Lecture 7 - Chapter 5: Factors Affecting the Reliability of Children's Forensic Reports

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORIES

• Ability to recount specific memories that happened in the past

  • Sematic 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

AM Narratives

• Ask 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 can we Differentiate AM from Episodic Memory?

• 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

Assessment of AM

• Narratives

  • Shapes ones 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

Development of AM

• At 2 years of age

  • Develop stable self concept and language

    • Talk about past events

  • Need adult prompting - need to ask follow up questions

  • Minimal detail - theyre kids bruh

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

• 6 years of age

  • Complete and elaborate narratives

  • Schooling

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

  • Parent-child talk

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

• Middle childhood and Adolescence

  • Progression of detailed narratives

  • More details (e.g temporal/spatial)

  • Inclusions of personal thoughts and evaluations

  • Subjective perspectives - your POV

• Young Adults and Beyond

  • Sophisticated Narratives - providing 5 W's without being asked

  • Complete narrative breadth

  • Extensive details

  • High degree of coherence - makes sense (beginning, middle and end)

How to Verify Accuracy of memory recalled from naturally occurring events?

• Ppl can just say whatever and researchers basically just have to go off of it

• They can use parental verification

  • 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

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• 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

• Forensic Setting Implications

  • Children maltreatment cases - children are interviewed about repeated events

    • Reliance on script is problematic

    • Difficult to obtain complete and accurate accounts of specific episodes

Simcock & Hayne (2002)

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

• Tested their memories a) 6 months and b) 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

  • 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

• E.g misleading 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 interfereing with the answers provided by the interviewee

  • projecting

  • Communicated by

    • Positive/negative reinforcement

    • Peer or Parental Pressure

    • Negative emotional tone

    • Repeating Questions

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: assented 13% of plausible questions and 5% of fantastic questions

  • GRP B - Same events and negative feedback to "non" responses AND positive to yes

    • Results: Falsely assented to plausible items 35% and fantastic items 52%

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

DISCLOSURE PATTERNS AMONG SAC

• Roland Submit - own clinical experiences

  • Sexual abuses accommodation syndrome (CSAAS)

  • Intra and Extra familial sexual abuse

  • Children are reluctant to disclose abuse to motivational reasons

  • 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

• 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 variable predict disclosure

  • Severity of abuse

  • Presence of Threats

  • Race

  • Gender

Studies on Children ongoing Forensic Eval for Suspected Abuse

• Difficult to estimate CSA denial and recantation rates

  • Who do we classify as abused vs non-abused

  • Representation

  • Methodology

• 4 major groupings to deal with assenting disclosure rates

  • Group 1: cases of dubious validity

    • Lowest disclosure rates

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

  • Group 2: Select subsamples

    • Extend evaluations to non disclosures but with high suspicion of abuse

  • Group 3: All children to come before forensic interviewers

    • Everyone has to be interviewed no matter if ppl think they were abused or not

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

    • CSA actually occured