Children's Eyewitness Research Articles

Mock Juror Perceptions of Eyewitness Reports Given by Children with Intellectual Disabilities.

Previous research suggests that an eyewitness credibility bias can arise when mock jurors are informed of a child's disability diagnosis. The aim of the present study was to examine mock jurors' lie-detection accuracy and credibility perceptions when assessing eyewitness testimonies provided by children diagnosed with an intellectual disability. Adult mock jurors (N = 217; half informed of the child's disability status) read four transcriptions from interviews with children (ages 10 to 15) diagnosed with an intellectual disability before evaluating the credibility and truthfulness of each eyewitness report. The mock jurors' lie-detection accuracy of the eyewitness reports produced by children with an intellectual disability (55.76%) was found to be similar to prior lie-detection research involving typically developing populations. Furthermore, there were no differences in the lie-detection accuracy and credibility ratings between mock-jurors who were informed of the child's disability when compared to those who were not informed. Although mock jurors perceived the children's testimony to have low credibility, they seemed reluctant to consider many of these testimonies to be false. The current findings also suggest that the disclosure of a disability may not independently cause worsened perceptions of child eyewitnesses.

Reframing Confidence Instructions to Child Eyewitness Reduces Overconfidence but Does Not Improve Confidence–Accuracy Calibration

ABSTRACTChildren are well‐documented to exhibit poor confidence–accuracy calibration on lineup identification tasks. Children tend to report overconfidence in their (often inaccurate) lineup identification decisions. This research explored the extent to which school‐aged children's (N = 142; 6‐ to 8‐year‐old) confidence reports are implicitly driven by perceived social pressure to provide a specific confidence rating. Children were randomly assigned to two different confidence instruction conditions: the neutral (n = 69) or the reframed conditions (n = 73). The reframed instructions encouraged honesty and instructed children to ignore perceived pressure when reporting confidence. Results revealed that the reframed instructions resulted in more conservative confidence judgments; however, this shift did not translate into those confidence ratings better reflecting children's identification accuracy. Overall, these findings provide evidence that, while external or social factors play a contributing role, other aspects of development are likely contributing more to the poor confidence–accuracy calibration observed with child eyewitnesses.

Dating early memories: When did events really happen?

Can children accurately date their early memories? This question has important real-life consequences such as when jurors evaluate the credibility of child eyewitness testimony in court. Answering this question is difficult given that adults present at remembered events may be inaccurate themselves in retroactively dating the memories recalled by their children, and often cannot provide reliable validation. In this study, prior to child interviews the parents of 6- to 13-year-olds provided eight memories of events with known dates, two each from when children were age 2, 3, 4, and 5 years. A total of 104 6- to 13-year-olds participated (47 % female, 70 % White and 26 % Asian or multi-ethnic), recruited from Canada (36 %) and USA (64 %). Children typically made systematic dating errors. Memories of events that had occurred when children had been age 2 were misdated by 1½ years on average, and as children’s age at the time of remembered events increased, misdating errors decreased. Errors usually involved children thinking they had been older at the time of remembered events than they actually were – a phenomenon termed ‘forward telescoping’ (versus ‘backward telescoping, when individuals think that they had been older at the time of remembered events than they actually had been). For example, many of the events from when children were age 2 were recalled by the children, but they misdated them to older ages. Although ‘age of memory’ (age of the child at the time of the remembered event) was significantly related to errors in dating, with more errors for memories from younger periods of their lives, ‘age of child’ at the time they did the memory task did not differ depending upon how old the children were. Findings have theoretical and forensic implications.

The role of experimenter familiarity in children’s eyewitness identification

Child eyewitnesses show a high false identification rate on target-absent (TA) lineups despite good performance on target-present (TP) lineups. One explanation is that children feel a social pressure to choose when presented with a TA lineup. We investigated whether experimenter familiarity would reduce social pressure and improve accuracy on TA lineups. Children (5–7 years, N = 120) watched a short video of a staged theft; 1–2 days later they completed a TP or TA lineup with a familiar or unfamiliar experimenter. Experimenter familiarity had an impact on lineup response in TA lineups only, with more correct ‘not there’ and fewer ‘not sure’ responses when the children were familiar with the experimenter. The results provide further evidence to support the social aspect of eyewitness identification decisions in children and provide a possible strategy to improve identification accuracy for those working with children in the criminal justice system.

The Gestural Misinformation Effect in Child Interviews in Switzerland

Gestures embody concepts in the form of universal representations. Researchers have highlighted that social communication often embodies nonverbal behavior. A forensic interviewer’s nonverbal behavior, such as gesturing during an interview, could communicate misleading information and may cause inaccuracies in the interviewees’ testimonies. The current study was conducted in Switzerland and included 108 child participants, in three age groups (a younger sample aged 6–9 years, n = 32) (a middle sample aged 10–11 years, n = 40) and an older sample aged 12–13 years, n = 36). Participants viewed a video and completed an interview about the video, individually, immediately after. During the questioning, the interviewer deliberately misled the interviewees with nonverbal gestures. The results showed that 95 children were misled by at least one gesture and that gestures led to a significant decrease in accuracy. Children also incorporated misleading gestures and reported false information; adding to existing evidence that misinformation can also be communicated through nonverbal gestures. Our findings demonstrate the negative influence of misleading gestures in child eyewitness interviews and provide more evidence for the robustness of the gestural misinformation effect, reported in previous research.

Knowledge about eyewitness testimony: a survey of Indonesian police officers and psychologists

ABSTRACT Faulty eyewitness testimony can be a notorious source of mistakes in the legal system potentially leading to wrongful convictions and miscarriages of justice. The current study examined the knowledge of a sample of police officers (n = 270) and psychologists (n = 63) in Indonesia regarding factors known to influence the validity of eyewitness testimony given by adults and children. Previous studies have documented that police and psychologists in Western countries have less-than-optimal knowledge about the psychology of eyewitness testimony. Similarly, our non-Western sample also demonstrated a lack of knowledge that may be damaging in the legal context such as the belief that recall of minor details indicates accuracy of memory. For both adult and child eyewitnesses, the psychologists performed significantly better than the police but at the item level these differences were small in size. Intriguingly, we also found that psychologists were more likely than the police officers to endorse the item about repression of memories. The findings show the need for teaching on the psychology of eyewitness testimony for professional groups involved in the legal arena.

Child eyewitness researchers often bin age: Prevalence of the practice and recommendations for analyzing developmental trends.

Effective practices for eliciting and analyzing children's eyewitness reports rely on accurate conclusions about age differences in how children retain information and respond to memory probes. Binning, which is the practice of categorizing continuous variables into discrete groups, can lower studies' power to detect age differences and, in some situations, produce significant but spurious effects. In this article, we (a) describe a systematic review that estimated the frequency of binning age in child eyewitness studies, (b) analyze real and simulated data to illustrate how binning can distort conclusions about age and covariate effects, and (c) demonstrate best practices for analyzing and reporting age trends. We expected that researchers would frequently bin age and that we would replicate the negative consequences of binning in the demonstration data sets. For the systematic review, we retrieved 58 articles describing child eyewitness studies and determined whether researchers binned age for one randomly selected analysis per article. We then compared alternative ways of analyzing actual and simulated data sets. Researchers binned age for 64% of the analyses (88% of analyses involving experimental manipulations vs. 35% of the nonexperimental analyses, φ = .55, p < .01). A significant age trend in the real data example was nonsignificant when age was treated as categorical, and in the simulated data sets we demonstrate how this practice may lead to detecting a spurious effect. Treating age as a continuous variable maximizes power to detect real differences without inflating the frequency of spurious results, thereby ensuring that policies regarding child eyewitnesses reflect developmental changes in children's needs and abilities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Supplemental Material for Child Eyewitness Researchers Often Bin Age: Prevalence of the Practice and Recommendations for Analyzing Developmental Trends

Supplemental Material for Child Eyewitness Researchers Often Bin Age: Prevalence of the Practice and Recommendations for Analyzing Developmental Trends

Forks in the road, routes chosen, and journeys that beckon: A selective review of scholarship on children's testimony

SummaryIn this brief review, we reflect upon the key contributions of research examining children's eyewitness testimony. Children's testimonial ability became a focus of interest for researchers about 40 years ago in the wake of several high‐profile child abuse cases that prompted questions about children's reliability in the face of problematic interviewing and other suggestive influences. Since that time, scholars have examined children's capacity to provide accurate and detailed descriptions of their experiences and also evaluated the impact of various suggestive techniques. We have learned much about the conditions that are likely to promote reliable testimony from children and, conversely, when we might have cause for concern about the veracity of their reports. We highlight here some methodological and translational issues that have plagued the field and suggest some areas for future research focus.

How sure are you that this is the man you saw? Child witnesses can use confidence judgments to identify a target.

We tested whether an alternative lineup procedure designed to minimize problematic influences (e.g., metacognitive development) on decision criteria could be effectively used by children and improve child eyewitness identification performance relative to a standard identification task. Five hundred sixteen children (6- to 13-year-olds) watched a video of a target reading word lists and, the next day, made confidence ratings for each lineup member or standard categorical decisions for 8 lineup members presented sequentially. Two algorithms were applied to classify confidence ratings into categorical decisions and facilitate comparisons across conditions. The classification algorithms produced accuracy rates for the confidence rating procedure that were comparable to the categorical procedure. These findings demonstrate that children can use a ratings-based procedure to discriminate between previously seen and unseen faces. In turn, this invites more nuanced and empirical consideration of ratings-based identification evidence as a probabilistic index of guilt that may attenuate problematic social influences on child witnesses' decision criteria. (PsycINFO Database Record

"I Didn't Do That!" Event Valence and Child Age Influence Adults' Discernment of Preschoolers' True and False Statements.

Justice can hinge on adults' abilities to distinguish accurate from inaccurate child testimony. Yet relatively little is known about factors that affect adults' abilities to determine the accuracy of children's eyewitness reports. In this study, adults (N = 108) viewed videoclips of 3- and 5-year-olds answering open-ended and leading questions about positive and negative actually experienced ("true") events or never experienced ("false") events that the children either affirmed or denied. Analyses revealed that adults were more accurate at determining the veracity of negative compared with positive incidents, particularly when children said that they had experienced the event. Moreover, adults' accuracy was at chance for older children's false denials. Psycholegal implications are discussed.

Comparing Younger and Older Adult Eyewitnesses: Examining the Simultaneous, Elimination, and Wildcard Lineup Procedures

Older adults (60- to 99-year-olds) and younger adults (18- to 49-year-olds) viewed a videotaped theft and were then asked to provide a description of the perpetrator. Following a brief delay, participants were presented with a simultaneous, elimination, or wildcard lineup procedure that was either target-present or target-absent. Overall, younger adult eyewitnesses were more likely to be correct in their identification decisions, reported more perpetrator descriptors, and had a higher proportion of accurate descriptors compared to older adults. Moreover, the simultaneous and elimination procedures were superior to the wildcard procedure in target-absent lineups. When presented with a target-present lineup, participants were more likely to be correct when presented with the simultaneous procedure compared to the elimination procedure. Neither of the identification procedures that have been shown to be beneficial with child eyewitnesses appear to have influenced the rate of correct identification or correct rejection for older adults as a separate age group.

Mother's IPV, Child Maltreatment Type and the Presence of PTSD in Children and Adolescents.

This correlational cross-sectional study was designed to investigate whether the intimate partner violence (IPV) suffered by mothers (physical and psychological maltreatment), child eyewitness of psychological and physical maltreatment suffered by the mother, the neglect suffered by children, and the maltreatment (physical and psychological) directly suffered by children are statistically associated to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms exhibited by the child. In addition, the prevalence of child PTSD was estimated, as well as the concordance between the PTSD symptoms assessed by the Child PTSD Symptom Scale (CPSS) and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR) criteria for child PTSD. The sample consisted of 152 Spanish children aged 8 to 17 and their mothers, who were recruited from Centers of Specialized Assistance for Women Victims of IPV. PTSD prevalence was 20.4%. The results of a canonical correlation analysis showed that the two types of maltreatment with the largest contribution to the canonical variable were physical maltreatment directly suffered by the child, and child eyewitness of physical maltreatment suffered by the mother. The potential developmental pathway of PTSD when both children and mothers suffer severe maltreatment needs to be examined, and this will contribute to the choice of the most effective type of specialized intervention.

The influence of disclosure history and body diagrams on children's reports of inappropriate touching: Evidence from a new analog paradigm.

We tested a new paradigm for child eyewitness research that incorporates children's disclosure histories into analog study designs. Mr. Science-Germ Detective creates meaningful touching experiences and varied patterns of preinterview disclosures by convincing children that touching in the laboratory is potentially contaminating (germy). Children (N = 287, 4 to 8 years) heard that Mr. Science could no longer touch children's skin and then participated in an educational program involving 2 attempted touches. A week later, their disclosure histories were determined by a phone call that occurred a day before a forensic-style interview in the laboratory. This interview was delivered in 1 of 2 conditions: with early open-ended and more focused prompts delivered without a diagram (conventional-first condition) or with an initial diagram-assisted phase (diagram-first condition). Results confirmed that the new paradigm produces salient touches and performance patterns across open-ended and more focused questions that mirror well-known findings in eyewitness studies. A diagram made it easier for research assistants to elicit detailed reports of touching, but only among children 5 years and older who had not previously disclosed. Accuracy rates were comparable across interview conditions for early substantive phases but declined among older children when interviewers used diagrams to elicit additional reports late in interviews. These findings demonstrate that disclosure history is an important variable to include in analog study designs and confirm that Germ Detective is a promising paradigm for initial tests of new interviewing strategies. (PsycINFO Database Record

The Mystery Man Can Increase the Reliability of Eyewitness Identifications for Older Adult Witnesses

Some groups of eyewitnesses, such as older adults and children, are less likely to correctly reject a target-absent (TA) line-up, as compared to younger adults. Previous research reports that using a silhouette in a video line-up called the ‘mystery man’ could increase correct rejections for TA lineups for child eyewitnesses, without reducing correct identifications for target-present (TP) line-ups (Havard and Memon in Appl Cogn Psychol 27:50–59, 2013). The current study, using older and younger adults, investigated whether using the mystery man would also increase the identification accuracy for older adults, without impairing younger adults’ identification accuracy. The results found that older adults in the ‘mystery man’ condition rejected TA line-ups significantly more often than those in the control condition (52 vs. 24 %), with no significant effect upon the TP line-ups. For the younger adults, the mystery man had no influence on identification responses for the TA or TP line-ups. Our findings suggest the mystery man technique may be beneficial for older adults, without detrimentally affecting the accuracy for younger adults, and thus could increase the reliability of eyewitness evidence, where video line-ups are employed.

Face-off: A new identification procedure for child eyewitnesses.

In 2 experiments, we introduce a new "face-off" procedure for child eyewitness identifications. The new procedure, which is premised on reducing the stimulus set size, was compared with the showup and simultaneous procedures in Experiment 1 and with modified versions of the simultaneous and elimination procedures in Experiment 2. Several benefits of the face-off procedure were observed: it was significantly more diagnostic than the showup procedure; it led to significantly more correct rejections of target-absent lineups than the simultaneous procedures in both experiments, and it led to greater information gain than the modified elimination and simultaneous procedures. The face-off procedure led to consistently more conservative responding than the simultaneous procedures in both experiments. Given the commonly cited concern that children are too lenient in their decision criteria for identification tasks, the face-off procedure may offer a concrete technique to reduce children's high choosing rates. (PsycINFO Database Record

Developmental Differences across Middle Childhood in Memory and Suggestibility for Negative and Positive Events.

In the present study, we investigated age differences in children's eyewitness memory and suggestibility for negative and positive events that children often experience during middle childhood. We first examined 216 ratings by children aged 8-12 years of the frequency and intensity of personal negative and positive experiences (Study 1). Based on those ratings, videotapes depicting the most frequent and intense negative (an accident) and positive (a family excursion) events were developed. A new sample of 227 children aged 8-12 years was tested for recognition memory of the videotapes using the three-stage post-event misinformation procedure (Study 2). Compared with 8- to 9-year-olds, 10- to 12-year-olds exhibited less memory malleability and less compliance with false information. Age improvements in recognition accuracy were also evident for children who watched the negative event, but not for those who watched the positive event. Compliance predicted misinformation effects, particularly in regard to peripheral details. Thus, using ecologically representative emotional events, age differences in suggestibility and memory accuracy emerged, especially for negative events.Theoretical and forensic implications concerning children's eyewitness memory and suggestibility are discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Low‐SES Preschool Children's Eyewitness Memory: The Role of Narrative Skill

This study investigated the relation between narrative skill and eyewitness memory in young children from low-socioeconomic status (SES) communities. A total of 176 children aged 3-5 years were interviewed about a conflict event they witnessed. The quality of their narratives about the event and their ability to narrate a story from a picture book were examined in relation to memory of the event. Comprehensive measures of individual differences in vocabulary skill, adaptive language use, and behavioral characteristics were also administered. The results revealed that children who produced longer, more descriptive, and more cohesive narratives about the event recalled more accurate details and made fewer memory errors, independent of their language ability and behavioral characteristics. The quality of story narratives did not make any independent contributions to memory. Child's age was a robust predictor of memory for the event. Implications of the findings for understanding eyewitness memory in low-SES children are discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

When Parents Know Little about What Happened: Parent-guided Conversations, Stress, and Young Children's Eyewitness Memory.

This study examined how 4- to 7-year-olds' memories for a stressor were influenced by conversations with a parent who had little knowledge of the target event, and the stress children experienced before, during, and after the event. Children (N = 43) watched a mildly stressful video before talking about it with a parent. Parents were asked to focus on either the children's feelings or the content of the video itself. A researcher interviewed the children about their memory following the conversation. Behavioral and physiological measures of children's stress were collected at multiple stages. Children recalled more inaccurate information with the parent than with the interviewer. Younger age and parent insecure attachment were associated with poorer memory. Manipulation of parents' emotion orientation did not predict memory, but individual differences in the talk did, although in different ways from what would be expected from research on conversations about shared events. Less stress (according to self-reported happiness and observed negative affect) before and after, but not during, the stressor was linked with better memory. Implications for children's memory in legal settings are discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Getting to Know You: Familiarity, Stereotypes, and Children's Eyewitness Memory.

The present study concerned how the acquisition of social information, specifically knowledge about personal characteristics, influences young children's memory and suggestibility. Effects of two sources of knowledge about a target person were systematically examined: familiarity and stereotypes. Children, aged 4-5 and 7-9 years (N = 145), were randomly assigned, per age group, to experimental conditions based on a familiarity (6 hours vs. no prior exposure) × stereotype (negative depiction as messy and clumsy vs. no stereotype) factorial design. Children then watched the target person engage in a target event (a series of contests) at a preschool ("Camp Ingrid"). The children's memory and suggestibility about the target person and target event were tested after a delay of 2 weeks. Results indicated that the negative stereotype resulted in an increase in children's correct responses both to free-recall stereotype-related questions (when children were unfamiliar with the target person) and to closed-ended questions overall (for younger children). However, the stereotype was associated with greater error to stereotype-related closed-ended questions. Moreover, familiarity increased children's accuracy to closed-ended questions. Implications for theory and application are discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.