One of the most debated issues in relation to child sexual abuse (CSA) is whether there should be a limitation period for prosecutions. In 2017 a French ministerial report was released proposing extension of the limitation period in part because of the sometimes long delay between the alleged events and the disclosure of the abuse. For this, the report relied on dissociative amnesia. It also advocated for the development of child victim interview protocols by victim associations. We show that dissociative amnesia is not consensual within the scientific community. Instead, we recommend scientifically reliable cognitive principles to explain the lack of memory. Moreover, interviewing techniques for children have already been designed by memory researchers to enhance recall and report of CSA, from which any uncontrolled deviation might put the child's testimony at risk. We conclude by advocating for the use of evidence-based psychology, and for cooperation between practitioners, judges and researchers.

Recent research shows that the quality of a baseline (i.e., the analysis of one's behavior in normal conditions) decreases when the second narrative is expected and deceitful. However, a first step would be to investigate whether the writing of a first narrative might influence the second, independently of its expectancy. In this study, we hypothesized that second narratives would be less detailed, especially if these narratives are deceptive. Participants (N = 71) were asked to narrate two consecutive truthful and deceptive narratives. The second narrative was unexpected, and the order of the narratives was counterbalanced. Results suggest a detrimental effect of deceptiveness and order on the frequency of details. Moreover, an interaction was observed, suggesting when narratives are written after a first one, the frequency of details decreases, all the more if they were deceptive. The results of this experiment are discussed from both a theoretical and an applied perspective.

Epistemic individualism has recently been considered as a potential explanation for critical thinking and conspiracy theories. We propose in this paper to resolve this paradox. In three studies (N = 1952), we investigate the constituents of epistemic individualism, build a scale, and examine how it explains belief in conspiracy theories. The last study also includes critical thinking dispositions and the appeal to authority. Overall, the final version of Epistemic Individual Scale (EIS) shows good reliability, and generally correlates positively with conspiracy theories. Critical thinking dispositions predicted partially epistemic individualism, but were not correlated to conspiracist mentality. Results are discussed in terms of educational applications and further investigation of the validity of the EIS.

In this article, we wish to foster a dialogue between theory-based and classification-oriented stylometric approaches regarding deception detection. To do so, we review how cue-based and model-based stylometric systems are used to detect deceit. Baseline methods, common cues, recent methods, and field studies are presented. After reviewing how computational stylometric tools have been used for deception detection purposes, we show that the he stylometric methods and tools cannot be applied to deception detection problems on the field in their current state. We then identify important advantages and issues of stylometric tools. Advantages encompass quickness of extraction and robustness, allowing for best interviewing practices. Issues are discussed in terms of oral data transcription issues and automation bias emergence. We finally establish future research proposals: We emphasize the importance of baseline assessment and the need for transcription methods, and the concern of ethical standards regarding the applicability of stylometry for deception detection purposes in practical settings, while encouraging the cooperation between linguists, psychologists, engineers, and practitioners requiring deception detection methods.