Face-to-face confrontation: effects of closed-circuit technology on children's eyewitness testimony and jurors' decisions

The Experiences and Perceptions of Sexually Abused Children as Participants in the Legal Process: Key Conclusions From a Scoping Literature Review

Child sexual abuse (CSA) is a phenomenon that receives attention from researchers and practitioners worldwide. An unknown percent of cases are disclosed bravely by children to authorities. One part of those children's journey can involve the legal process, which aims to decide whether a crime happened and, if so, to sentence the offender. To do so, a considerable amount of evidence is required. Part of what makes CSA cases complex is that the child's word is often the only evidence. There are growing discussions concerning the importance of children's participation in the legal process, pointing to its contribution to practitioners' decision-making as well as children's wellbeing. The current scoping review aimed to examine the existing knowledge regarding how children experience and perceive participation in the legal process following CSA. Although this issue has been previously addressed, the current study was designed to systematically spotlight studies that pinpoint children's perceptions and experiences. Using PRISMA guidelines, 17 manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals over the last 11 years were identified. The analysis yielded a major theme of children's need for validation, with four subthemes relating to the need to be protected, the need to be seen and heard, the need to be believed, and the need to be provided with support. The themes and how they relate to other aspects of sexually abused children's lives are discussed as well as practical implications for future studies. The main conclusion relates to the necessity for a holistic approach with children throughout the legal process.

Trials by video link after the pandemic: the pros and cons of the expansion of virtual justice

The Covid-19 pandemic has led to an enormous increase in the use of technology in the courtroom. This development raises the important question on the potential effects of the digitalisation of criminal justice—especially from the viewpoint of the right to a fair trial. This contribution discusses this complicated question from different angles. It focuses on a number of different assumptions underlying the debate: the assumption that the use of technology in the courtroom diminishes human interaction, impedes an effective defence, influences decision-making and affects the legitimacy of the trial. This is done with the aim to shed light on the lack of evidentiary basis of these assumptions which clearly complicates the current discussion on the future of technology in the courtroom. The author argues that the validity of these assumptions needs to be adequately tested before we can make any long-term decisions on the content and scope of virtual criminal justice.

The Effects of Victim Age, Perceiver Gender, and Parental Status on Perceptions of Victim Culpability When Girls or Women Are Sexually Abused

This study investigated perceptions of victim culpability in sexual assaults against girls and women according to victim age, perceiver gender, and perceiver parental status. Overall, 420 jury-eligible participants completed an online survey recording their attributions of guilt, responsibility, and blame toward 10-, 15-, and 20-year-old girls and women in relation to sexual assault. Attributions of culpability were affected by whether the victim physically or verbally resisted the abuse, wore sexually revealing clothes, or was described as having acted promiscuously. Fifteen-year-old victims were perceived as more culpable for the abuse than 10-year-old victims. Implications of these findings are discussed.

The credibility of testimony from minors allegedly victims of abuse within the Italian legislative framework

The authors aim to analyze the key aspects related to the testimony of children who might have been victims of sexual harassment and abuse. The issue of medico-legal psychiatric assessment of minors who claim to have been sexually abused is extremely contentious and widely-debated, not only due to the growing spread of such claims, but also on account of the technical challenges it raises. For these reasons, national as well as European lawmakers have intervened by enacting new legislation, and scientific communities have established new sets of guidelines aimed at improving the overall conditions under which a child is called to testify as well as the process through which depositions are collected and evaluated, so as to ensure that any assessment of the reliability of the testimony is scientifically grounded. The authors also highlight the importance of regulatory measures meant to minimize the risk that the questioning of a child might negatively affect his or her emotional balance by limiting and lessening stressful conditions and anxiety, which may traumatize and irretrievably scar the child. Moreover, they stress the importance of dealing with the social issue of child abuse by strengthening a preventive set of measures.

Is There Consensus About Children's Memory and Suggestibility?

The modern scientific study of children's eyewitness memory was initially motivated, in important part, by the sensational preschool investigations and prosecutions of the 1980s and 1990s (e.g., the McMartin case, the Kelly Michaels case, the Country Walk case). These cases form the centerpiece of Professor Cheit's scholarly book, The Witch-Hunt Narrative. In recent years, researchers have made great strides in helping the legal system tackle some of the complex issues involved in child sexual abuse investigations. While commenting on Professor Cheit's book, we review areas of consensus regarding child forensic interviewing, areas of disconnect between scientific laboratory studies and needs of the legal system, and the potential effects of bias on the scientific enterprise relevant to Professor Cheit's treatise. Although we find that there is consensus in the field regarding a set of general principles, there is often room for disagreement in evaluating a particular case, and there is still much to be learned about how best to interview children when allegations of sexual abuse arise.

Want a Better Criminal Justice Response to Rape? Improve Police Interviews With Complainants and Suspects

Achieving just outcomes in rape cases is difficult, but there are ways we can improve the investigation and prosecution of these crimes, now. We outline how targeting variables, within control of the criminal justice system, can improve the quality of information police obtain from interviews with complainants and suspects. We explore how, by preserving these accounts on video, the criminal justice process can better use this information to improve effective decision making from investigation through to criminal trial through to prevention.

The Diagnostic Value of Children's Responses to Cross-Examination Questioning

In response to a widespread belief within the legal system that cross-examination is instrumental in uncovering the truth, we examined the effect of cross-examination questioning on the reports of children who had-and had not-been coached to lie. A group of children, aged 6-11 years (N = 65), played three computer games with one of their parents. For half of the pairs, the parents-who acted as confederates-coached their children to make lies of commission concerning the occurrence of two target activities. For the remaining pairs, these two target activities actually occurred, and there was no coaching. Immediately afterwards, children were interviewed about the two activities. Those who-correctly or incorrectly-reported that both activities occurred were retained for the final sample (n = 56); these children were then interviewed again with both neutral questions and cross-examination-style challenges. Neither style of questioning elicited responses that discriminated between liars and truth-tellers: although the accuracy of children who were lying increased in response to cross-examination questions, the accuracy of truth-telling children saw a corresponding decrease. When asked neutral questions, children's responses tended to be consistent with their earlier responses, whether or not those responses were lies. These findings raise important questions about the function that cross-examination might serve in trials involving child witnesses. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Where There's Smoke, There's Fire: the Effect of Truncated Testimony on Juror Decision-making

In countries that allow child complainants of abuse to present their direct evidence via pre-recorded videotape, the recording is sometimes truncated for relevance or admissibility purposes before it is presented to the jury. In two experiments, we investigated how this practice affects mock jurors' judgments of child credibility and defendant culpability when truncation omitted the child's less plausible allegations. Mock jurors read a transcript of a 6-year-old girl making an abuse allegation against the janitor at her school. Some jurors read this allegation only (truncated version), while others also read either one or two additional - but less plausible - allegations by the same child. Contrary to what we predicted, the presence of these additional allegations did not decrease jurors' belief in the core allegation, nor did it influence their judgments about the child complainant's honesty or cognitive competence. In fact, under at least one condition, reading additional, less plausible allegations made jurors more likely to pronounce the defendant guilty of the core allegation - even when jurors did not believe the additional allegations. This finding stands in stark contrast to prior research on jurors' evaluation of adults' testimony that includes implausible details. Future research in this area will help to elucidate the conditions under which the presentation of truncated testimony may or may not influence juror decision-making. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Emotional Child Witness Effect Survives Presentation Mode

The emotional witness effect - the phenomenon whereby people are affected by the emotional manner in which a witness presents testimony - constitutes a possible source of wrongful decisions in legal contexts. One stereotypical view of abused children is that they should be sad when talking about their experiences of maltreatment, whereas children may in fact express a variety of emotional expressions when talking about abusive events. This raises the question as to whether there is an optimal mode in which to present child victim testimony that could reduce the possible influence of displayed emotions. In the present study, mock police interviews were carried out with female child actors, role-playing the victims of physical abuse by their stepfather, telling the same story with four emotional expressions (neutral, sad, angry, or positive). Laypersons (N = 465) were presented with the interviews as transcripts with the emotional reactions of the child witness noted, audio recordings, or videotaped recordings. Participants then rated the credibility of the victim witness. Replicating previous results, the "sad" expression elicited the highest credibility ratings across all modes of presentations. Presentation mode affected ratings of credibility, with the transcript versions resulting in the highest ratings. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Preparing Children for Court: Effects of a Model Court Education Program on Children's Anticipatory Anxiety

The current study examined whether a pretrial preparation program, consisting of legal knowledge education, stress inoculation training, and a mock trial, is associated with decreased anticipatory anxiety of child witnesses. One hundred and ninety-three 4- to 17-year-olds who were awaiting impending legal proceedings attended Kids' Court School in Las Vegas, NV, one to two weeks before their court appearances. Participants completed a measure of anticipatory court-related anxiety before and after the intervention. As predicted, children's anticipatory anxiety decreased significantly from pretest to posttest. Results demonstrate the promise of a brief, unbiased, standardized program for reducing system-induced stress on child witnesses, while maintaining the integrity of the legal process. This study serves as a springboard to guide future research, practice, policy, and implementation on a larger scale.

Support Person Presence and Child Victim Testimony: Believe it or Not

This study examined the effects of support person presence on participants' perceptions of an alleged child sexual abuse victim and defendant. Two hundred jury-eligible community members (n = 100 males) viewed a DVD of an 11-year-old girl's simulated courtroom testimony either with or without a female support person seated next to her. Participants found the child victim to be less accurate and trustworthy, and the defendant to be less guilty and less likely to have sexually abused children, when the support person was present. Participants who viewed the female support person (n = 100) believed that she had probably coached and spent a great deal of time with the child victim before testifying. Female participants perceived the child to be more accurate, and the defendant to be more guilty and likely to have sexually abused children, than male participants. The degree to which the child victim's testimonial behavior violated participants' expectancies mediated the negative relation between support person presence and child victim accuracy and trustworthiness. Support person presence was positively associated with expectancy violation, which in turn was negatively associated with child victim accuracy and trustworthiness. These preliminary findings suggest that seating a support person next to an alleged child victim in court may have the unintended effect of decreasing the child's perceived credibility and, if replicated, suggest that alternative seating arrangements might be necessary.

Conformidade entre testemunhas oculares: efeitos de falsas informações nos relatos criminais

Este estudo investigou como informações falsas fornecidas a testemunhas oculares podem afetar a fidedignidade de seus relatos. Os participantes foram divididos em duas condições experimentais. Todos assistiram ao vídeo de um crime e responderam a um questionário sobre informações nele descritas. Em uma condição, os participantes preencheram o questionário individualmente e, em seguida, discutiram suas respostas com um confederado, que fornecia informações falsas ao participante. Após discutirem tais informações, os participantes eram requisitados a fazer um novo relato. Em outra condição, os participantes realizaram todo o procedimento individualmente, sem receberem informações falsas. O número de erros na presença do confederado foi maior quando comparado com a condição sem o confederado. São discutidos possíveis fatores que envolvem a distorção da memória por meio de conformidade, assim como implicações práticas dos resultados encontrados.

Explaining gender differences in jurors' reactions to child sexual assault cases

In three experiments, we investigated the influence of juror, victim, and case factors on mock jurors' decisions in several types of child sexual assault cases (incest, day care, stranger abduction, and teacher-perpetrated abuse). We also validated and tested the ability of several scales measuring empathy for child victims, children's believability, and opposition to adult/child sex, to mediate the effect of jurors' gender on case judgments. Supporting a theoretical model derived from research on the perceived credibility of adult rape victims, women compared to men were more empathic toward child victims, more opposed to adult/child sex, more pro-women, and more inclined to believe children generally. In turn, women (versus men) made more pro-victim judgments in hypothetical abuse cases; that is, attitudes and empathy generally mediated this juror gender effect that is pervasive in this literature. The experiments also revealed that strength of case evidence is a powerful factor in determining judgments, and that teen victims (14 years old) are blamed more for sexual abuse than are younger children (5 years old), but that perceptions of 5 and 10 year olds are largely similar. Our last experiment illustrated that our findings of mediation generalize to a community member sample.

Children's perceived emotional behavior at disclosure and prosecutors' evaluations

The present study investigated the perceived emotional behavior of alleged child victims when disclosing sexual abuse in a forensic interview. It also addressed whether the perceived emotional behavior influenced prosecutors' evaluations of children's potential as witnesses and prosecutors' recommendations to press charges. Ninety-eight videotapes of forensic interviews with alleged child sexual abuse victims (4- to 17-year-olds) were coded for behavioral indicators of emotions. Case file information and district attorney evaluations were also coded. Results indicated that children were not generally perceived as being emotional (e.g., sad) during disclosure. However, the perceived intensity of expressed emotions was greater when children disclosed the alleged abuse compared to when they discussed more neutral topics in rapport building. Greater perceived emotional withdrawal by children at disclosure was associated with more negative evaluations of child witnesses by prosecutors. Moreover, children's emotional behaviors, as noted by prosecutors, were among the predictors of prosecutors' recommendations to file charges. Practical implications are discussed.

SUPPORTING CHILDREN IN U.S. LEGAL PROCEEDINGS: Descriptive and Attitudinal Data From a National Survey of Victim/Witness Assistants

We conducted a national survey of 786 victim/witness assistants (VWAs) to provide descriptive and attitudinal information about support person use in U.S. legal proceedings involving children. VWAs (N = 414) from 46 states returned completed surveys (response rate = 53%). Prosecutor-based VWAs or parents/guardians most frequently served as support persons. One support person was almost always or often used with child victims and/or witnesses of all ages. Support persons were extremely common in cases involving child sexual abuse, physical abuse, neglect, and adult domestic violence. Overall, support persons provided more informational than emotional support. The most common informational support was to provide referrals to community resources, conduct courtroom visit/orientation, and disseminate relevant procedural information. The most common emotional support was to accompany the child to trial. Support persons rarely or never questioned children directly during investigative interviews or in court. Respondents believed support persons decrease children's stress and increase accuracy and credibility; however, this effect varied as a function of who provided support, child age, case type, and type of emotional or informational support. Respondents believed that support person presence at trial probably does not prejudice jurors against defendants. These survey data provide a benchmark for legal professionals and a foundation for future social scientific research examining the effects of support person use on children.

Assessing children's competency to take the oath in court: The influence of question type on children's accuracy

This study examined children's accuracy in response to truth-lie competency questions asked in court. The participants included 164 child witnesses in criminal child sexual abuse cases tried in Los Angeles County over a 5-year period (1997-2001) and 154 child witnesses quoted in the U.S. state and federal appellate cases over a 35-year period (1974-2008). The results revealed that judges virtually never found children incompetent to testify, but children exhibited substantial variability in their performance based on question-type. Definition questions, about the meaning of the truth and lies, were the most difficult largely due to errors in response to "Do you know" questions. Questions about the consequences of lying were more difficult than questions evaluating the morality of lying. Children exhibited high rates of error in response to questions about whether they had ever told a lie. Attorneys rarely asked children hypothetical questions in a form that has been found to facilitate performance. Defense attorneys asked a higher proportion of the more difficult question types than prosecutors. The findings suggest that children's truth-lie competency is underestimated by courtroom questioning and support growing doubts about the utility of the competency requirements.

Beliefs and expectancies in legal decision making: an introduction to the Special Issue

This introduction describes what the co-editors believe readers can expect in this Special Issue. After beliefs and expectancies are defined, examples of how these constructs influence human thought, feeling, and behavior in legal settings are considered. Brief synopses are provided for the Special Issue papers on beliefs and expectancies regarding alibis, children's testimony behavior, eyewitness testimony, confessions, sexual assault victims, judges' decisions in child protection cases, and attorneys' beliefs about jurors' perceptions of juvenile offender culpability. Areas for future research are identified, and readers are encouraged to discover new ways that beliefs and expectancies operate in the legal system.

Do Jurors Get What They Expect? Traditional versus Alternative Forms of Children's Testimony

This study examined prospective jurors' expectancies for the verbal and nonverbal behavior of a child testifying in a sexual abuse case. Community members (N = 261) reporting for jury duty completed a survey in which they described their expectancies for how a child alleging sexual abuse would appear when testifying and their beliefs about discerning children's truthfulness, testimony stress, and fairness to trial parties. Within this survey, we varied the child's age (5, 10, or 15 years old), type of abuse alleged (vaginal fondling or penetration), and whether the abuse actually occurred (yes, no) between participants across five different testimony conditions (traditional live in-court, support person present, closed-circuit television, preparation, and videotape) within each participant. Participants expected a child providing traditional testimony to be more nervous, tearful, and fidgety; less confident, cooperative, and fluent; and to maintain less eye contact and provide shorter responses than when the child provided alternative forms of testimony. Participants believed it was easiest to determine a child's truthfulness and fairest to the defendant when the child testified live in court, but that this form of testimony was the most stressful and unfair to the child. Expectancies and beliefs differed within the alternative forms of testimony as well. Negative evaluations of children's alternative testimony may be the result of expectancy violation; namely, jurors expect differences in children's verbal and nonverbal behavior as a result of accommodation, but those differences actually do not occur.

Managing the legal proceedings: An interpretative phenomenological analysis of sexually abused children's experience with the legal process

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this study was to describe how sexually abused children experience the legal process, a process that includes being questioned by the police during the preliminary investigation and by lawyers and the prosecutor in the courtroom, and meeting other professionals from various agencies.

METHOD

Face-to-face in-depth interviews were conducted with 10 children-9 girls and 1 boy between 9 and 15 years old-who had experienced child sexual abuse (CSA). The interviews were semi structured and carried out and analyzed by interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). The aim of IPA is to explore the participants' views of the world and to adopt as far as possible an "insider perspective." IPA draws on a tradition of phenomenology and symbolic interactionism in attempting to understand how people make sense of their experiences.

RESULTS

Five major themes emerged through the analysis: not being believed, making CSA visible, need for support, sanctions for offenders, and lack of respect for the child's integrity. Almost all the children had a feeling of not being believed. They described feelings ranging from anxiety to dread and even terror when they had to describe the CSA they had experienced. Even though the importance of support for such children is already well understood, the children stated that the support they were given was not sufficient. The children said that they wanted support from a single professional who was well informed about both the legal process and CSA. When the children were asked to reflect on sanctions against the abusers, they said that it was important that the perpetrator got treatment/therapy but they also said that imprisonment was desirable. Financial compensation was not as important to them; the damage had been done and money could not compensate for that damage. The children also said that both the lawyers and the media had treated them with disrespect.

CONCLUSIONS

It is valuable for children who have been exposed to CSA to learn that they can take part in the legal process as equal partners with the other participants, and it is evident that the quality of psychological care and support needs to be improved. The children want to be participants in the legal process rather than passive objects of that process.

Promising to tell the truth makes 8- to 16-year-olds more honest

Techniques commonly used to increase truth-telling in most North American jurisdiction courts include requiring witnesses to discuss the morality of truth- and lie-telling and to promise to tell the truth prior to testifying. While promising to tell the truth successfully decreases younger children's lie-telling, the influence of discussing the morality of honesty and promising to tell the truth on adolescents' statements has remained unexamined. In Experiment 1, 108 youngsters, aged 8-16 years, were left alone in the room and asked not to peek at the answers to a test. The majority of participants peeked at the test answers and then lied about their transgression. More importantly, participants were eight times more likely to change their response from a lie to the truth after promising to tell the truth. Experiment 2 confirmed that the results of Experiment 1 were not solely due to repeated questioning or the moral discussion of truth- and lie-telling. These results suggest that, while promising to tell the truth influences the truth-telling behaviors of adolescents, a moral discussion of truth and lies does not. Legal implications are discussed.

Abused and neglected children in court: knowledge and attitudes

OBJECTIVE

After maltreated children are taken into protective custody, dependency courts determine the children's placements. Many, if not most, maltreated children never attend their dependency court hearings. We had the rare opportunity to interview children in a jurisdiction where children regularly attend their detention hearings in dependency court. Our main goals were to assess maltreated children's knowledge and attitudes about their court experiences and identify predictors thereof. We also examined if the maltreated children desired greater participation in dependency court decisions.

METHODS

Immediately after attending their dependency court hearings, 7- to 10-year-olds were interviewed about their knowledge of, attitudes concerning, and participation in dependency court. Information was also extracted from the children's dependency court files.

RESULTS

Lack of understanding and negative attitudes were common. Age predicted court knowledge, and age, anxiety, court knowledge, abuse type, and criminal court referral predicted attitudes. Qualitative findings included that a substantial minority of children did not feel believed or listened to, and most children wanted to return home.

CONCLUSIONS

This research is relevant to current debates about the extent to which children should be involved in legal decisions. The results suggest that maltreated children may profit from greater understanding of dependency court. Moreover, the findings indicate that children often wish to have greater influence in dependency court decisions.

POLICY IMPLICATIONS

Professionals should consider providing children involved in dependency court hearings with age-appropriate information about the legal proceedings. Children may also benefit in dependency hearings from the opportunity, directly or indirectly (through their attorneys), to give voice to their wishes and needs.

Legal and social service responses to child sexual abuse: a primer and discussion of relevant research

This paper provides a broad overview of legal and social service responses to child sexual abuse, the overarching legal framework provided by federal legislation, and funding mandates and the unique and shared investigative concerns of law enforcement and child protective service entities. Relevant psychological research is highlighted throughout, including research on investigator training, forensic interviewing techniques, children's suggestibility, jurors' perceptions of child witnesses, and courtroom accommodations for child witnesses.

Trauma and memory: effects of post-event misinformation, retrieval order, and retention interval

The present study concerned effects of misinformation, retrieval order, and retention interval on eyewitness memory for a traumatic event (a vivid murder). Relations between misinformation acceptance and compliance were also examined. The classic three-stage misinformation paradigm (Loftus, 1979) was employed, with a multi-component recognition test added. Either immediately or 2 weeks after viewing a distressing film, 232 adults read a narrative (misleading or control) about the murder and then took a recognition test that tapped memory for central and peripheral details. Test-item order either matched the chronology of the film or was randomly determined. Significant misinformation effects were obtained. Moreover, control participants were more accurate in response to questions about central than peripheral information; however, this was not so for misinformed participants. Sequential but not random retrieval order resulted in a higher proportion of correct responses for central as opposed to peripheral misinformation questions. Compliance was significantly related to misinformation effects. Delay increased participants' suggestibility, impaired memory accuracy, and produced higher confidence ratings for misinformed participants compared to controls. Findings indicate that even for a highly negative event, adults' memory is not immune to inaccuracies and suggestive influences.

Conformity among cowitnesses sharing same or different information about an event in experimental collaborative eyewitness testimony

Using the Mori technique in which two different movies presented on the same screen were viewed separately by two groups without their noticing the duality, two experiments were carried out with 138 undergraduates in groups of varying sizes to examine the effects of cowitnesses with the same or different information on these witnesses' memory distortion. Exp. 1 investigated the cowitness effects in a one-versus-two situation, while Exp. 2 investigated the effects in a two-versus-two situation. Analysis showed isolated eyewitnesses who had no supporting cowitnesses changed their minds more frequently toward the majority and, when they had a cowitness who shared the same information, they tended to stick to their original reports even after being confronted with conflicting information in a discussion.

Hearsay versus children's testimony: Effects of truthful and deceptive statements on jurors' decisions

Researchers and courts are focusing increasing attention on the reliability of children's out-of-court statements, especially in relation to trials of child sexual abuse. The main goal of this study was to investigate the effects of presentation of children's out-of-court statements (e.g., hearsay) on jurors' perceptions of witness credibility and defendant guilt, and on jurors' abilities to reach the truth. Child participants experienced either a mock crime or were coached to say they experienced the crime when in fact they had not. During elaborate mock trials involving community member jurors, children's testimony was presented either: (1) live, (2) on videotape, or (3) via a social worker. Analyses revealed that testimony format directly influenced jurors' perceptions of child and social worker credibility (e.g., children were perceived as less likely to provide false statements if they testified live) as well as jurors' sympathy toward the child, all of which then predicted jurors' confidence in defendant guilt. Jurors had difficulty discerning accurate from deceptive child statements regardless of testimony format. Implications for psychology and the legal system are discussed.

Do jurors "know" what isn't so about child witnesses?

Are expert witnesses needed in child sexual abuse cases to educate jurors about children's memory, suggestibility, and reactions to abuse, or do jurors already know what such experts could tell them? To cast light on this question, we surveyed jurors and jury-eligible college students and compared their beliefs with what is known via scientific research regarding children's memory and ability to testify, reactions to interrogation, and reactions to sexual abuse. We also asked participants to infer results of four widely cited studies of children's suggestibility. Participants' beliefs were consistent with findings from research on some issues (e.g., that children can be led to claim that false events occurred) but diverged from the scientific consensus on other issues (e.g., whether children can remember painful events in infancy). Similarly, participants sometimes overestimated and sometimes underestimated the level of suggestibility observed in empirical studies. Individual differences in accuracy were related to participants' gender, education and ethnicity, and there was considerable disagreement among participants on many questions. Implications of findings for the admissibility of expert testimony in child abuse cases are discussed.

Gaze aversion: A response to cognitive or social difficulty?

When asked questions, adults and children often avert their gaze at certain points within the interaction, especially when questions are difficult (Doherty-Sneddon, Bruce, Bonner, Longbotham, & Doyle, 2002; Glenberg, Schroeder, & Robertson, 1998). Gaze aversion may be a way of managing the cognitive load associated with the processing of visual environmental information, or it may serve to alleviate a negative social-emotional experience, such as the self-consciousness associated with, for example, a fear of failure. In the present study, thirty-six 8-year-olds were questioned either face to face or across a live video link. Questions varied in type (arithmetic, verbal reasoning, and autobiographical and episodic memory) and in difficulty. Children averted their gaze more during face-to-face questioning than during video-mediated questioning; however, question difficulty had a very strong influence on aversion in both interview conditions. It is concluded that although social factors play a role in children's gaze aversion during pedagogical question-answer sequences, the primary function of averting gaze is to manage the cognitive load involved in the processing of environmental information.

Wailing Babies in Her Wake

The scientific study of child witnesses has influenced both developmental science and jurisprudence concerning children. Focusing on the author's own studies, 4 categories of research are briefly reviewed: (a) children's eyewitness memory and suggestibility; (b) memory for traumatic events in childhood; (c) disclosure of child sexual abuse; and (d) experiences of child victim/witnesses within the legal system. Implications for psychology and for legal practice are discussed.

Surreptitiously projecting different movies to two subsets of viewers

A new technique (manipulation of overlapping rivalrous images by polarizing filters, or MORI) has been invented for presenting on the same screen two different images that can be seen separately by two groups of viewers without their noticing the overlap. It can easily create desired artificial conflicts among viewers. Two perpendicular polarizing filters provide separate invisible channels from dual video projectors to two groups of viewers on a single screen. The basic principle of the presentation technique, details of the apparatus, and limitations are introduced. As an example of the application of this technique, an eyewitness experiment is briefly reported. The results of experiments conducted by the author and colleagues provide evidence of the effectiveness of this technique with various projectors, video materials, group sizes, and ages of participants.

A comparison of two forms of hearsay in child sexual abuse cases

The present study was designed to compare two forms of hearsay: videotaped hearsay and hearsay supplied by an adult witness. In elaborately staged, mock child sexual abuse trials, jurors were presented with (a) videotaped forensic interviews of children who, in actual legal cases, disclosed abuse or (b) a police officer who repeated the children's videotaped statements. In addition, a subset of jurors who viewed the videotape during trial were allowed access to the videotape during deliberations. Findings indicated that manner of presentation of children's testimony had an indirect effect on verdicts. Jurors in the videotape conditions were more likely to believe that the child fully disclosed during the forensic interview, which in turn influenced ratings of child believability. The latter ratings were the strongest predictor of defendant-guilt judgments.

Nearly 4 years after an event: children's eyewitness memory and adults' perceptions of children's accuracy

OBJECTIVE

The current study examined children's eyewitness memory nearly 4 years after an event and the ability of adults to evaluate such memory.

METHOD

In Phase 1, 7- and 10-year olds were interviewed about a past event after a nearly 4-year delay. The interview included leading questions relevant to child abuse as well as statements designed to implicate the original confederate. In Phase 2, laypersons and professionals watched a videotaped interview (from Phase 1) that they were misled to believe was from an ongoing abuse investigation. Respondents then rated the child's accuracy and credibility, and the probability that the child had been abused.

RESULTS

In Phase 1, few significant age differences in memory accuracy were found, perhaps owing in part to small sample size. Although children made a variety of commission errors, none claimed outright to have been abused. Nevertheless, some of the children's answers (e.g., saying that their picture had been taken, or that they had been in a bathtub) might cause concern in a forensic setting. In Phase 2, professional and nonprofessional respondents were unable to reliably estimate the overall accuracy of children's statements. However, respondents were able to reasonably estimate the accuracy of children's answers to abuse questions. Respondents were also more likely to think that 7-year olds compared to 10-year olds had been abused. Professionals were significantly less likely than nonprofessionals to believe that credible evidence of abuse existed. Professionals who indicated personal experience with child abuse or a close relationship with an abuse victim were more likely to rate children as abused. A gender bias to rate boys as more accurate than girls was apparent among laypersons but not professionals.

CONCLUSIONS

Children were generally resistant to suggestions that abuse occurred during a long-ago generally forgotten event, but some potentially concerning errors were made. Both professionals and non-professionals had difficulty estimating the accuracy of children's reports, but adults were more likely to rate children as accurate if the children answered abuse-related questions correctly. Training and personal experience were associated with adults' ratings of children's reports. Implications for evaluations of child abuse reports are discussed.

Fractional factorial designs for legal psychology

Researchers considering novel or exploratory psycholegal research are often able to easily generate a sizable list of independent variables (IVs) that might influence a measure of interest. Where the research question is novel and the literature is not developed, however, choosing from among a long list of potential variables those worthy of empirical investigation often presents a formidable task. Many researchers may feel compelled by legal psychology's heavy reliance on full-factorial designs to narrow the IVs under investigation to two or three in order to avoid an expensive and unwieldy design involving numerous high-order interactions. This article suggests that fractional factorial designs provide a reasonable alternative to full-factorial designs in such circumstances because they allow the psycholegal researcher to examine the main effects of a large number of factors while disregarding high-order interactions. An introduction to the logic of fractional factorial designs is provided and several examples from the social sciences are presented.