Week 11 reading 1: I don't think that's what really happened: the effect of cross-examination of the accuracy of children's reports Flashcards
Reason for research
-It’s known that children change their original testimony under cross-examination
-But unknown the effect of these changes on the accuracy of the children’s testimony. In other words we do not know if children originally telling the truth are immune to the effects of cross-examination.
-The current piece of research aims to fill that gap: are changes elicited by cross-examination directed toward or away from the truth.
Method basics
-Children aged 5-6 years old (46 participants in total)
Examined the effect of cross-examination on the accuracy of reports of a contrived event:
-Event: policemen met children and took them inside a police station. Various activities e.g. children got fingerprint taken, mugshot, got to see inside jail cell, took them outside to see police cars including seeing the lights and sirens turn on.
-Exposure to misleading information: children randomly assigned to 1 of 2 groups. 1 of the groups was repeatedly given misleading information about the police visit (at 2 and 4 weeks after the event). Children in this group were told that they had tried on handcuffs and that a lady had come into the police station to report that her child’s bike had been stolen. Both of these events did not occur! Other group= control, no misleading information was given.
-Direct examination interview: occurred 6 weeks after the event. All children were interviewed by a different interviewer than before about what happened at the police station.
-Cross examination interview: occurred 8 months after the direct examination interview (9 and a half months after the police station visit). All children interviewed by a different interviewer than the misleading question interviewers or the direct examination interviews.
Results basics
-Consistent with prior research, children made changes to their original responses during cross-examination: Overall, 85% of the children in the present study changed at least one of their original responses during cross examination, and one third (33%) of the children changed all of their original responses.
-These changes occurred irrespective of original accuracy: in fact children were just as likely to change a correct answer under cross-examination as they were to change and answer that had initially been incorrect.
-Prior exposure to misleading information did
not affect children’s responses to cross-examination: even children with no prior exposure to misinformation altered their original responses, ultimately decreasing their levels of accuracy.
-These findings demonstrate that cross-examination style questioning is inappropriate for young children.
What are some reasons why cross-examination would be particularly inappropriate for children?
-Cross-examination often includes leading questions, complex vocabulary, and complex syntax
-These features have consistently been shown to be inappropriate for use in child interviews because children tend to comply with leading questions and seek little clarification regarding confusing wording, phrasing etc.
Inconsistency in the purpose of cross-examination and what it achieves
-The fundamental goal of cross-examination should be to uncover the truth i.e. to only discrete unreliable/ inaccurate witnesses
-In practice, cross-examination is often used to discrete witness testimony regardless of it’s accuracy
-It is not necessarily true that cross-examination and it’s aggressive/ misleading style will not pose problems for witnesses who are telling the truth
Balance between ecological validity and experimental control in the present study
Experimental control:
-All children participated in the same contrived event. This allowed the opportunity to assess accuracy (as ground truth was known).
Ecological validity:
-Prior to direct examination some children were exposed to misleading information and some were not. This provided ecological validity as the inclusion of the misinformation group mimics conditions under which children have been mislead or coached prior to testifying.
-All children were interviewed using a laboratory analogue of cross-examination which was designed, within ethical limits, to mimic many of the language and tactical features of real child cross examinations.
- The delays between the original experience and direct examination and between direct examination and cross-examination were 6 weeks and 8 months, respectively. This served to mimick normal delay periods in actual cases e.g. in NZ average delay in 8 months (other countries like Australia and the US have similar periods).
Three specific questions the study wished to answer
-First, do children change their original reports when interviewed in a style consistent with cross examination? (this is determining whether the lab method of cross-examination is mimicking that of the courts)
-Second, does the accuracy of children’s original responses predict whether or not they change these responses during cross examination? In other words, does cross-examination compel inaccurate witnesses to change their reports without affecting the reports of accurate witnesses?
-Finally, does exposure to misleading information during the retention interval affect children’s susceptibility to the effects of cross-examination?
Details of direct examination interview questions
-Interview started with: I heard that a long time ago, you did something really special—you went to the police station. Well I couldn’t go, so can you tell me
everything that happened? Tell me everything that you can remember about what happened at the police station.
-The only prompt used during this part of the interview was “Can you tell me anything else?”
When children ceased to provide further information, the directed recall part of the interview began. The interviewer said: I’m going to ask you some more questions now. You might have told
me the answers to some of the questions already, but if you have, just tell me again.
-Children were then asked 4 yes/no questions about whether two of the true events (photo and police car) and the two false events (handcuffs and stolen bike) had occurred at the police station.
-If the child answered yes then the interviewer then said “tell me about that”
-Direct examination interview was videotaped and audiotaped.
4 yes/no questions used in the directed recall part of the direct examination interview:
- Did you have your photo taken?
- Did you get to try on handcuffs?*
- Did you see the police car?
- Did you a see lady come in and report her child’s bike stolen?*
- questions are false events that the misinformation group received
Details of the cross-examination interview questions
-Interview started with: A long time ago, a lady came and asked you questions about the police station. She gave you a badge with your name on it. Do you remember that? I’m going to show you the video of you talking to that lady. You need to watch and listen really closely, and then I’m going to ask you some more questions.
-Watched the video, during which the experimenter remained silent.
-The experimenter then asked the following three general questions:
Can you tell me how old you are?
Do you know when your birthday is?
Can you tell me where you live?
-Each child was then asked four sets of 10 questions that pertained to the four topics that he or she had discussed during the direct examination interview (photo, handcuffs, car, and stolen bike)
-When the child responded to a question the experimenter moved on to the next question without responding to the child’s answer. Likewise, if a child had not begun to answer a question within a few seconds, the experimenter moved on to the next question. At all times, the experimenter maintained a pleasant but very professional manner with the child.
Questioning protocol during the cross-examination interview
-Aim to get the child to reverse his or her original yes/ no answer that had been given in the direct examination interview e.g. change from saying their photo was taken to saying it wasn’t taken.
-If a change did not occur, the secondary aim was to get the child to admit that his or her original answer might have been wrong.
-Each set of 10 questions followed a similar outline:
Q1= clarify answer child gave in direct examination interview, expect affirmative answer
Q2-7= complex, ambiguous, irrelevant, leading closed questions common to a cross-examination questioning style
Q8= challenged child’s certainty about the topic in question
Q9= express disbelief in the child’s original answer+ a reason for disbelief.
Q10= only used if child did not comply with Q9. Another leading question asking the child to consider whether the reason for disbelief was possible.
Coding
-During direct examination, children were given 2 points for each of the four questions that they answered correctly
-During cross-examination, points were added or deducted from this score if children changed their
original response. Added is change was correct, deducted if change was incorrect. For children who did not acquiesce completely but admitted that the alternative suggestion was possible, one point was added or deducted. If did not change their response no points were added or deducted.
What in the results suggests that the method used for cross-examination in the present study mimicked the effect of court-room cross-examination?
In the Zajac et al. study (not this one) of actual court transcripts from trials involving sexual abuse, over 75% of the children made one or more changes to their earlier testimony during cross-examination- in the present study it was 85% (comparable percentages).
Based on prior studies of children’s testimony we know that children’s answers to adult’s questions are influenced by:
1) their ability to monitor the source of the original information
2) by the strength and content of the underlying memory representation
3) by a tendency to comply with authority figures even when those figures are wrong
Could these factors explain changes towards inaccuracy made by children under cross-examination in the present study?
1) The results of the present study suggest that children’s changes to their prior account are not restricted to situations in which they are required to monitor the source of the information i.e. there was not a significant difference between the mislead and control children’s ultimate levels of accuracy. Even children who only had one source of information (their own experience of the event) still made a large number of errors. NOT A FACTOR
2) It is possible that children in the present study were highly susceptible to information that was provided to them during the course of cross-examination (i.e. suggestion that an event occurred) that occurred 9.5 months after the original event as due to natural forgetting the memory trace would have been weak. YES A FACTOR
3) Yes, it could be compliance i.e. children may have agreed with the suggested information during
cross-examination even though they believed that the interviewer’s suggestions were incorrect. Children in the present study may have perceived the interviewer to be intimidating or demanding, or simply older and wiser and thus were reluctant to disagree. YES A FACTOR
Note: the present study does not separate out whether suggestibility or compliance played a greater role in children’s responses to cross examination questions.
Practical implications of the study
-Our findings suggest that the cross examination process as it stands may be an inappropriate process for children giving evidence in court.
-Legal professionals generally agree that cross-examination is often used with the aim of discrediting a witness. The results of the
present experiment suggest that this goal is likely to be readily attained when the witness is a child as most children became inconsistent during cross examination.
-Results highly consistent with children’s performance during real-life cross-examinations.
-Children made changes irrespective of initial accuracy i.e. changes under cross-examination were not simply corrections of previous mistakes but often invovled changes from the truth.
