Psych 3025: Contemporary Issues In Developmental Psych PDF

Psych 3025 Children as victims **Introduction to Children in the Justice System** - The idea of child development -- People don't necessarily have a good idea/awareness of child development. When one says a five-year-old is permitted to testify and nine-year-old is permitted to test...

Psych 3025 Children as victims **Introduction to Children in the Justice System** - The idea of child development -- People don't necessarily have a good idea/awareness of child development. When one says a five-year-old is permitted to testify and nine-year-old is permitted to testify who makes that decision -- Judges - So, we could have two different judges with varying levels of understanding about what children are actually capable of doing. - It could be fear of traumatizing a child by having them testify and not allowing them to testify. IF the is nobody else who can testify the offender can get off and you don't allow the child to testify - A he said vs she said is hard to prove. Who do we exactly believe. - If there is no physical evidence all we have is the child's testimony and if child can't give their testimony, then it is really their words against the perpetrator - Child memory is something that actively progresses through memory - The fear of retraumatizing a child -- Somebody that is afraid of retraumatizing a child - They then don't get to talk about it - With children you're not going to be able to get a huge vocabulary -- don't expect them to want to talk to you or listen. You're not nearly as interesting as you think but if you do it properly kids as young as three can testify but we have to be very careful with how we do that. - Parents - outside influences - At the age of seven you can usually tell when the kid is lying because by then there are ore influenced by what they should say or shouldn't say beyond age seven they can pretty convincing stories - Even some judges don't know how to appropriately judge students -- because how many courses do you think judges receive about child development -- they don't necessarily have that knowledge to evaluate children -- there are those that are going to go out and seek out advise and there are going to be those that just try and brush it. - Patriarchal society usually the men's word is always right for e.g. the Sri Lankan government -child marriage is illegal so what is the opinion of the general public about it Children and Witnesses - Somewhat difficult to assess the differences between the two - Research initially focused mostly on witnesses - Recognizing possible differences in the abilities of/issues faced by victims more recently research is being completed to assess issues that are specific to victims - United Nations Convention on the rights of the Child - Original document in 1959 - Most recent revision in 1989 - Many countries have signed the convention, but it is also easier to sign the document than to ensure that the articles are in fact allowed - UNICEF Convention - Easier to sign it rather than follow it - Canada's Role - Reservation: i) Article 21, ii) Article 37, iii) - Statement of understanding: Article 30 Witnesses - History - View of child witnesses has changed overtime - Dating back to Salem Witch Trials -- children viewed as highly suggestible (if a child told you that something happened, it did really happen) - Have difficulty distinguishing fact from reality and thus provide inaccurate testimony - Personal significance of a case was not thought to matter, but we later learn that it does matter - People were being burned at the word of the child - The problem was the questioning - Renewed interest - Four factors led to renew interest in child witnesses: - Expert Testimony -- have to have training, the research should have an error range - Social Scientists interest in applied research -- research that can be carried out by practitioners. Rallying the research to example Police, Nurses, etc. - Studies on adult eyewitnesses -- the effects of suggestibility. Memory is malleable regardless of age - Lost in the mall phenomenon, if it's coming from the parent, it might have happened - Legal community became interested in research - Issues commonly assessed - Recall/Recognition Memory -- Recall is mostly the interview part of the investigation and Recognition is mostly eyewitness line up - Questions asked -- open ended questions for a recall, Recognition type question could be like multiple questions, Closed questions, yes and no - Children's suggestibility -- you have to very careful with kids. As long as we use procedures that are suggestable - Courtroom preparation/Accommodations - Lying -- Prove that a kid is lying vs the assumption that the kid is lying - The Role of Coaching -- telling kids what they should say and then Victims - Maltreatment - Child abuse -- nonaccidental injury and assault - Falls under three - Physical Abuse - Sexual Abuse - Child neglect -- the most difficult to proof - Emotional/ Verbal Abuse - Exposure to Domestic Violence - Physical Abuse - Can have you both emotional and physical effected - Emotional: - Pathological fear, shyness, passive dispositions, hostility, indifference, depression - Kids might bottle their emotions and project it onto others - Physical: - More likely to engage in crime and drug abuse. - Most of times depends on friends, hanging out with a crowd slightly older. Troubled kids find troubled kids - Can lead too things like risky sexual behavior - Cyclical nature of violence -- kids that experienced violence than move to being violent themselves - Sexual Abuse - Symptoms resemble those of PTSD -- depression, anxiety, sexual problems, suicidal behaviours, substance abuse and self-abuse. - We're seeing internalizing behaviours and externalizing behaviours - Feeling lack of control. Not knowing how to deal with it - Not good coping mechanisms - Not knowing how to trust people and there may be some fear - They think that's the normal way of showing affections - Victims often have difficulty forming relationships -- particularly true for boys - Kids have on average to tell 15 people before it comes forward - Neglect - Failure to provide minimal care - Can be physical (are you providing food, clothing etc.), emotional (telling kids that you dislike them), intellectual (depriving them of school), social or moral - Emotional abuse is linked to substance abuse, low self-esteem, depression, difficulties in school and poor peer relations (not setting peer dates). - It's a parent's obligation to provide for their children - Neglect is the most common but the hardest to prove - Attachment can go in both directions. That is still the only parent that the child know - Issues Commonly Assessed - Similar to Eyewitness issues -- need to see if victims react the same way witnesses do - Sometimes they do and sometimes they do not Perpetrators - Models of Criminal Justice - Two Major Models - Just Desserts: - want to make the offender suffer the same way the victims suffered. Do whatever they think fits - Does not acknowledge a need to rehabilitate offenders. Reality is that they are coming out. You want to fix the problem when they come out - Assumes punishment will be severe enough to deter a person from committing future crimes. General deterrents -- Specific deterrents - - Research suggests this model does not work when it comes to reducing reoffending. This can be particularly kids - This model increases offenses - Retributive/Restorative/Rehabilitative - Attempts to reserve the wrongs that have occurred. - To try and make sure your punishment equates to the offence, but it isn't jail - Treat the offenders so he/she will not commit additional crimes. It's different for - Sentence should be partially punitive and partially restorative/rehabilitative - History of Youth Justice in Canda - During the 18^th^ and 19^th^ centuries once, a child reached the age of 7, they were seen as an adult and were sentenced as such - Did not work -- children often went on to commit additional crimes - Juvenile Delinquents Act - Brought into effect in 1908 - Thought crime was a result of deficiencies in socialization - Rehabilitation was key. There was little concern for retribution or deterrence - Opponents to the act wanted the system to be similar to that seen with adults - Cited need for protection of public, lack of rights for young offenders and lack of resources for rehabilitation - Young offenders act - Introduced in 1982 - Key focus was the responsibility of the young offender and the protection of the public - Need for supervision, discipline and control were of utmost importance - Treated young offenders more like adults but with recognition that youth were less responsible for actions and had "special needs" - Under this act Canda had the highest rate of youth incarceration in the western world (16 and 17 older were sent to adult prison) Youth Criminal Justice Act - Introduced in 2003 - Thought youth criminal justice should address underlying causes of behaviour, rehabilitate young offenders, give meaningful consequences for behaviour. - Puts emphasis on extrajudicial (punishments other than prison) measures. If there are other options other than prison those options should be considered - Interventions should be timely and prompt, in order for the brain to register. If you a child does something bad, they need to get in from of the judge immediately. IF you wait to late the child will not make the association - Your behaviour needs to be followed by punishment immediately How do we treat/rehabilitate youth? - Risk/Needs/Responsivity Principles - Risk-need to have some level of who is at risk to reoffend - Risk assessment instruments -- we want high protective factor more than risk factors - Focus on rehabilitating them - Needs -- needs to identify key criminogenic needs and address them. Dynamic risk factors, risk factors than can be changed e.g. we can fix your drug addiction. Static risk factors -- those factors that we can't change e.g. committing a crime when you were young or being abused when young because we can't fix those - Dynamic vs Criminogenic needs: Criminogenic needs explain why you committed the crime in the first place - Non-criminogenic needs - Responsivity -- need to recognize that each offender is different and successful intervention needs to recognize differences. (Language is a big problem when it comes to people taking part of the intervention) **Child's Memory and Suggestibility** Th type of memory that were interested in: - Memory for the events in your life - Includes the who, what, where and when of events. - Influenced by factors such as language (the ability to speak and understand. Not talking about French, English, etc.), culture, beliefs, understanding, perceptions and expectations. - Receptive vocabulary -- the words that you actually understand. A word they can't say but understand for example cookie or walk. - Productive vocabulary -- the words that you can say. Understanding doesn't really mean remembering - Culture - In north America, people remember about themselves but other collective cultures they remember their family. That is going to have an impact - Perception -- what do you think is happening - Autobiographical Memory and the Brain - Brain development necessary for autobiographical memory is the same as that needed for the encoding, storage and retrieval of other information - Developmental Changes - Behavioural and electrophysiological measures show age-related changes in encoding across the first two years of life - Differences in recognition versus recall demonstrate there are also age-related changes in consolidation - Children show more forgetting in consolidation to be related to storage failures more so than retrieval failure -- transforming short term memories. To long term memories Assumptions - Originally thought we forget because a memory is old. Now recognize information may not have been properly encoded, consolidated or stored - With age encoding and consolidation improves so that forgetting is more likely to be a function of problems with storage or retrieval. -- Kids memory is not existent. Kids memory is not as bad as you think Role of the self - Necessary to organize event information around concept of "me" -- for the concept of themselves, they use the mirror test - Complete self-recognition using the mirror self-recognition test occurs between 18 and 22 months of age. There is no doubt that they can't recognize themselves - Confusion as to what has the most influence given parallel developments in neurological processes and language development. - Proof is believed to be shown in: - Self is used as a base of reference in encoding -- I did this, I did that, that they are referencing themselves - Improvements in memory (e.g., strategy use, metamemory) help memory functioning - Neurocognitive developments relevant to knowledge base about the self-occur at this time -- for other theorists they think that this is too complex, so they don't buy into the idea of themselves at that age Sociolinguistic Perspective - As children learn to talk thy learn to organize new events around autobiographical memory - Allows them to develop history - Begins at about 2.5 years of age - In early years heavily scaffolded by parents -- (providing the question to the child and they just have to agree and disagree. However, the question you ask could alter their memory that's why we have to be careful about scaffolding) - True autobiographical memory may not develop until late into preschool or even later - Yes or no question -- some kids have some biases regardless of the question Role of the Parent - Individual differences in how parents talk to children lead to differences in how children talk about the past. You see different patterns. Its teaching the child what's important - Recounting is about telling something whereby the parent isn't present - Leap-frogging -- a technique whereby the person asking the question is jumping all over the place. Structure development about what the child is supposed to remember - The idea of scaffolding is being one level above the child - The naming of various conversation styles differ depending on the person doing the research but can be divided into high elaborative versus low elaborative parents Language development - Major changes occur in the productive vocabularies of children between 1 and 4 years of age - Know receptive vocabulary probably has an effect before this but the extent of the effect is unknown - Parental scaffolding can help memory retrieval (talking to children is a skill.) Parents can help getting things from kids when those who are trained cannot Effects of Language Acquisition - Magic Shrinking Machine - They had gone back a year later to see if kids remember anything and... - Children could remember using non-verbal tasks but could only use words to describe the event part of their vocabulary at the time of the task - The got very little from the kids. Kids that had vocabulary at the time could tak about it - Even if they couldn't talk about it, they were able to remember through visuals - Seemed to have difficulty putting into words an event that was encoded preverbally Development of strategies - Does not appear to develop gradually but instead increases quickly - No single factor to mostly explain strategy used - Factors include age, level of knowledge, child's ability Mental effort - By focusing on the strategy children do not have the mental ability to complete the task effectively - Kids remember more when you have them talk about it rather than writing because they are focusing so much on how to write - When the tasks we're giving them is too hard making it harder for them to remember - Individual differences in working memory can explain age differences in strategy use and subsequent task performance - Depending on the age of the kid we have t use different interview styles to get something out from them Knowledge base - Differences exist in both the actual capacity of working memory as well as the functioning capacity - Having a better developed knowledge base appears to lead to faster processing (The chess test) The don't remember what's important -- a lot of things that we may consider important children don't Metamemory - Knowledge a person has about the functioning and contents of his/her own memory. As a child you don't know what's important and so you have too picky about what's important and what's not - Younger children only notice the effectiveness of strategy use when it leads to substantial differences in memory. Older children notice more subtle differences Suggestibility - The tendency to report information communicated since the time of the original event -- it could from your imagination, media etc. - Generally measured by looking at two possible components: Yield and Shift - Yield: the tendency to give in to pressure (real or perceived) from a questioner. - This is why with kids; we have to be really careful because kids believe adults know everything. - Shift: the tendency to change perspective to incorporate new information. -- This is the part where the child actually believes Recall versus Recognition Memory - Older children provide more information in response to open ended (recall) question than younger children - Paraphrasing and back channelling can put younger children on a more equal level (particularly young children) -- using our working memory to help them keep things I mind. - Younger children seem to be as accurate as older children I response to open-ended questions - Mistakes may be made (e.g., source monitoring errors) even in response to open ended questions -- the yield and the shift -- you're hearing information in addition of seeing information. You know that I heard - Recognition questions allow younger children to provide more details but there is increased error \_ asking yes or no question, multiple choice questions -- give them the idea that they know everything - Sometimes use funnel approach -- start with open -- ended questions and move into direct questions. Asking kids direct questions so they can trip up and not seem credible Assessing recall - Both laboratory research and naturalistic research demonstrate memory is better for emotional events than for everyday mundane events -- the things that scare your ore have you surprised; you should remember these more than your everyday life. The problem with kids that experience sexual abuse often it may be mundane as opposed to those thinking that they should remember because It is drastic. Laboratory versus Naturalistic - Laboratory research has the advantage of internal validity (in control of everything) -- coding scheme -- of everything that you could remember, what can you remember and out of everything what was accurately remembered. As complete and as accurate as possible - Advantage: You have an objective way of measuring the completeness and accuracy of recall - Disadvantage: the level of stress may not be sufficient to parallel trauma - Naturalistic research has the advantage of external validity, and the personal significance of such events may explain superior recall - Limitations include inability for objective consideration or random assignment and low base rate. Recalling Naturally Occurring events - Medical procedures are personally distressing allowing an assessment of memory for traumatic events - Ground truth- we can tell that kids remember the basic, but we don't know how much is true - Stress level may be assessed and correlated with recall. It depends on the study you read. Some studies will say stress will increase memory, some say that stress decreases memory and some say that there is no relationship between the two. - WE have to look at how we measure it -- we can't just ask children what they're stressed about. There is big differences about the way people perceive stress - Using two measures of stress level or using biological measures - With kids you use the face measures - What you have to be careful about stress is the bell curve because everybody's bell curve looks different. That plateau tells us about the relationship between stress and memory - The nature of the event and the centrality of features can partially explain differences in recall. - Peripheral event details -- they had nothing to do with the outcome of the event -- if they were changed, they wouldn't have changed the outcome. -- They have no purpose with - Central -- things that actually had to do with it -- e.g. whatever was stolen had to do with the event. It's basically the notion of importance. We tend to have better memory for things that are central - If we talk about kids, it could be problematic because what could be central and peripheral for us could be different for kids Flashbulb memory - Has to be something so extreme - It's not as pure as people think -- e.g. O.J Simpson case, Princess Diana, 9/11. So extreme. - Distinct place in your memory - An assessment of children's memory for the Challenger disaster showed children provided clear, consistent, and detailed reports but made mistake. - The mistake could be peripheral - Mistakes could be partially explained by a lack of understanding. Parent's helping kids through that scaffolding -- going above the kids understanding. How can you encode it if you don't know what to encode. They're just not going to remember because they didn't encode - Comparisons of memories for the Chowchilla (1976) kidnappings to public reports and differences in memory across interviews show inaccuracies in peripheral details. E.g. trying to remember what color shirt someone was wearing -- should we expect the kids to remember the little details when something major is happening to them - In recall of Hurricane Andrew stress mediated the amount of information recalled in the initial interview - Their idea of measuring stress was being objective about it. Low stress group was the kids who were in a town that. Moderate -- those who were part of the hurricane, but their house wasn't struck. High -- those who were struck - We have to be careful what we - Less to do with stress and more with the personal piece - How vivid is - - (What one person encodes will not be the same with what someone else encodes) - All children recalled additional information after six --not sure if its legitimate story or if it's from somewhere else they heard - Hypermnesia -- kids remember more information than what they forget -- has to do with the way memory works. Thinking about something and taking your mind away from it helps one to remember Sexual Abuse (Gail Goodman) - Research seems to suggest that this can be well remembered log after the fact even in the absence of intervening interviews. - Child Sex Ring -- (E.g. disabled man starting a sex ring) - Allegations made for 246 acts. There was supportive evidence for 78.9% - There was evidence for 318 acts -- Allegations were made about 61% of these -- They're forgetting 39 percent of it -- they just couldn't remember those events - More likely to be errors of omission (things that you forgot completely) or error of commission (when you say something happened that didn't happen, giving that wrong detail) - It's not that the things didn't happen, they could be just telling us about something that had happened in a different time - They have had something happen to them repeatedly -- script memory instead of a distinguishing memory (Asking in relation to their tv shows because they will remember as opposed to time and age) Repressed Memories - Whether or not memories were in fact completely forgotten is debatable - Can you actually lock something deep down and then miraculously appear - Different crime has different time of statute of limitation - Reporting it at a later age - The debate then comes about whether or not the event could have occurred - So, what's the difference between people who wait until they're not in trouble and those that have, they memory appear after - No memory about it and finding evidence that it did happen - Hypnosis -- we don't really know it works. It doesn't appear to be it's on state. Your brain becomes more open. - Suggestive level of questioning - Research from PTSD shows -- heavy stress, see change in the hippocampus -- high level or cortisol - IF you're good at dissociating, you recall less trauma - Some studies show even after lengthy delays people can provide detailed and accurate accounts of abuse that occurred when adults were children - There are assessments to help determine whether a memory is in fact true (e.g., how was it recovered? (was it recovered under suggestive questioning? Suggestive questioning under hypnosis) When did the abuse occur? (could you have a reasonable memory)) Recall following A Delay - False Memory Syndrome -- false belief that a person was sexually abused as a child - Five criteria to be considered: - Age of complainant at the time of abuse (Infantile amnesia) - - Techniques used to recover memory e.g. hypnosis involved, and suggestive questioning would be problematic - Similarity of reports across interview sessions (add more details or forget things) - Motivation for recall -- like parents telling you to testify - Time elapsed since alleged abuse -- the closer the more likely to have happened False memories - Can convince even adults that events that did not happen did in fact happen - Easier to convince people with more plausible events - Rejection of false events is related to metacognitive ability The Misinformation effect - Simply introducing an inaccurate detail to a witness could lead them to report that detail later - Can occur in a number of ways - Subjects may guess at the answer they feel the experimenter wants -- you should never introduce something that the child hasn't introduced - Subjects remember event details as well as post-event details but cannot distinguish between the two -- co witness event, news stories, new details that come to light and not knowing if it happened or not - Original memory may be replaced with new incorrect information Props - Some people want to use props to help children remember however... - The use of props to aid children's recall is deemed questionable - Anatomically Detailed Dolls -- how do you know the kids have been abused or their just curious - Many young children cannot understand that the props are supposed to represent the event -- (The Human Spark) - More realistic props may work somewhat better than things that don't give the level of detail Context Reinstatement - Encoding specificity principle -- items that were present when we encoded something may serve as retrieval cues. Things are going to cue that for you. - For example, songs that make you think about a moment that one had forgotten - You have to be careful about the introduction of cues - Let kids come up with their own cues, they help better with memory - Both the setting itself and items that were present at the time of the event have been shown as somewhat effective in helping children's recall - Cost Benefit analysis - Mental reinstatement can also work but the effectiveness seems to depend on the age of the child **Interviewing Child Witnesses** Ground Rules - Research has shown that we really need to lay out some ground rules. - Might need to give children some direction regarding how to behave during an interview - It's okay to say I don't know - Ask the interviewer for clarification when you don't understand a question. If you're not sure just ask. A lot of times kids don't know that they don't understand - Talk to the kids first -- build a rapport Review - Need to strike a balance between two key things: - Completeness -- Trying to get everything that you remember - Accuracy -- what you have said, is it right or is it wrong cause this is where credibility comes in - You can change the style of questioning but not too much that there is a large amount of inaccuracy - Done through various styles of questioning Free Recall - Free Recall -- questions are asked that do not suggest the to be recalled information. -- Broad questions. - E.g. What happened? Not suggesting anything to the child. - Accuracy similar to adults with free call - Free recall is not going to give as everything, but we move from free recall to open ended questions Interview Styles - Varying interview styles have been developed in an attempt to strike a balance between the use of direct and open-ended question styles (e.g. step wise, cognitive, NICHD) - Step wise: Not developed by psychologists Step Wise - Interview begins with free recall questions about a particular experience - Next child is asked a series of directive questions designed to clarify and elaborate on his/her free recall response - This style sometimes includes doll play (very problematic) - Problem: Jumping straight from free recall to direct questions. There should be open ended questions between, this can pick out on some things mentioned, better than direct as we may inferences from free recall - Most common technique in Canada Cognitive interview (Ron fisher developed this) - Consists of four retrieval methods designed to increase the amount of information recalled: - Mentally reconstructing the context of the original event - Reporting everything: There may be things that were important, but they might not be necessary NICHD Protocol Interview (trying to get this mandated with adults) - More structured -- contains more open-ended questions and fewer direct questions. - Practice story -- Point out things that the kid might have forgotten. This is where training really helps. Learn how to turn the information you're given into open ended questions. Make sure the child is still comfortable with you - Absolute last resort - Used in Israel -- by going through procedure and taking children to crime scene and repeating procedure more details can be reported - Lengthy training process is essential to its success - Taught the type of questions to use and practice to avoid - Less evidence of misinformation effect -- less than what you get from the other procedures - This is considered the gold standard Narrative Elaboration Technique - Children learn to organize recall appropriately - Set up in such a way that research can scaffold - Trained using stories to talk about participants, settings, actions, conversation/affective states and consequences when recalling an event - They use a story book -- most commonly used little red riding hood - Cards are used as visual cues to probe children's recall - People card - Setting card - Conversation and emotional - Consequences card - Appears to be an effective technique Anatomically Detailed Dolls - Assume dolls will help children verbalize what has occurred - Provide more inaccurate details with dolls - No standard procedures for dolls to use or how to score data -- How do you know that it's indicative of abuse or not - If we take something a child does and ask adult questions - Do abused children play differently? IS the kid abused or are they acting out of curiosity. There is nothing to suggest they play differently Recall for People - Younger children recall fewer items than older children - Hair is most commonly described feature -- other things aren't remembered - Interior facial features are problematic for both children and adults -- hard time to remember -- anything in the middle of the face e.g. eyes, lips - Children have difficulty describing characteristics like height, weight and age. Make relative comparison. - Can you think about anyone you know that is about the same heigh or age Consensus on Child Interviewing - Researchers have agreed on the following - Victims/witnesses need to be interviewed as soon as possible to reduce forgetting, recording that statement and getting the child to agree to using it in the courtroom so there could be complete - The jury gets to decide if the recording is viable or not however that's problematic in of itself - There's going to be a lot of changes mentality - There's going to be some forgetting happening - Rapport must be established - Get the child comfortable before you ask anything sensitive - Teenagers may be more uncomfortable - The purpose of the interview and the ground rules must be explained - Talk about it at a pace you're comfortable at - Children, not interviewers, must introduce to be discussed topics - Suggestibility piece - We don't know what happened, we have to be very careful asking the questions - Use open-ended questions - Be considerate of the child's vocabulary - When possible, use open-ended questions to elaborate on topics introduce by the child - Tell me about the person - Record interviews - So, we could go back - Double line up - The praise could be problematic - Repeated interview - Practice our story because otherwise we're going to forget - Time window construct -- we have a finite amount of time whereby we're going to remember something - happens to children of abuse - So, the more we practice the longer we can extend the children remember, however the problem with the repeated interview is how the interview was done - Source monitoring theory -- - Trace theory of development -- verbatim trace -- they want to remember everything -- Gist trace -- summary of what happened. The verbatim traces are going to trace out quickly - There's not going to be a distinguish -what happened where - Repeated questions -- we will be seeing inconsistent answers **In the courtroom** The enviromwnt may be t Testifying in COURT - There have been major reforms in Canada around things like oath taking, promising to tell the truth, and unsworn testimony -- swearing under the bible - Asking the kid what the oath is before testifying - We're assuming that people actually care about oath - Asking kids if they can tell the difference between the truth and a lie - - Children may have to demonstrate that they can communicate what they have experienced. - Trying to see if the kid can actually talk to you - Assuming that kids can't do it and have to prove that they are competent however with adults its just assumed that they are competent to testify Reforms - Rules changed in Canada in 2006. -- before that children under 14 had to pass a competency inquiry. Victoria Tallware - Now they have to answer some simple questions to show they can answer questions and have to promise to tell the truth but there is no truth or oath requirement - Research questions whether it is okay to ask children to promise to tell the truth, do they understand the word promise for example when they are under age 3 or 4. - We don't think kids understand what a promise is. - In other countries the competency requirement remains - Used to also be the case that there had to be physical evidence if children were giving unsworn testimony The Premise behind the Truth-Lie Research - Legal personnel and jurors need to make judgements about children's believability - Mistakes have serious consequences -- sending an innocent person to jail Questions - Can we make these decisions? - Are there specific factors that influence the ability to make such decision? Clashing views - Do young kids tell lies? Are young kids always lying? - A child telling a lie doesn't mean they are always lying - Does knowing what a lie is mean that children will lie? The Temptation Resistance Paradigm (the marshmallow test) - DO kids actually know whether t - Knowing what - The kids know most what a lie is, about two thirds of children don't lie. So if they don't lie what makes the courtroom think that the kids will lie then - Looking at visual cues is actually harder than we think - The lying cues that adults have aren't necessarily the same with kids. -- we need to remember that kids have bundles of energy - Taxing the working memory until someone admits that theyre lying What about when kids lie - Cues that people often assume mean people are lying are not necessarily indicative of lying (Mann et. al, 2002) - Cues that may actually indicate lying in adults do not necessarily indicate lying in children (Vrij et al., 2004) What About The Parents Who Wants His/her Child To Lie? - In certain circumstances, parents may ask a child to lie/ - Children will lie to conceal a parent's misdeeds (Talwar et al., 2004) - Typically, most of them will lie for their parents. - Then we can access their working memory and see how long they lie. Taxing their working memory - Attachment between the parent and the kid does also play a role with whether a child would lie - Parenting style as well plays a difference - Possible then, that parents may be able to coach children into telling a lie that could then be presented in court - Children don't know the idea of coaching so how would they know that they were coached? - Talking to a parent doesn't necessarily mean that the child has been coached - So, it's like how do you get that information? There's little research about this - Some parents may not even know that they are coaching