Lecture 7: Factors Affecting the Reliability of Children's Forensic Reports

Chapter 5

Autobiographical Memories

• ability to recount specific memories that happened in the past

• Memory that happened to you in the past and you can remember the time and place and is significant

• has Semantic and Episodic components

Semantic AM

•  Involves general knowledge and factual info about yourself (e.g birthday)

Episodic AM

• Recount personal experiences that are specific to time and place (e.g attending uni)

• Emotional and perceptual

Autobigraphical Memories Narratives

• Ask the participant to describe past events with open-ended questions

• Participant gives as much detail as possible

  • Researcher can then ask follow up questions if they want more info (5 W's)

  • Details provided/needed: Spatial, Contextual, Emotional, Perceptual

How to diffrentiate AM from Episodic?

• Episodic Memory

  • Likely to be "forgotten" Or does not involve the self

  • Not unique

  • E.g Walking your dog

• Autobiographical Memory

  • Meaning & significance - important

  • Involves different components

Narratives

• Shapes one’s sense of self

• helps with contracting and organizing personal events

• WH questions

• E.g Can you please tell me about the event? Open ended question

• how they assess autobigraphical assessment

Development of AM: 2 Years Old

• Develop a stable self concept (who they are) and language

  • Talk about past events

• Need adult prompting: need to ask follow-up questions

• Minimal detail: they’re kids bruh no shit

• Theory of mind - understanding that ppl will have different perspectives and not think exactly how you do

Development of AM: 6 Years Old

• Complete and elaborate narratives

  • able to provide more complete and elaborate accounts of past events

• Schooling

  • Teachers read books to them and ask them to make predictions

  • how many details they need to know etc

• Parent-child talk

  • After school parents ask open-ended questions so they can explain their day

  • get better at talking about past events

Development of AM: Middle Childhood and Adolescence

• Progression of detailed narratives

  • can provide a lot more details (fully Developed)

• More details (e.g temporal/spatial)

  • can include when and where something happened

• Inclusions of personal thoughts and evaluations

  • better understanding of who you are

  • you add your opinons and thoughts to your stories

• Subjective perspectives - your POV

  • e.g youre a grad and it sucked (thats how you feel)

Development of AM: Young Adults and Beyond

• Sophisticated Narratives

• Complete narrative breadth

  • how much detail and context you provide

  • providing 5 W's without being asked

• Extensive details

  • details you add so someone gets the full story youre telling

• High degree of coherence

  • makes sense (beginning, middle and end)

Parental Verification

• helps to verify accuracy of memory children recall

• Prior to bringing a child in to ask them questions, they will contact a parent to provide events that happened on a calendar

• The parent will specify unique events that happened

• When the child comes in to talk about their AM, the researcher can verify it

• Can also be done in adults but mainly children

Kulkofsky, Wang & Ceci (2008)

• Children engaged in pizza-baking activity

• Included unusual and non-schematic elements (e.g baking pizza in a fridge)

• Results:

  • One week later, children's free recall statements were 24% incorrect

  • Spontaneous statements are not completely error free

Scripts

• Generalized accounts of what usually happens in a given situation

• What typically happens in a specific environment

  • E.g going to a restaurant

• Young children are better at reporting scripts

  • Difficult to distinguish between specific episodes of repeated events

APPLICATION EXAMPLE: forensic Setting Implications - Scripts

• Children maltreatment cases - children are interviewed about repeated events

  • Reliance on script is problematic

  • Difficult to obtain complete and accurate accounts of specific episodes

Spontaneous Statements

• Young children’s spontaneous reports of past events are generally accurate but sparse.

• Accuracy declines when recalling confusing or ambiguous events.

• Scripts can cause memory errors, as children may fill in gaps with typical event patterns.

• Limit to early memory recall – Memories before language onset are unreliable.

  • we dont use words to describe stuff if they werent already in our vocab - no shit

Simcock & Hayne (2002)

• Exposed children who were 27, 33 and 39 months to a novel event

• Tested their memories at 6 months and 1 year later

• Parents verified children's vocabulary abilities

• Results:

  • 6 months and 1 year tests showed children used same vocabulary at time of encoding

    • no child used words to describe the event that had not been part of the child’s vocabulary at the time of the original event.

  • Later verbal recall is dependent on language ability at time of encoding

Peterson et al (1996)

• Children's LTM for emergent room visits

• Interview a) immediately after visit to ER, b) 6 months to 5 years

• Results:

  • Preschoolers = fewer details than older children

  • 3 y/o recalled central information

    • Able to remember the most important pieces of info during their visit

Suggestibility

• Factors "before" and "after" an event can influence recall

• Can be social or psychological factors

• children may accept an interviewer’s suggestion while knowing that the suggestion is not correct

• E.g misleading questions

• age appears to be the single best predictor of suggestibility

  • older kids can call it out more than younger

Forensic Using Leading Questions….

• Forensic interviews frequently ask children leading questions (problematic = leading)

  • Used b/c spontaneous reports are not detailed

  • Children are less accurate when answering direct questions compared to open-ended questions

    • Less IDK responses

Interview Bias

• Opinions of the interviewer interfering with the answers provided by the interviewee

• projecting

How can Interview Bias be communicated?

• Positive/negative reinforcement

  • Praising or punishment

• Peer or Parental Pressure

  • telling interviewee what others have said

• Negative or accusatory emotional tone

  • e.g urging the child to help keep the defendant in jail

• Repeating Questions

  • go until the kid gives you the answer you want

Garven et al (2000)

• Kindergarten children recall details from Paco came to their class

• Both groups asked misleading questions

  • Grp A - Plausible events (did Paco break a toy?) AND Fantastic events (did Paco take you to a farm in a helicopter

    • Results: 13% agreed to plausible questions and 5% of fantastic questions

  • GRP B - Same events and negative feedback to "no" responses AND positive to yes

    • Results: Falsely agreed to plausible items 35% and fantastic items (52%)

    • more suggestible

Bruck et al (2002)

• Experts watch videos of children's true and false reports that emerged due to suggestive questioning techniques

• Asked to classify true and false events

• Results:

  • No better than chance at distinguishing true from false memories

  • found that false narratives contained more spontaneous details, more temporal markers, more elaborations, and more aggressive details than true narratives

Disclosure Patterns Among Sexual Assault Cases

• Sexual abuses accommodation syndrome (CSAAS)

• Intra and Extra familial sexual abuse (within and outside family) Children are reluctant to disclose abuse due to motivational reasons

  • such as being ashamed, scared, or embarrassed.

• Therefore, abused children might give partial, delayed disclosure of info or not at all

Adults retrospective accounts of CSA and childhood disclosure: Evidence on delayed disclosure

• Many Adults report they never told anyone during childhood about CSA

• Few brought to attention of authorities (e.g police, social workers etc)

• Support summits notion of secrecy

• Few individual difference variables predict disclosure

  • Severity of abuse

  • Presence of Threats

  • Race

  • Gender

  • intra vs extra familial

Studies on Children ongoing Forensic Eval for Suspected Abuse

• Difficult to estimate CSA denial and recantation (taking statements back) rates

  • key factors for recantation: pressure from caregivers/predator, fear of consequence, non-supportive environments

    • Who do we classify as abused vs non-abused

      • need info that accurately classifies these children

    • Representation

      • have to have rep of all children who come before forensic interviewers in the sample

    • Methodology

      • different techniques affect disclosure rates

      • particularly sample choices and interview methods

What are the 4 Major Groups that deal with assenting disclosure rates?

• Group 1: cases of dubious validity

• Group 2: Select subsamples

• Group 3: All children to come before forensic interviewers

• Group 4: Cases that come before forensic interviewers that are rated as founded or highly probable

Group 1: Cases of Dubious Validity

• Lowest disclosure rates

• Came from studies with dubious/overturned studies and those with poor techniques

  • unreliable data

  • used samples from a famous McMartin case and some weird ass santaic ritual case

• the studies used were not helpful in deciding disclosure rate patterns

Group 2: Select Subsamples

• Disclosure rate: 43–61% of children disclosed abuse.

• Includes select subsamples of children who come before authorities:

  1. Non-disclosing children under extended evaluation with high suspicion of abuse.

  2. Children with strong abuse evidence (e.g., videotaped abuse, STD diagnoses) but no prior disclosure.

• Limitation: Not representative of all forensic cases—results apply only to these specific subsamples.

Group 3: All children to come before forensic interviewers

• Disclosure rate: 71–83% of children disclosed abuse.

• Sample: All children referred for forensic interviews, regardless of abuse substantiation.

• Key finding: Higher disclosure rates than Group 2 (40–60%).

• Many children had already disclosed abuse before the forensic interview, likely increasing overall rates.

Group 4: Cases that come before forensic interviewers that are rated as founded or highly probable

• CSA actually occurred

• Disclosure rate: 85–96% of children disclosed abuse.

• Sample: Highly probable CSA cases, assessed using multiple sources:

  • Child’s disclosure, medical evidence, confessions, eyewitness reports, etc.

• Key finding: The highest disclosure rates are likely the most accurate estimate of true abuse cases.

• Efforts were made to distinguish founded vs. unfounded cases for reliable disclosure estimates.