The Child in the Eyes of the Jury: Assessing Mock Jurors’ Perceptions of the Child Witness

Ross, David F.; Miller, Beth S.; Moran, Patricia B.

doi:10.1007/978-1-4684-6338-5_8

Cited by 82 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…The question of credibility addresses the issue of what leads to belief independently of whether the story is actually true. Factors that may affect adults' perceptions of child witness credibility include a child's perceived general competence, suggestibility, trust-worthiness, nonverbal demeanor, age, gender, and other personal characteristics (e.g., Bottoms & Goodman, 1994;Goodman, Bottoms, Herscovici, & Shaver, 1989;Haugaard & Reppucci, 1992;Ross, Dunning, Toglia, & Ceci, 1990). Given that jurors' evaluations of the accuracy of children's testimony may be subject to error, it is important to identify the factors that influence adults' judgments of children's truthfulness (Goodman et al, 1989;Wells, Turtle, & Luus, 1989).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Adults' judgments of children's coached reports.

Talwar

Lee

Bala

et al. 2006

Law and Human Behavior

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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.

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confidence: 99%

Adults' judgments of children's coached reports.

Talwar

Lee

Bala

et al. 2006

Law and Human Behavior

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“…In fact, across all the transcript conditions, the most common reasons that mock jurors provided for rendering a guilty verdict were the child's age and her perceived honesty. Ironically, perhaps, when it comes to some allegations, a child's limited cognitive ability increases their perceived credibility (Ross, Dunning, Toglia, & Ceci, 1990).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Where There's Smoke, There's Fire: the Effect of Truncated Testimony on Juror Decision‐making

Anderson

Gross

Sonne

et al. 2016

Behavioral Sci & The Law

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Many countries around the world have modified their legislation to allow child complainants of abuse to present their evidence-in-chief via pre-recorded videotape, or through closedcircuit-television (CCTV), rather than through live testimony, which has been shown to be stressful for children. With this modification, many countries also allow for childrens' videotaped evidence to be truncated for relevance or admissibility purposes. In the two experiments, we examined whether truncating testimony influenced how mock jurors rated the credibility of a 6-year-old child complainant when her testimony contained the primary core allegation only, or when the testimony was presented with either one or two additionalbut less plausible-allegations. We also examined how mock jurors rated the guilt or innocence of the defendant. Contrary to what we predicted, we found that participants believed the child's core allegation, regardless of whether or not it was presented with additional less plausible allegations. Moreover, jurors who read the transcripts containing multiple allegations of abuse were more likely to find the defendant guilty of the core allegation than were jurors who read the core allegation only. These findings suggest that the truncation of testimony may affect the outcome of a trial; however, more research is needed on the effects of truncated testimony on juror decision-making as we continue to try to make the criminal justice system as fair as possible for all of those involved.iii

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“…Research that compares younger adults to older adults has demonstrated that elder witnesses are less accurate (Bartlett & Fulton, 1991;Bornstein, Witt, Cherry, & Greene, 2000;Brimacombe, Quinton, Nance, & Garrioch, 1997;Brimacombe, Jung, Garrioch, & Allison, 2003;O'Rourke, Penrod, Cutler, & Stuve, 1989), more often misled by false information (Cohen & Faulkner, 1989; but see Bornstein et al, 2000), and have greater false recollection (Schacter, Koutstaal, Johnson, Gross, & Angell, 1997). Their testimony may result in fewer guilty verdicts with mock jurors, especially when the elders are described in stereotypical ways (Bradshaw, Golding, & Marsil, 2006;Nunez, McCoy, Clark, & Shaw, 1999; but see Ross, Dunning, Toglia, & Ceci, 1990). Other research involving eyewitnesses has found that the older eyewitnesses are viewed as more honest (Allison, Brimacombe, Hunter, & Kadlec, 2006;Ross et al, 1990) or no age effects are found (Neuschatz et al, 2005), especially when the elder has normal vision, hearing, and cognition (Smith & Winograd, 1978;Yarmey, 1984).…”

Section: Eyewitnessesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Their testimony may result in fewer guilty verdicts with mock jurors, especially when the elders are described in stereotypical ways (Bradshaw, Golding, & Marsil, 2006;Nunez, McCoy, Clark, & Shaw, 1999; but see Ross, Dunning, Toglia, & Ceci, 1990). Other research involving eyewitnesses has found that the older eyewitnesses are viewed as more honest (Allison, Brimacombe, Hunter, & Kadlec, 2006;Ross et al, 1990) or no age effects are found (Neuschatz et al, 2005), especially when the elder has normal vision, hearing, and cognition (Smith & Winograd, 1978;Yarmey, 1984). Clearly, witness researchers have focused on the elderly (Bornstein, 1995) and it is probably the best example of incorporating elder issues into legal psychology research, but there is still much to be learned.…”

Section: Eyewitnessesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Elder research: filling an important gap in psychology and law

Brank

2007

Behavioral Sci & The Law

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In the past few decades, psychology–law as a discipline has made great strides in understanding and guiding public policies on issues related to eyewitnesses, confessions, juries, judges, juveniles, the mentally ill, and many others. As a field, we have largely neglected the oldest subset of the population, with only a few scholars focusing specifically on elder issues or systematically including elders in their studies. The current article is a call to research. It first outlines why elders should be considered as a specific subset of the population even though they have not been an area of focus in the field. Second, the article provides suggestions for integrating elder issues into more common psychology–law research as well as some new areas for research. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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The Child in the Eyes of the Jury: Assessing Mock Jurors’ Perceptions of the Child Witness

Cited by 82 publications

References 19 publications

Adults' judgments of children's coached reports.

Adults' judgments of children's coached reports.

Where There's Smoke, There's Fire: the Effect of Truncated Testimony on Juror Decision‐making

Elder research: filling an important gap in psychology and law

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