the ability to recognize emotions, and also the affective part of empathy, predicting general cognitive ability. These findings are discussed at length in the paper.

Originality/value: This research adds more knowledge to the issue of how general cognitive ability relates to cognitive empathy and other subconstructs of empathy or Theory of Mind.