Eyewitness Testimony of Children - Literature review Example

A childhood eyewitness’s dependence holds significance legally and psychologically. Legally, regardless of age, an eyewitness greatly impacts the jury’s decision of a suspect’s guilt. While under oath, an imprecise recollection is hardly a crime. The greatest concern regarding childhood eyewitnesses is that their memory of the events may be vulnerable to outside influence. Research shows that younger children give less reliant accounts of events. A study even showed the effects that age and ill treatment had on the statements of child witnesses between the ages of three and ten. Six to eight year olds’ testimonies have also been proven vulnerable to suggestion. These researches help with the obtaining of accurate information from children, without pressuring them in any way. Study 1:  Goodman, et al. (2001) . Goodman and his colleagues studied the link between abused children and their eyewitness testimonies while considering a few other factors. They split children with similar backgrounds, abused and non-abused, into the age groups of three to six and seven to ten year olds. The children were paired up according to common factors like their age, gender, abuse status etc. The first part of the experiment was that the children were paired with a stranger (with whom they were encouraged to engage) and then busied in things like reading, photography or blowing bubbles. After a two week interval, an interview was conducted, questioning the children about the various aspects of the social-interaction and asked fallacious questions about the play session. Then the memory and vulnerability of the abused and non-abused children was compared. The group’s initial prognosis was that the older children would have more confident recollections; the non-abused would have display a higher aptitude than the abused children and that an abused child would be easier to influence and his memory more imprecise. From the experiment, the researchers established the older children’s recollection to be more precise and detailed. Age had little impact on the boys’ answers but it was an effecting factor for the girls. The younger girls were inaccurate in comparison to the older girls and the younger boys. The younger boys were found to have the best accounts. However, older children in general gave more noncommittal responses than the younger ones and abused boys gave more noncommittal responses than non-abused boys. The influencing agents in the precision of recollections, age, gender and abuse status, were interconnected. Younger non-abused boys had better memories than anyone else, especially abused boys their age. In older children, abuse had little influence on the precision of answers or even to the general vulnerability to outside influence with regard to abusive actions. Non abused children were nonetheless found to be better at answering direct questions and at recognizing the stranger. The type of abuse inflicted on a child did impact certain answers. For example invasively abused children excluded actual events of abuse and children who were abused at a younger age gave less correct information that children abused at an older age. The children made little errors with regard to misleading questions with older children being more accurate and boys in general being more accurate than girls. The only important effecting factor in the recognition of the male stranger was the abuse status where non abused children were better than the abused ones. Age impacted the research in the recollections of events and openness to suggestions aspects. Basically it was proven that the older children were generally more accurate than the younger ones with specific information or free recall. Study 2:  Cassel and Bjorklund (1995) Duplicating what a witness would usually go through Cassel and Bjorklund reviewed the impact of having implicating questions asked over a frequent evaluation. The aimed at supporting the accuracy of children’s free recall. Referring to a different study showing children being apt to answering leading questions correctly, they concluded that younger children’s accounts were more open to suggestions than older children. The mock trial method aimed at being as similar to a real case scenario as possible, with delays and methods of questioning. 45 six and eight year olds along with70 college students were enrolled in the experiment. Participants were of similar backgrounds and assigned (without any specific pattern) to any of the three treatment levels negative leading, positive leading and control. They were shown a short film portraying an argument and the children were then asked to do a puzzle for fifteen minutes. Then all three groups were called for free recall. They were then asked to give a recollection of the film and prompted with impartial questions. The participants were interviewed two more times. A week later the ‘’leading groups’’ were only called in for interviews while a month later all three groups were asked to come in for free recall and asked the same leading questions. None of the participants were incorrect in what they remembered in the first interview but older participants had greater levels of free recall. Age differences were evident in the overall free recall. Although some participants slight recollection problems, age was not an affecting factor. No important links were found either. The positive leading group was shown to have more accurate responses than the negative leading group at the one-week interval interview. In the one month interview, the positive leading questions were answered better by the six year olds while the eight year olds were better at the negative leading questions. The eight year olds were more averse to the positive leading questions whereas the younger children accepted the information in the negative leading questions. However this difference is too small to be important. At this interview, the younger children responded more accurately to positive leading questions and less accurately to negative leading questions than the older children. An inconclusive part of the research was that the older children did not know the answers to some questions while the younger children answered all asked questions. The interview questions had four categories; central items, appearance items, bicycle items, miscellaneous items. The alteration in the children’s responses was observed and it was noticed that the central items were best remembered. Miscellaneous items were next best remembered but the bicycle and appearance items were frequently forgotten. The answers for small details were changed more than for the central items and younger children had a greater tendency to do so than the older children. The inaccurate recollection of the bicycle items was shocking because this sort of information was what could change the dependability of a witness. Other studies Granhag and Landstrom (2010) Granhag and Landstrom also conducted a study to examine the effects that different presentation modes on the eyewitness experiences of children. Other factors which were examined to be impacted by the various modes of presentation shown were firstly the perception of adults and the assessments of the same witnesses. The children were interviewed and asked about a specific event that they had either experienced or imagined. These interviews were recorded, by making use of a two way closed circuit television or by using a pre-recorded video. There were two effects on which the study focused on; the first of these was the vividness effect. This effect basically states that testimonies can be categorized as vivid if they are emotionally intense, concrete and provoke imagery, and are in sensory proximity. Due to this vivid testimonies are seen as more credible, memorable and convincing. Also kept in mind was the ability of the adults to detect when the child was being deceptive. Research shows that normally the ability of adults to detect when a child is lying fall just about the level of chance. This is largely due to the fact that adults have a tendency to analyze the child’s veracity by paying more attention to their statements than to their physical appearance. The participants for this study comprised of child witnesses and adult observers. A sample of 108 children between the ages of 10 to 11 years, out of which 65 were boys and the rest girls, acted the part of a witness for the study. They were selected from a number of different schools in Sweden. The sample was balanced as far as the children’s ethnicity was concerned. The adult observers were 240 in number, 65 males and 175 females, between the ages of 18 and 65. Their role was to that of observers. Majority of the adults were Caucasian college undergraduate students. Through random selection they were assigned to either watch a child telling the truth or lying through a video recording. The adult observers before viewing the video interview were given background information stating that a number of children were claiming to have spoken to a man near their school. They were told that half of these children were truthful while the other half had only heard about the man. After viewing the tape the observers had to complete a questionnaire and answer questions related to their perception regarding the child’s statement; these were aimed at the statement given by the child and their appearance. Some of these observers viewed the child’s statement live and not through a camera. The results of the study show that the observers who saw the children give their testimony live were seen in positive terms than the ones who saw a recording. It was concluded that the more proximal a presentation mode, the more positive was the perception of the adult observer. It was also found that children who had to testify on video were also less nervous when compared to the one’s who gave their statement live or on a two-way CCTV. Discussion While these studies aimed to address the reliability of children’s eyewitness testimony their experimental methods adopted were vastly different. All experiments tried to replicate a real life eyewitness experience. However the basic difference was that while Goodman et al. (2001) had a two week delay between the session, the participants in Cassel and Bjorklund (1995) and Granhag and Landstrom (2010) had delays between the interviews conducted on the participants of about 10 to 15 minutes. Also the studies address situations which were vastly different in terms of what the child witnesses. Children in the Goodman et al. study were actively participating in the interaction, whereas in the Cassel study they had to observe a recorded interaction between people. In the Granhag and Landstrom study the participating children claimed to have interacted with a man near their school. They were further split into a lying or truth situations. These individual studies contribute to the fact that children who firsthand experience an event have the tendency to more accurately report it rather than those who simply just observe. The recall rate for children who had more actively participated in an experience tended to also have higher recall rates. The research also states that abused children were more likely than nonabused children to testify about an event that had impacted them. However the chance of both abused and nonabused children to give statements about an event which does not affect them tends to be equal. Also, another key difference between these studies is that the abuse status is only relevant in the study conducted by Goodman et al and not in the other two studies. Goodman et. Al (2001) incorporated a number of factors, such as age, gender, whether the child had been abused, their IQ’s and their ethnicity. Cassel and Bjorklund took into account only one factor, that of age. Granhag and Landstrom (2010) took into account age, ethnicity as well as gender of the children. The age group in all the studies is similar, however Goodman et al. uses a sample which is much broader in terms of age than the other two studies which makes his findings a lot easier to generalize. From a piagetian perspective the sample used in the studies highlights the comparison of preoperational and operational children. Preoperational children, who are between the ages of two to seven, have a understanding of the world through language as well as imagery, whereas operational refers to older children who being to understand the world through logical thought (Holliday, 2003). So while Goodman et. al sample falls between the preoperational and concrete operational stage, the sample of the other two studies fall towards the end of the preoperational stage and can be considered older. As far as the controversy regarding the credibility of the eyewitness testimony of children is concerned one key finding by Goodman et al. (2001) was the fact that children who were abused were more suggestible. The findings also indicate that the young children were also resistant to misleading questions, although if the child was older the chances that he answers questions correctly rose. All the studies addressed critical psychological and legal issues which were involved in a child’s eyewitness testimony. They also suggested that future research be based on added measures. These should make use of the stability of a family, post traumatic stress disorder, bonds of attachment as well as dissociation. There is also discussion leaning towards analyzing the effects of repeated questioning as well as the use of false memory to determine the accuracy of the statements received. A challenge associated pointed by such research goes to highlight the fact that children when repeatedly questioned tend to be led into answering the same question differently; hence investigation into this aspect is marked as critical. Being an eyewitness is a stressful and confusing experience for a witness, regardless of their age. While it is important to establish ecological validity more important is protecting the participant from long term harm. Cassel and Bjorklund found that the way a younger child encodes information is quiet divergent from how an old child. While the young rely on verbatim representations, the older children lean towards gist representations (Siegler, 2005). So taking into account a child’s level of cognitive development can also be an area of concern for future researchers in order to come up with appropriate methods for evaluating the accuracy of a child’s testimony while minimizing the trauma for the subject. Further research Lowenstein et. al (2010) Lowenstein et al focused their research on the aspect of child eyewitness testimony and it’s accuracy as far as identifying a witness in the presence of a uniformed police officer was concerned. This study focuses on the possibility that uniformed police officers impose on a child eye witness an authority cue which in turn has an adverse effect on the child’s ability to accurately identify the suspect. The sample used by the research is focused on 60 participants, between the ages of nine to ten, all belonging from the UK. The child had to witness a staged crime and they were later showed a number of individuals from which they had to pick out a ‘burglar’. The staged line up was simultaneous using a design which incorporated two conditions; one in which a uniformed guard was present and the other in which he was not. The results of the study indicate that children in the uniform present conditions made more guesses as to the identification of the burglar when compared to those in a uniform absent condition. However it was also seen that in the children in the presence of the uniformed guards tended to be make more false identifications. This was mostly due to the presence of the guard inducing in the child eyewitness the tendency to be less nervous and experience lesser anxiety and hence lesser uncertainty when pointing out a burglar; regardless of whether they were right or wrong. Lehman et. al. (2010) Lehman et al conducted a study which focused on inserting a adapted misinformation-effect paradigm to see the effect that it had on the accuracy of the testimony of children eyewitnesses. Furthermore it aimed to see their resistance to misinformation and suggestibility. The sample comprise of 40 children who were 4 and 39 that were 6 years old. A story was told to these children and which they later reviewed and were asked questions about in two formats; the recall or recognition format. After a period of three weeks some misinformation regarding the events in the story was given. Another week later the children were asked the original questions. After a gap of two years a similar procedure was used with a story that was different for 31 of the children. The results of the study show that even though four year olds had a greater tendency to disagree than the older children as far as the initial misinformation was concerned. However this resistance did not have an impact on their accuracy or suggestibility scores. The six year olds on the other hand showed more resistance to the suggestive effects of misinformation when they underwent a recall test or when they were given a chance to disagree with misinformation. References Cassel, S., & Bjorklund, F. (1995). Developmental patterns of eyewitness memory and suggestibility. Law and Human Behavior, 19 (5), 507–32. Goodman, G., Bottoms, B., Rudy, Davis, S. L., & Schwartz-Kenney, B. M. (2001). Effects of past abuse experiences on children’s eyewitness memory. Law and Human Behavior, 25 (3), 269–98. Holliday, R. E. (2003). Reducing misinformation effects in children with cognitive interviews: Dissociating recollection and familiarity. Child Development, 74, 728–751 Landström, S. and Granhag, P. A. (2010), In-court versus out-of-court testimonies: Childrens experiences and adults assessments. Appl. Cognit. Psychol., 24: 941–955 Lehman, E., McKinley,M., Thompson, D.,Leonard, A., Rothroc, L. (2010). Long-term stability of young childrens eyewitness accuracy, suggestibility, and resistance to misinformation. Journal of Applied Development Psychology. 31 (2010) 145–154 Lowenstein, J., Blank, H., and Saue, J. (2010) Uniforms Affect the Accuracy of Children’s Eyewitness Identification Decisions. Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling. 7: 59–73 (2010) Siegler, R.S., & Alibali, M.W. (2005). Children’s thinking. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Read More