Forty French gendarmes from the Gendarmerie Nationale, and 40 laypersons completed two experiments to assess how they make inferences from testimonies. The first experiment targeted how inferences are made when the critical information on which a judgment has to be made is explicitly stated in the testimony or it is implicit and has to be inferred. The second experiment assessed the comprehension of statements when critical information about an event described by a witness was directly and clearly available in the testimony or embedded within irrelevant information and personal thoughts of the witness. Results showed that gendarmes had fewer false alarms than laypersons when the statements were explicit but had as many false alarms as laypersons when information was implicit and had to be inferred. It was also found that gendarmes had fewer false alarms than laypersons when the critical information was not embedded within irrelevant information but had as many false alarms as laypersons when irrelevant information was present. This study shows that being a gendarme involves better understanding of testimonies, but only as long as testimonies do not contain redundant, interfering, and implicit information. Otherwise, this superiority is lost.

中文翻译：

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法国宪兵在听证人时进行推理的能力：内隐和干扰信息会限制他们的理解力

国家宪兵队的40名法国宪兵，并且40名外行完成了两个实验，以评估他们如何从证词中进行推断。第一个实验的目标是在证词中明确说明必须作出判断的关键信息时，如何做出推论，或者是隐含的并且必须进行推论。当证人直接或清楚地获得有关证人描述的事件的重要信息或嵌入证人无关的信息和个人想法时，第二个实验评估对陈述的理解。结果表明，在陈述明确的情况下，宪兵的虚假警报要比外行人少，但在隐含信息和必须进行推断的情况下，宪兵的虚假警报要比外行人多。还发现，当关键信息未嵌入无关信息中时，宪兵的误报率比外行者少，但是当存在不相关信息时，宪兵的误报率与外行者一样多。这项研究表明，成为宪兵需要更好地理解证词，但前提是证词不包含多余，干扰和隐含的信息。否则，这种优势就会丧失。