The purpose of the present study was to experimentally examine whether testimony modality leads to differences in perceptions of expert witnesses and their opinions. We hypothesized that simulated testimony delivered via phone would be perceived as less credible, efficacious, and assigned less weight than testimony delivered via videoconference or in-court. We recruited a sample of 275 U.S. men and women via Amazon Mechanical Turk. After viewing a videotaped mock court scenario depicting testimony by a forensic psychological expert witness, participants completed measures of expert credibility, efficacy, and expert social presence. A simple contrast multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) revealed perceptions did not differ between in-court, videoconferencing, and phone testimony conditions. Higher social presence scores predicted more favorable perceptions of the expert. These findings provide clearer support for the continued implementation of remote videoconference testimony in courts. We offer recommendations on how to optimize the use of remote testimony based on the present study and previous findings.

本研究的目的是通过实验检验证词方式是否会导致专家证人及其意见的认知差异。我们假设通过电话提供的模拟证词会被认为不如通过视频会议或法庭提供的证词可信、有效，并且分配的权重更小。我们通过 Amazon Mechanical Turk 招募了 275 名美国男性和女性的样本。在观看了描绘法医心理专家证人证词的模拟法庭场景录像后，参​​与者完成了专家可信度、有效性和专家社会存在感的测量。一个简单的对比多元方差分析 (MANOVA) 显示，在法庭内、视频会议和电话证词条件下的看法没有差异。较高的社会存在分数预示着对专家的更有利的看法。这些发现为在法庭上继续实施远程视频会议证词提供了更明确的支持。我们根据目前的研究和先前的发现，就如何优化远程证词的使用提出建议。