Adults' judgments of children's coached reports.

Abstract

This study investigated adults' judgments of the honesty of children's coached true and fabricated mock testimony. Adults saw video clips of children testifying in a mock court about a true or fabricated event in their lives. They were asked to make an assessment of the truthfulness of the testimony, and respond to questions about their perception of children's credibility. Half of the adults saw children testifying after a competence examination, and the other half saw children testifying without a competence examination. Overall, girls were rated as more competent than boys, and their testimony was more likely to be believed. Younger children were more likely to be rated as incompetent than older children. A factor analysis of adults' responses revealed six factors which significantly predicted adults' overall assessment of children's credibility, and their evaluations of children's competence to testify. Adults' detection accuracy was at chance, with the majority of children rated as truthful. Viewing the competency examination and cross-examination did not improve the adults' detection accuracy. However, seeing the cross-examination made adults' less likely to believe children's testimony. The implications of these results for the judicial system are discussed.

In‐court versus out‐of‐court testimonies: Children's experiences and adults' assessments

“…Thus, even though the video observers' deception detection performance was better than chance level, their performance was not better than the performance by the observers in the other conditions. This finding supports previous research showing that when observers only have access to a videotaped statement, it is a very difficult task to assess a child's veracity (Talwar & Lee, 2002;Talwar, Lee, Bala, & Lindsay, 2006).…”

Detecting children’s lies: Are parents accurate judges of their own children’s lies?

“…Importantly, the accuracy levels displayed by parents in this study were higher than those found in the literature examining laypersons detection of lying (49% to 51%), suggesting that parents may possess a unique skill they apply during detection (e.g., Edelstein, Luten, Ekman, & Goodman, 2006;Leach et al, 2004;Talwar et al, 2006). Moreover, parents in this study outperformed parents in other studies (Chahal & Cassidy, 1995;Oldershaw & Bagby, 1997; who were attempting to detect the lies of children other than their own.…”

The role of corroborative evidence in child sexual abuse evaluations

“…Using a different methodology, Herman (2005) estimated that the overall error rate for judgements about uncorroborated CSA allegations is at least 0.24. The hypothesis that, in the absence of corroboration, most MHPs are unable to reliably distinguish between children's-or, for that matter, adults'-true and false reports of past events, including reports of sexual abuse, is supported by a large body of empirical research and syntheses of existing research (Bond & DePaulo, 2006;Crossman & Lewis, 2006;Faust & Ziskin, 1988;Fisher, 1995;Fisher & Whiting, 1998;Goodman et al, 2002;Herman, 2009;Hershkowitz et al, 2007a;Horner et al, 1993a;Leach, Talwar, Lee, Bala, & Lindsay, 2004;Lindblad & Lainpelto, 2008;Melton & Limber, 1989;Orcutt, Goodman, Tobey, Batterman-Faunce, & Thomas, 2001;Poole & Lindsay, 1998;Realmuto, Jensen, & Wescoe, 1990;Realmuto & Wescoe, 1992;Talwar, Lee, Bala, & Lindsay, 2006;Vrij, Akehurst, Brown, & Mann, 2006).…”