Diabetes educators without formal exposure to family theory may be overestimating how much they emphasize family support in diabetes education. Increasing formal education about the importance of family involvement in self-management behaviors could positively affect individual diabetes self-management outcomes.

Several experiments have demonstrated a camera perspective bias in evaluations of videotaped confessions: videotapes with the camera focused on the suspect lead to judgments of greater voluntariness than alternative presentation formats. The present research investigated potential mediators of this bias. Using eye tracking to measure visual attention, Experiment 1 replicated the bias and revealed that changes in camera perspective are accompanied by corresponding changes in duration of fixation on the suspect and interrogator. A path analysis indicated that visual attention partially mediated the bias, with at least one additional factor independently contributing to it. A proposed second factor was changes in available visual content that naturally coincide with alterations in camera perspective. Experiment 2 directly manipulated observers' focus and thus more conclusively established visual attention as one mediator of the camera perspective bias. Together the two experiments provide plausible evidence that differences in visual content may also mediate the bias.

Objective. Numerous previous experiments have established the existence of a camera perspective bias in evaluations of videotaped interrogations/confessions: videotapes that make the suspect more visually conspicuous than the interrogator(s) by virtue of focusing the camera on the suspect yield assessments of voluntariness and judgments of guilt that are greater than those found when alternative presentation formats are used. One limitation of this body of research is that all the interrogations/confessions used to date were simulations; therefore, no evidence currently demonstrates that the camera perspective bias importantly generalizes to authentic videotapes recorded by police and depicting actual suspects and interrogators. Two experiments addressed this issue.Methods. Experiment 1 compared judgments of voluntariness based on viewing two authentic videotaped confessions -one recorded with the camera focused on the suspect, the other with the camera focused equally on the suspect and interrogator -with those based on listening only to the audio or reading only a transcript. Experiment 2 compared judgments of voluntariness and guilt of an originally equal-focus videotaped confession that was edited to produce suspect-focus and interrogator-focus versions.Results. In Experiment 1, participants judged the videotape version of the confession to be more voluntary than either the audio only or transcript versions, but only for the suspect-focus videotape. In Experiment 2, participants viewing the suspect-focus version of the confession (relative to the interrogator-focus version) judged it to be more voluntary and the suspect more likely to be guilty.Conclusion. The present research further strengthens the policy implications of the literature on camera perspective bias by providing evidence that the bias manifests with authentic interrogations/confessions as well as with simulations.

Videotape is becoming an increasingly common means of recording and presenting confessions that are obtained during custodial interrogations. Many scientific, legal, and political experts view this procedural advance as a solution to the growing problem of some innocent people being induced to incriminate themselves when confronted by standard police interrogation tactics. We review a program of research that indicates, however, that the indiscriminate application of videotaping to solve the problem of coerced or false confessions slipping through the system could ironically exacerbate the situation.

Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences.-Norman CousinsThis chapter draws on the psychological literature to emphasize some important issues that would be prudent for lawmakers to keep in mind in their pursuit of a sound videotaping policy. Such a scientifically based policy would not only require that custodial interrogations be videotaped in their entirety but would also provide guidance on how interrogations should be videotaped to best protect the innocent from the possibility of wrongful conviction. Moreover, we argue in this chapter-again from the standpoint of relevant science-that even under the best of circumstances, evaluations of defendants' videotaped statements obtained during a typical police interrogation conducted in the United States (see chap. 1, this volume) are subject to the same biases that often undermine the quality of judgments of in vivo interactions between people (e.g., the fundamental attribution error; Ross, 1977). Consequently, the ultimate success of the videotaping reform will only be as good as fact finders' decision-making processes. It is not the point of this chapter to disparage the videotaping movement; rather, as the chapter's epigraph suggests, the hope is to further its success by identifying potential unintended consequences and offering recommendations, sooner as opposed to later, for avoiding them (cf. Lassiter & Dudley, 1991).