Particularisation of Child Abuse Offences: Common Problems when Questioning Child Witnesses

Powell, Martine B.; Roberts, Kim P.; Guadagno, Belinda

doi:10.1080/10345329.2007.12036415

Cited by 39 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 36 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Witnesses, including children, are asked to provide information about the timing and frequency of alleged instances for reasons including the opportunity of the defendant to provide an alibi and the determination of appropriate charge(s) so that individual jurors consider the same offence(s) when reasoning about verdict rather than making their decisions based on a defendant's general propensity to commit (or not) a particular crime (Powell et al, ; S . v .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nonetheless, in many jurisdictions, children who allege repeated abuse are required to particularize, or discuss specific instances of an event with an adequate degree of precision in reference to time, place, or other unique contextual detail, and are often questioned about the frequency of repeated events, in order for an investigation to proceed ( S v . R , ; see Powell, Roberts & Guadagno, ). Although there is much literature concerning children's temporal memory for a past event that happened only once (e.g., Friedman, ; Friedman & Lyon, ; Friedman, Reese, and Dai, ), and even their temporal estimations of future events (Busby Grant, & Suddendorf, ; Hudson & Mayhew, ), we know less about children's temporal memory for similar events experienced repeatedly.…”

mentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Not only may children be tasked with providing temporal information beyond their abilities, but when children make allegations of repeated abuse, the risk of temporally suggestive questions increases (e.g., ‘tell me more about the touching game that happened when you saw him last week’; when both the content and temporal references are accurate but did not occur together), and children find these types of questions more challenging than questions that suggest content alone (Powell et al, ). Thus, it is vital to understand how accurately children with repeated experience are able to determine how many times an event occurred and to sequence information across individual occurrences, in the absence of suggestive or highly complex questioning.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Developmental Differences in the Ability to Provide Temporal Information About Repeated Events

Roberts

Brubacher

Drohan-Jennings

et al. 2015

Applied Cognitive Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

. (2015). Developmental differences in the ability to provide temporal information associated with an instance of a repeated event. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 29,[407][408][409][410][411][412][413][414][415][416][417] We are grateful to the children, parents and schools who participated, and to the numerous TEMPORAL MEMORY OF A REPEATED EVENT 3 AbstractChildren (n = 372) aged 4 -8 years participated in 1 or 4 occurrences of a similar event and were interviewed 1 week later. Compared to 85% of children who participated once, less than 25% with repeated experience gave the exact number of times they participated, although all knew they participated more than once. Children with repeated experience were asked additional temporal questions and there were clear developmental differences. Older children were more able than younger children to judge relative order and temporal position of the four occurrences.They also demonstrated improved temporal memory for the first and last relative to the middle occurrences, while younger children did so only for the first. This is the first systematic demonstration of children's memory for temporal information after a repeated event. We discuss implications for theories of temporal memory development and the practical implications of asking children to provide temporal information.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 97%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Developmental Differences in the Ability to Provide Temporal Information About Repeated Events

Roberts

Brubacher

Drohan-Jennings

et al. 2015

Applied Cognitive Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…When recalling repeated events, children typically recall how events usually transpire, rather than episode‐specific details (Fivush, Hudson, & Nelson, ). In forensic settings, this tendency can be problematic when children are required to describe individual episodes of repeated offences in reasonable detail (e.g., the time, place, or context; Powell, Roberts, & Guadagno, ; S v. R , ). One method that may assist children's recall of individual episodes of repeated events is to provide them with practice of this task prior to substantive discussions (Brubacher, Roberts, & Powell, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effects of one versus two episodically oriented practice narratives on children's reports of a repeated event

Danby

Brubacher

Sharman

et al. 2017

Legal Criminol Psychol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Purpose Previous research has found that children's reports of repeated events can be influenced by the presence and type of narrative practice in which they engage immediately prior to substantive recall. In particular, children's reports have been shown to benefit from practice providing narratives about an autobiographical repeated event. A gap remains, however, with regard to understanding whether practice narrating one episode of a repeated event encourages children to think about unique features of specific episodes, or whether practice of two episodes is required. The current study addressed this gap. Methods Five‐ to nine‐year‐olds (N = 167) experienced four classroom activity sessions and were later interviewed. Children provided a practice narrative about either one or two episodes of an autobiographical repeated event prior to discussing individual episodes of the activities. Results Older children recalled more details from the activities when they had practised recalling two episodes compared to one episode. Younger children did not benefit from the second episodic practice. Many similarities were observed across conditions for children of all ages. Conclusions Older children were likely receptive to the subtle differences between conditions because of their advanced cognitive abilities. Interviewers may assist older children to recall a larger amount of information if they first provide practice recalling two episodes of an autobiographical repeated event. However, a practice narrative about one episode may be sufficient to assist many children should two‐episode practice be unfeasible or interviewees are too young to benefit from recall of a second episode.

show abstract

“…These problems are rarely an important issue in daily life because we have no real reason to accurately remember everything we experience. However, in for example criminal investigations of repeated sexual abuse or intimate partner violence it is important that the plaintiff does not only describe details about the events in general, but also (1) provides specific information about individual episodes and (2) can refer to a number of episodes (e.g., more than two; [15]). Hence, there is a fast growing body of psychological research on how to facilitate recollection of repeated events in legal interviews.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Factors Affecting Two Types of Memory Specificity: Particularization of Episodes and Details

2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Memory for repeated events is relevant to legal investigations about repeated occurrences. We investigated how two measures of specificity (number of events referred to and amount of detail reported about the events) were influenced by interviewees’ age, number of experienced events, interviewer, perceived unpleasantness, and memory rehearsal. Transcribed narratives consisting of over 40.000 utterances from 95 dental patients, and the corresponding dental records, were studied. Amount of detail was measured by categorizing the utterances as generic, specific, or specific-extended. We found that the two measures were affected differently by all five factors. For instance, number of experienced events positively influenced number of referred events but had no effect on amount of detail provided about the events. We make suggestions for future research and encourage reanalysis of the present data set and reuse of the material.

show abstract

Particularisation of Child Abuse Offences: Common Problems when Questioning Child Witnesses

Cited by 39 publications

References 36 publications

Developmental Differences in the Ability to Provide Temporal Information About Repeated Events

Developmental Differences in the Ability to Provide Temporal Information About Repeated Events

The effects of one versus two episodically oriented practice narratives on children's reports of a repeated event

Factors Affecting Two Types of Memory Specificity: Particularization of Episodes and Details

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About