applied psych quiz 2 Flashcards
What is a repeated event?
• A repeated event is the same type of event that is experienced on multiple occasions. Each event shares a common underlying theme and structure
• There are many different situations where people will find themselves repeatedly victimised
- Domestic violence
- Child sexual abuse
- Stalking/harassment
- Bullying
Repeated events and memory evidence
• Complainants need to be able to particularize one instance of abuse by recalling specific information about the time, place and content of the abuse
• Legal requirements for statements
- Need to provide incident specific information about at least one instance of abuse time, place, what happened
Memory for repeated events
• Historically, research into memory for repeated events has focused on child populations
- Primarily to understand the children’s memory for repeated abuse (e.g. child sexual abuse)
• Whereas, memory for predate events in adults victims/witnesses has received less research attention
- This might be because adults were considered to be are unlikely to remain in situations where they would be repeatedly victimised?
• How can you research memory for repeated events?
• The most common methodology is:
- Compare memory for a single event to memory for an instance of a repeated event
Measuring memory performance
• How do we measure memory?
- Primarily interested in memory accuracy for a target event (i.e. whether reported details match what actually happened)
• Memory accuracy is operationalised in different ways:
- Correct details: experienced details from the target event
- Internal intrusions errors: experienced details from non-target events
- External intrusions errors: non-experienced details (i.e. made up details)
Key findings: correct details
• Repeated event group tends to report fewer correct details about a target event compared to the single event group
Key findings: incorrect details
- Repeated event group tends to report more internal intrusions about a target event compared to the single event group
- Repeated event group tends to report fewer external intrusions about a target event compared to the single event group
Memory for single and repeated events
• The findings indicate that memory for repeated events might be organised differently than memory for a single event
Theoretical framework
• These theories account for the difference in memory for single and repeated events:
- Fuzzy trace theory
- Source monitoring framework
Fuzzy trace theory
• Two types of memory traces are encoded for each type of event
- Verbatim traces: encodes the exact surface details of an event
- Gist traces: encodes the overall meaning and general structure of the event
• Each time the same type of event is repeated:
- A verbatim trace is encoded during each new event the same gist trace is activated and strengthened
• Therefore, this theory predicts that when someone has experienced a repeated event they might eb more likely to access the ‘gist’ of an event rather than specific details
• This accounts for why repeated event participants report fewer accurate details (i.e. fewer correct details, more internal errors) than single event participants
Source monitoring framework
• Memory encoding
- People encode memory traces based on the content of the event rather than when it occurred (i.e. the source/origin of the event)
• Memory retrieval
- Therefore, when people retrieve a memory trace, they need make a decision about when the details of an event occurred
- This is when source monitoring errors can occur
• Source monitoring errors: associating wan experienced detail with the incorrect occurrence. This is akin to an ‘internal intrusion error’
• Therefore, people that experience repeated events might be good at remembering what (the content) happened across the instances but struggle to determine when it occurred (during which event)
Stress and memory
• Is memory better for stressful events compared to neutral events?
• Flashbulb memories
- People report having exceptionally clear, vivid and detailed recollections of unexpected and traumatic events they have experienced (e.g. 9/11, JFK assassination etc.)
- However, it is difficult to determine memory accuracy for autobiographical memories. Need to look at some lab studies!
• Researchers have compared memory for closely matched stressful and neutral stimuli
• More correct details are recalled for the about the stressful stimuli than the neutral stimuli
• These findings suggest that emotional arousal (i.e. stress) during encoding appears to enhance long-term memory
• Overall, previous research and theories indicate that stressful events will have an enhancing effect on witness memory relative to emotionally neutral events
• But does stress impact memory for single and repeated events differently?
Conclusion: stress and repeated event memory
- The findings suggest that experiencing repeated stressful events might make someone report fewer correct details when compared to experiencing a single stressful event
- The findings also show that there is no difference in the number of incorrect details reported (internal intrusion and external intrusion errors) when experiencing either a predated or single stressful event
- However, regardless of event stress, repeated event participants are still more likely to make internal intrusion errors than single event participants
Understanding court processes
• What fears do you think the child would feel?
- Speaking in front of others
- Making a mistake
- Punishment for mistakes
- Retaliation (increased from 7-13 years)
- Having to see defendant
• Comprehension
- Need to prove own innocence
- Likelihood of jail for witness
- Role of witness
- Need to tell truth
• Cognitive and emotional responses are interlinked
• Helping children understand what to expect
- Interactive court room diagram
- Website of justice and attorney general
- Older children: cartoon version of the charter of victim’s rights
• Screens and cctv
- Evidence in chief by way of a pre-recorded interview; if one was completed by the police
- Ask questions via cctv
- Screening the defendant from the child
Understanding truth and lies
• NSW oaths act (1990): a child’s evidence can be accepted without taking the oath if:
1. Told important to tell the truth
2. Declares will not lie
• What is a lie?
- Factuality
- Belief of speaker
- Intent of speaker
• Piaget
- ‘naughtiness’ of lies judge by consequences, not intention, till 8-10 years
• More recent research:
- Pre-schoolers can judge by intention is salient BUT evaluation of goodness/naughtiness of truth vs lies is till shaky
Can children be encouraged to tell the truth?
• NSW oath acts (1990): a child’s evidence can be accepted without taking the oath if
- Child is told important to tell truth
- Child declares will not lie
• Lyon et al (2008) child development, 79, 914-929
- Children (4-7 years) coached by adult to
a. Deny playing with the doll house
b. Falsely report playing
- When instructed to lie they were less likely to lie (false report) – especially in young children. reassurance helpful
• Police card for interviewing children
- These exercises are implemented with police and court to try and help them tell the truth
- Police continue with interview even if they don’t understand truth because the court will establish that
From the equality before the law bench book NSW
• Competence to give unsworn evidence is presumed if the child is told:
- It is important to tell the truth – child states that they will do so - Someone might ask questions you don’t know the answer to, if so, it’s okay to say I don’t know - You shouldn’t feel pressure to agree with suggestions that aren’t true (say if you don’t agree with something: say ‘that isn’t right)
Understanding legal and general language
• What develops? a. Vocabulary b. Grammar c. Use of language in social contexts - Both receptive and expressive language - Gradual acquisitions across primary school years of concepts of and vocabulary for: Number Distance Weight Time Height - These concepts are very important in pressing charges, but young children don’t always have them
Vocabulary for relevant concepts
• Body parts: families often have idiosyncratic terms for ‘private’ body parts
• Relational terms: before, after, yesterday, tomorrow, earlier, later
• Words of the days of the week, months, seasons
• Receptive language: can children monitor their understanding of adult’s questions?
• Comprehension monitoring involves:
- Identifying the problem
- Selecting appropriate strategy
- Social emotional skills
Saywitz 1995
• Even if they realize they don’t understand, young children may be reluctant to say ;I don’t know/ I don’t understand’
• He trained 6 to 8 years old to:
- Monitor comprehension
- Signal lack of comprehension
- E.g. what are the markers that were given to the class to use to decorate the scarves for your dance costume?
• three groups
1. no intervention
2. ‘tell me if you don’t understand’
3. Comprehension monitoring strategy training
• Instructed children:
- Indicated lack of comprehension more
- Asked for rephrasing more
Memory ability – memory experiment
• Memories aren’t exact reproductions of experience: they are constructed at storage and reconstructed at retrieval
• ‘memory elaborates, deletes and shapes its content, at encoding, storage and retrieval’
• Poor memory and free recall in children
- More disorganised storage
Developing scripts – general ideas we have about specific events
Children don’t always have many scripts
- More rapid decay
Cause brains are still developing
- Poor retrieval strategies
Kids don’t have very good strategies
- Selective retrieval
- Knowledge limitations
Prompting children’s memory
• Free recall
- ‘tell me everything you can remember about the time when’
- Minimal information and few errors
• Specific questions
- ‘what colour hair did he have?’
- Maximal information BUT many errors
• The trouble with specific questions
- Specific questions: yes or no forced choice (multiple choice) questions are particularly prone to errors
Children limited free recall
• Do anatomical dolls help?
• Not with free recall
- Very small increase in correct reports of genital touch BUT NO false reports of genital touch
• Helpful with specific questions
- 92% correctly reported genital touch
- BUT 8% incorrectly reported genital touch
Did anatomical dolls help ‘disclosure’?
- Moreover specific questions with dolls generated more errors about other aspects of the examination
- The problem may be worse with younger children
- 3 year old’s reporting on a medical examination using anatomical dolls
- No genital examination: 50% false reports
- Genital examination: 47% correct reports
- Younger children may be encouraged to give false reports by anatomical dolls
Social and emotional development
• Children may not recall BUT guess: - Perceived expectations - Failure to comprehend reason for questions • Children may recall info BUT fail to report - Embarrassment - Pressure not to disclose • Reluctance to disclose - Lack of knowledge re-appropriate adult behaviour - Threats - Self-blame, embarrassment - ‘it won’t make any difference’ - Perceived supportive context - Language, cognitive competence
Reluctance to say I don’t know
• Children’s reluctant to say, ‘I don’t understand what you are asking” “ could you please say that in a different way?”
• Asking children bizarre questions
- E.g.is milk bigger than water?
• Most 5 and 7 year old’s attempted a response
• Older children more likely to qualify their answer (‘it might be because’)
• Are children misinterpreting the adults expectations/conversational rules?
What makes children suggestible?
• We are all vulnerable to accepting incorrect information/suggestions that we encounter!
• But in general, suggestibility decreases with age
• What makes children suggestible?
- Poorer memory
- Explicit by adult questioners
- Source monitoring ability
- ‘contamination’ but adult questioner’s preconceptions
- Simple compliance
Definition of deception
• A successful or unsuccessful deliberate attempt, without forewarning, to create in another a belief which the communicator considers to be untrue
Types of lies
• Outright lies
- Completely contradictory to the truth
• Exaggerations
- Embellishes the truth
• Subtle lies
- Literal truths that are designed to mislead
Reasons to lie
• 5 reasons
1. To gain personal advantage
2. To avoid punishment
3. To make a positive impression on others
4. To protect themselves from embarrassment/disapproval
5. For the sake of social relationships
• Self-orientated vs other orientated
Frequency of lying
• Usually around the age of 2 years old is the first lie – lie of denial
• American diary study: uni students told 2 lies/day and community members told 1 lie/day. Most lies were self-serving
• Frequency of lying depends on:
1. The personality and gender of the liar
2. The situation in which the lie is told
3. The people to whom the lie is told
• The gender and personality of the liar
- Extroverts lie more than introverts
- Frequency of lies similar between men and women
- Women tell more social lies
- When dating, women lie to improve physical appearance, men lie to exaggerate earning potential
• The situation in which the lie is told
- 90% lie to prospective date
- 83% lie to get a job
• People to whom the lie is told
- Lowest rate of lying with spouses (1/10 interactions – mostly subtle)
- Highest rate of lying with strangers
- University students lie frequently to their mothers (almost 50% of conversations)
Three ways to catch a liar
- Observe their verbal and non-verbal behaviour
- Analyse the content of what they say
- Examine their physiological responses
Behavioural indicators of deception
• Some verbal and non-verbal cues are more likely to occur during deception than others, depending on:
1. Emotion
2. Content complexity
3. Attempted behavioural control
• Paul Ekman’s emotional approach
- Deception results in different emotions: guilt, fear, excitement (duping delight)
- Strength of emotion depends on personality of liar and circumstances of lie
- Emotions may influence the liar’s NVB
• Content complexity: lying can be difficult to do
- People engaged in cognitively complex tasks exhibit different non-verbal behaviours
- More speech fillers and errors, longer pauses and move our limbs less
- Can’t tell lie back to front
- Difficult to make eye contact
• Liars may attempt to control their behaviour in order to avoid getting caught
- When liars do this, they sometimes overcontrol themselves, resulting in behaviour that looks rehearsed and rigid, and speech that sounds too smooth
- Non-verbal behaviour is more difficult to control than verbal behaviour
• Micro expressions: a fleeting facial expression discordant with the expressed emotion and usually suppressed within 1/5 to 1/25 of a second
• It is difficult to control facial communication and it can betray a deceiver’s true emotion to a trained observer
• Inconsistent emotional leakage occurred in 100% of participants at least once. Negative emotions were more difficult to falsify than happiness
Behavioural indicators of deception: verbal and non-verbal cues to lying
• Verbal cues - Higher pitch of voice - Increased response latency - Increased errors in speech - Shorter length of description • Non-verbal cues - Decreased nodding - Decreased foot and leg movement - Decreased hand movements
Behavioural indictors of deception
- Liars do not seem to show signs of nervousness such as gaze aversion and fidgeting
- Professional lie detectors ability to accurately classify truth and lies is about 55%
- Analyses of non-verbal behaviour are not accepted as evidence in criminal courts
Content indicators of deception - Statement validity assessment (SVA)
• Developed in Germany to determine the credibility of child witnesses’ testimonies in trials for sexual offences
• Extended to adults and other types of cases
• SVA accepted in other European courts, but not UK courts. Opinion in US is divided
• Has been presented in expert testimony in US but main role in guiding police investigations and decisions of prosecutors
• Consists of three major elements:
1. Semi-structured interview
2. Criteria-based content analysis (CBCA) of transcribed version of statement given during the interview
3. Evaluation of the CBCA outcome via a set of questions (validity check list)
CBCA: the content analysis
• Based on the ‘undeutsch hypothesis’:
- A statement derived from memory of an actual experience differs in content and quality from a statement based on invention and fantasy
• Trained evaluators judge the presence or absence (or strength) of 19 criteria – the higher the score the more likely it is true
• The presence of each criterion strengthens the hypothesis that the account is based on genuine experience
