Interrogations-and-Confessions-Handbook

598 A Psychology of Interrogations and Confessions
rank for persons in the general population in England. Considering the fact that
the test was administered in English, the results indicate that Mr A has had
least average verbal memory capacity. He would be expected to do somewhat
better if tested in his own language. It is noteworthy that Mr A retained his
overall memory performance very well over a two week period (i.e. he retained
almost 80% of the material on both tests). The confabulation scores on immediate
recall and delayed recall after approximately one hour fell within normal
limits. However, there was an unusually large increase in Mr A’s confabulatory
responses after a two week period, even though his memory for the material
had deteriorated only slightly. This indicates that time delay has marked effects
upon his producing confabulations. Although confabulations on the scales
do increase over time as memory of the story deteriorates (see Chapter 12), the
increase in confabulation noted in Mr A’s case was unusually large, particularly
with regard to the GSS 2 (i.e. there were 11 items of confabulation).
In spite of the general absence of undue susceptibility to suggestions (the
suggestibility scores on both scales fell in the average range—50th percentile
rank), it is noteworthy that the answers given by Mr A to the 20 specific questions
tended to be very vague, and he was hesitant and kept changing his
answers (e.g. ‘I don’t remember, probably, can’t remember that’; ‘maybe traffic
lights, don’t know, yes’). This suggested that Mr A lacked confidence in his
memory and found it difficult to discriminate between true recollections and
erroneous material. This tendency of his to be so hesitant in his answers was
very unusual for somebody who has a good intellectual and memory capacity.
Figure 23.1 shows the T-scores obtained on the Minnesota Multiphasic
Personality Inventory (MMPI; Hathaway & McKinley, 1991) on two separate
occasions, 10 months apart. The MMPI was first administered to Mr A by the
clinical (prison) psychologist, on 14 July 1997. The psychologist provided me
with a copy of the MMPI in Norwegian, which was completed by Mr A during
my assessment in May 1998. The reason for administering this test was to see
whether there had been any change in his mental state since the previous testing,
on the same test. On the previous testing a number of the clinical scales
T-Score
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
L F K Hs D Hy Pd Mf Pa Pt Sc Ma Si
14.7.97 16.5.98
Figure 23.1. The MMPI profile scores of Mr A during (14 July 1997) and after (16 May
1998) a confusional state