testimony. It teaches, for example, that colors to which particular attention has not been given are especially ill remembered; that times of a few minutes are almost always considerably over-estimated; that the main outlines of an event, if they have been followed with attention and if the witness has not shared especially in the emotions involved, are commonly correctly reproduced; that on the contrary, things observed without attention are very liable to distortion. (For this reason delayed reports with reference to the appearance or clothing of a person not carefully observed are for the most part worthless.)
e. As the psychological study of testimony advances it will become possible for experts of psychological training in exceptional cases to offer opinions on the psychical character of important witnesses; the experimental testing of witnesses also, e.g., with reference to their capacity to observe, their suggestibility, their ability to estimate extents of time and space, their memory for colors, seems at least in principle, possible; though, so far, psychological methods are not ripe for it.
f. The best thing of all is, of course, that the jurist himself should be a psychological expert; for this reason it is before all else desirable that jurists should be thoroughly trained in applied psychology and its methods and results. A jurist who has himself been the subject of experiment and thus has seen in his own case how memory functions and how the answering of questions ( Verhbrsfrageri] is actually performed, as well as on what conditions these operations depend, will profit from the experience in the technique of his own questioning.
g. The testimony of adolescents and children demands special consideration. While the juvenile offender before the court receives a wholly different treatment from the adult, the juvenile witness is not thus distinguished, It is not borne in mind that the usual procedure of interrogation greatly diminishes the value of child testimony and at the same time puts the juvenile witness in moral peril. The introduction of special investigating magistrates ( Untersuchungsrichter} for juvenile witnesses, before whom the children should be examined but once and then as soon as possible after the event, is to be desired.
8. Literature. The most important titles in the literature of the Psychology of Testimony, as well as collective reviews of it, are to be found in W. Stern's Beitrage zur Psychologic der Aussage, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1903-6, and in its continuation, the Zeitschrift fur angcwandte Psychologic, edited by Stern and L,ipmann since 1907. In America G. M. Whipple gives in the Psychological Bulletin, VI, No. 5, May, 1909, a collective review with bibliography; and a very extended bibliography has also been brought together by Wigmore in the Illinois Law Review, III, Feb., 1909.
