Essay/Term paper: Should children be allowed to testify in court?

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Social Issues

Should Children Be Allowed To Testify In Court?


Over the past ten years, more research has been done involving
children's testimony than that of all the prior decades combined. Ceci & Bruck
(93) have cited four reasons for this :

- The opinion of psychology experts is increasingly being accepted by courts as
testimony,

- Social research is more commonly being applied to the issues of children's
rights,

- More research into adult suggestibility in accordance with reason naturally
leads to more research into child suggestibility,

- Children are more commonly being used as witnesses in cases where they are
directly involved (i.e. sexual abuses cases), requiring the development of
better ways for dealing with them as special cases.

Some psychologists deem children to be "Highly resistant to suggestion,
as unlikely to lie, and as reliable as adult witnesses about acts perpetrated
on their bodies" (Ceci & Bruck 1993). However, children are also described as "
Having difficulty distinguishing reality from fantasy, as being susceptible to
coaching by powerful authority figures, and therefore as being potentially less
reliable than adults" (Ceci & Bruck 1993). The suggestibility of child witnesses,
the effects of participation on children's reports, and the effects of postevent
information on a prior memory representation must be taken into account when it
comes to seeking answers to the reliability of their testimony, especially
because sexual abuse and sexual assault cases are a big part of children's
testimony and they are often the only witness.

Those psychologists who feel that children can be rated as "Highly
resistant to suggestion...." etc. seem to have a good argument, whereas those
who take the opposite view also seem to have just as valid an argument. Which
psychologists are right? Maybe both. It seems that without outside influences,
social encounters, or other interference's, children's testimony has the
potential to be quite valid. This is under ideal situations, however, which
unfortunately rarely occur.

One of the major problems when assessing the validity of child witnesses
is the suggestibility of the child. Ceci & Bruck (1993) define suggestibility
as "The degree to which children's encoding, storage, retrieval, and reporting
of events can be influenced by a range of social and psychological factors." A
child's perception of events may be manipulated by many factors with misleading
questions being the most common way to assess a subjects suggestibility (Smith
& Ellsworth, 87). A misleading question according to Smith et al, is one that "
provides information that is inconsistent with the event witnessed, suggesting,
for example, the existence of an object that was in fact not present." After
being asked leading questions, a subject is much more likely than a person not
asked leading questions to report the presented false information as correct.

This statement was validated by Kaufman and Richter's 1990 study. In
this study a number of young children (4 - 7 year olds) saw a short film
featuring a circus performance. A few weeks after watching the film, the
children were split into two groups. They were then asked (individually) a
number of questions relating to the film. The first group were asked leading
questions i.e. "What colour was the clowns hat" (where in fact the clown had not
been wearing a hat), while the other group was simply asked "Was the clown
wearing a hat". Kaufman and Richter found that regardless of age, children
often answered the leading questions and accepted the fabricated information as
being the truth.

This study clearly shows that children can be manipulated by clever
questioning about a witnessed event. However, this study did not involve the
child interacting with the event i.e. the child did nit participate on any
emotional level by simply watching a video.

Rudy & Goodman (1991) conducted an experiment involving the effects of
participation on children's testimony. The main purpose of Rudy & Goodman's
work being to see whether the factors of age or participation influenced the
recall of a child. Their experiment involved thirty-six children (eighteen 7-
year olds and eighteen 4-year olds) going in pairs into a parked trailer with a
male stranger (a confederate). One child played games with the confederate while
the other child watched closely. Positive verbal and physical interaction took
place between the confederate and the participant, and positive verbal
interaction took place between the confederate and the bystander. The events
were videotaped and lasted about ten minutes. The children then returned
individually ten to twelve days later for a memory test and were asked to recall
everything he or she could remember about the day in the trailer. Various
questions were asked, which included specific and misleading questions. Rudy
and Goodman concluded that although the children's participation level in an
event did not have a pervasive effect on their memory, it did serve to increase
the child's resistance to suggestion. Thus, children are more likely to resist
suggestion if they are somehow involved with the event.

Robins et al (92) criticised this investigation on a number of levels
and concluded that it could not be applied to support the use of child
witnesses in a courtroom situation with any validity. Firstly, Robins noted
that the majority of cases in which children were used as witnesses (i.e.
sexual abuse and sexual assault cases), the events that the witnesses are asked
to recall are often far from positive and indeed, where a child has been
allegedly assaulted/abused, the witness may experience a number of emotional
factors that alter the perception of the event i.e. guilt, fear, hatred,
confusion etc, none of which were present in the Rudy and Goodman study.
Although, of course, the introduction of these factors would have been a serious
breach of ethics. Another criticism is that the time frame involved may not
have been sufficiently long enough to emulate the period from event to
testimony in a child witness case. Finally, the situation under which they were
asked to recall the event was not nearly the same as being asked to recall
details in a courtroom (Vickers & Fuller, 92).
There are many other types of suggestibility that can affect the
reliability of a child's recall of events.

Experiments that involve the effects of postevent information on a prior
memory representation were performed by Rovee-Collier et al (1993) involving
three-month-old babies. Rovee-Collier et al stated that ".....in eyewitness
testimony research, postevent information impairs retention of the original
event and increases the probability that interpolated [new] information will be
identified as part of the original event." The infants used in the experiments
were taught to kick to cause a crib mobile to move. They were then exposed to
information on a novel mobile for a short amount of time. The information
received by the babies after the novel event impaired their recognition of the
original mobile when it immediately followed their training. Infants treated
postevent data as part of the original training procedure. However, the
postevent information did not impair their recognition of the event if it was
delayed by one day. Rovee-Collier et al (93) proposed that "......postevent
information displays conflicting information coactive with it in primary memory
and creates a new, updated memory token of the event"

This seems to suggest that children are more susceptible to alter their
perceptions of an event only if postevent information is supplied directly
after the event. However, Summ & Girston (94) suggested that "........with the
brains inability to perceive every single piece of information of an event, new
information will be immediately supplied through the act of "assumption'" Summ
& Girston defined "assumption' as being the process by which information which
has not been directly perceived (i.e. attenuated information (Triesmann, 64)),
is reconstructed using prior knowledge. This theory, therefore, leads us to
believe that there is a source of unconscious postevent information after every
even, even though assumption may only cause a very small amount of new
information.

The fact that Rovee-Collier et al received no indication of postevent
information clouding the recall of the infants they used (if the information
was presented a little time after the event) can be explained by their own
justification of using infants in the first place. They suggested that ".....
infants are choice subjects for investigation and study on memory involvement
because the babies are not exposed to problems linked with social or task
demands and other circumstances. It has often been observed that these problems
interrupt customary research on eyewitness testimony. Also, an infants' memory
is not crowded with numerous other prior associations". This infers that the
infants could not unconsciously supply their own postevent information as they
do not have enough knowledge of their situation to make assumptions about new
event.

Furthermore, children who give testimony in court are most likely to be
older that the ones that Rovee-Collier et al used in their study, and also it
is likely that they would have to recall far more detailed information than the
colour or arrangement of a mobile.

Supporters of using children to give testimony in court have claimed
that the use of anatomically correct dolls when interviewing children involved
in sexual abuse cases allow the child to express themselves easier for a number
of reasons. These are:

- The dolls simulate a critical event which could spark recall and help to
overcome the language barrier,

- They help to overcome any shyness or embarrassment that the child might feel,

- They can be used in a projective manner, where a preoccupation with the
genitalia may indicate sexual abuse.

Ceci & Bruck (93) refute these arguments with the following reasons:
Firstly, the dolls themselves are suggestive. They might actually encourage a
child to play in a manner appearing to indicate abuse because they provide a
freedom from inhibition that might not be normally present or could indicate an
exposure to sexuality, rather than actual abuse. Second, there is almost no
normative data to support the use of dolls. Until fairly recently, no
significant research had been done which compared patterns of play with the
dolls between abused and non-abused children.

A further issue when deciding whether children should be allowed to
testify in a courtroom is that of factors not directly related to the child.
For example how do jurors react when a child is asked to testify. i.e. Do
jurors believe children? This question has been investigated by researchers in
complex detail. Luus, Wells & Turtle (1995) conducted studies on jurors who
were misinformed of the interviewee's age, then asked to judge the information
garnered under cross examination. Surprisingly, it was discovered that
transcripts of interviews with 8-year olds were judged to be as credible as
those of adults. Similarly, when the juror was told the incorrect age, it did
not affect the judgment. The jurors assessed the credibility of the testimony
based on its content and not on the age of the interviewee. Interestingly, Luus,
Wells and Turtle point out that this is actually a problem for jurors. Although
they judged the children to be more accurate, they, in fact, were not. yet, the
researchers are quick to point out that the research conditions and a real
courtroom setting are very different and this should be accounted for. Overall,
Luus, Wells and Turtle found that jurors may enter the courtroom with a negative
bias against the child witness, but the actual testimony is judged more on the
quality than on the child's age.

Some psychologist's, however, have refused to believe that children can
give an accurate testimony. By understanding what cognitive issues can affect
memory, researchers have been able to develop an interviewing technique which
specifically seeks to maximise the completeness and accuracy of information
reported by and interviewee. This type of interview is known as a "cognitive
interview' (Saywitz, Geiselman & Bornstein, 1992) showed that cognitive
interviewing with children significantly increased the number if correct facts
recalled. Additionally, they discovered that practice cognitive interviews
using an improvised event could improve recall. These findings have recently
been supported by McCauly & Fisher (1995). In their research, the cognitive
interview increased the amount of information accurately recalled by children.
They also confirmed that new, accurate information was recalled ion subsequent
interviews. Uniquely, they found that using the cognitive interviewing technique
as a follow-up to a standard interview increased the amount of accurate
information gained over using the standard interview a second time. This is
especially applicable to field work where the first interview is often
conducted hurriedly, without using cognitive procedures (McCauly & Fisher,
1995).

In conclusion I have found that the underlying aspect of child testimony
is suggestibility. Researchers today are concentrating most of their efforts in
this area. It is easy to suggest that no children should be allowed to testify
on account of the malleability of their recollection. However, children can
play a vital role in the legal system, and indeed there are many cases in which
a child is the only witness to a crime, but until the time that sufficient
research has been done to achieve a system of questioning that will eliminate
the suggestibility and social aspects of a child's testimony, all such
testimonies should be treated with caution.


REFERENCES

Bernstein, D. A., Roy, E. J., Srull, T. K., Wickens, C. D. (1994)
Psychology, 3rd edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, MA.

Ceci, S & Bruck, M. (1993). Suggestibility of the Child Witness: A
Historical Review and Synthesis, Psychological Bulletin. 113, 403 - 439

Lefrancois, G. R. (1992). Psychology, 2nd edition. Wadsworth Publishing
Company. California.

Luus, C. A. E., Wells, G. L., & Turtle, J. W. (1995). Child
eyewitnesses: Seeing is believing. Journal of Applied Psychology, 80, 317 - 326


Rovee-Collier, C. et al. (1993). Infants Eyewitness Testimony: Effects
of Postevent Information on a Prior Memory Representaion, Memory and Cognition,
21, 267 - 279