The authors examine in detail the constellation of factors, gleaned
from laboratory research and elsewhere, that can affect children's
testimony.  These include:
   * Interviewer bias -- when the interviewer (parent, therapist,
     investigator) believes he or she knows what happened and attempts
     to get the child to confirm it, ignoring anything the child says
     that does not conform with the interviewer's bias and encouraging
     anything that does.
   * Repeated questions -- children, especially younger children, are
     more likely to change their answers when asked the same yes or no
     question repeated during a single interview. Answers from
     children to yes or no questions repeated over several interviews
     are likely to become more firm and confident, regardless of
     whether they are correct.
   * Stereotype induction -- children's reports can be influenced by
     stereotypes suggested by the interviewer (or by others before the
     interview takes place). An interviewer telling a child that "[the
     suspect] is a bad man who does bad things" is an example of
     stereotype induction. Similarly, children can come to assume and
     report bad things about someone they had previously heard
     described in negative terms.
   * Encouragement to imagine and visualize -- when asked to "think
     real hard" about or to visualize events they don't remember,
     childrencan come to "remember" and then present a detailed,
     coherentnarrative of events that never occurred.
   * Peer pressure -- children'sreports can be influenced by the
     application of peer pressure ("Johnny told me all about it, and
     he said you were there, too.") Studies also show that children
     can incorporate into their own memories experiences that their
     peers told them about, but which they did not witness themselves.
   * Authority figures -- children tend to regard adults generally as
     all-knowing and trustworthy, which can influence how they
     respond to questioning by adults. But they may also be sensitive
     to status and power differentials among adults -- an important
     issue when children are interviewed by police officers, judges
     and medical personnel.
   Much of what has been learned about the influence of suggestive
interviewing techniques on children has come from laboratory research,
which the authors acknowledge is not a perfect analog to real-life
sexual abuse and real-life questioning. However, they also note that
it would be ethically impermissible to interview children in the
laboratory as intensively as they have been in real cases, much less
to sexually abuse them in the name of science.
In a chapter on ethical and professional issues, the authors discuss
the roles of mental health professionals as therapists, forensic
interviewers and expert witnesses in cases involving children's
testimony. They recommend that each of those roles be occupied by
different people in a given case as each has a distinctly different
job to do.
For expert witnesses, they offer suggestions on how both mental health
professionals and social scientists can be most helpful to judges and
juries (as opposed to the prosecution or defense), recommending that
they thoroughly familiarize themselves with the relevant literature
but learn only enough about the case at hand to assure that their
expertise is relevant.
They note that studies have found very little agreement and very low
rates of accuracy among expert witnesses who are asked to evaluate
cases and make a judgment about whether children were or were not
abused, and urged that attorneys and judges "put their feet to the
coals, forcing them to provide scientifically adequate evidence for
their interpretations. In light of the research, to do otherwise would
seem akin to accepting the testimony of a forensic astrologer."
Book: Jeopardy in the Courtroom: A Scientific Analysis of Children's
Testimony by Stephen J. Ceci, Ph.D., and Maggie Bruck, Ph.D.,
Published by the American Psychological Association (Item No. 4318350,
ISBN: 1-55798-282-1 Available from the APA Order Department, P.O. Box
2710, Hyattsville, MD 20784-0710 or 1-800-374-2721; Price: $29.95
List/$24.95 for APA Members)
(Bound galleys for media available from the APA Public Affairs
Office.)
____________________________________________________________________
The American Psychological Association (APA), in Washington, DC, is
the largest scientific and professional organization representing
psychology in the United States and is the world's largest association
of psychologists.  APA's membership includes more than 132,000
researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through
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to advance psychology as a science, as a profession and as a means of
promoting human welfare.
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