Discernment of Children's True and False Memory Reports: Police Officers and Laypersons.

Adults' ability to accurately evaluate children's statements can have far-reaching consequences within the legal system. This study examined the evaluations of police officers ("experts") and laypersons ("nonexperts") when presented with videotaped interviews of children aged 3 and 5 years who provided either true or false reports or denials. Participants were drawn from several counties in the eastern United States. Children's interview statements fell within four statement types: accurate reports, false reports, accurate denials, and false denials. Both groups of participants displayed overbelief in false denials. Several control variables predicted accuracy, including children's age and children's race. A significant interaction emerged: Experts (vs. nonexperts) had greater odds of being accurate when judging false reports (vs. false denials). These findings highlight the challenges adults face when distinguishing between various types of children's statements. The results have important implications for legal contexts, emphasizing that fact finders need to be mindful of the risks associated with both overaccepting false denials and accepting false reports.

"I Didn't Do That!" Event Valence and Child Age Influence Adults' Discernment of Preschoolers' True and False Statements.

Justice can hinge on adults' abilities to distinguish accurate from inaccurate child testimony. Yet relatively little is known about factors that affect adults' abilities to determine the accuracy of children's eyewitness reports. In this study, adults (N = 108) viewed videoclips of 3- and 5-year-olds answering open-ended and leading questions about positive and negative actually experienced ("true") events or never experienced ("false") events that the children either affirmed or denied. Analyses revealed that adults were more accurate at determining the veracity of negative compared with positive incidents, particularly when children said that they had experienced the event. Moreover, adults' accuracy was at chance for older children's false denials. Psycholegal implications are discussed.

Great expectations? Comparing litigants' attitudes before and after using legal procedures.

OBJECTIVE: To examine whether litigants' initial attraction to legal procedures (e.g., mediation, hearings, jury trials) predicted their postexperience evaluations of the procedures and whether attendance moderated this relationship. HYPOTHESIS: Litigants' initial attraction to the legal procedure that later resolved their case would better predict postexperience satisfaction and fairness for litigants who adjudicated versus settled. I also explored whether the predicted relationship would vary as a function of litigants' attending the procedure and when case duration, lawyer involvement, and litigants' repeat player status were included in the models. METHOD: Four hundred-twelve state court litigants rated their attraction to different legal procedures at the start of their cases and 335 (81.3% retention) rated their satisfaction with, and fairness of, the procedure that ultimately resolved their case. RESULTS: Initial attraction to and ex post evaluations of legal procedures were more strongly related among litigants who adjudicated versus settled, but this association did not hold when the covariates were included. Instead, lawyer involvement and shorter duration were associated with increased ex post satisfaction and fairness. For litigants who personally attended their procedure, initial attraction was unrelated to later evaluations of fairness and those who settled evaluated their procedure as fairer compared to those who adjudicated. By contrast, for litigants who did not attend, initial attraction was positively related to later fairness evaluations and there was no fairness difference between settlement and adjudication. The same attendance patterns emerged irrespective of whether the covariates were included. CONCLUSIONS: Lawyer involvement and shorter case duration better predicted litigants' evaluations of legal procedures than their initial attraction to procedures. Attendance was associated with increased fairness evaluations for settlement relative to adjudication and initial attraction was positively related to fairness only when litigants did not attend their procedure. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

"That never happened": adults' discernment of children's true and false memory reports.

Adults' evaluations of children's reports can determine whether legal proceedings are undertaken and whether they ultimately lead to justice. The current study involved 92 undergraduates and 35 laypersons who viewed and evaluated videotaped interviews of 3- and 5-year-olds providing true or false memory reports. The children's reports fell into the following categories based on a 2 (event type: true vs. false) × 2 (child report: assent vs. denial) factorial design: accurate reports, false reports, accurate denials, and false denials. Results revealed that adults were generally better able to correctly judge accurate reports, accurate denials, and false reports compared with false denials: For false denials, adults were, on average, "confident" that the event had not occurred, even though the event had in fact been experienced. Participant age predicted performance. These findings underscore the greater difficulty adults have in evaluating young children's false denials compared with other types of reports. Implications for law-related situations in which adults are called upon to evaluate children's statements are discussed.

How the need for cognition scale predicts behavior in mock jury deliberations.

The role of Need for Cognition (NC) in mock jury deliberations was examined. Study 1 showed that when groups of 4 (2 high and 2 low in NC) deliberated together, high-NCs spoke significantly longer than low-NCs and were perceived as more active and more persuasive. High-NCs were not, however, viewed as generating arguments that were more valid or more logical. In Study 2, participants deliberated in dyads with a confederate who delivered either strong or weak arguments against the participant's position. Contrary to expectation, low-NCs were more responsive to differences in argument quality. The findings suggest that, in mock jury deliberations, high-NCs are the active participators whereas low-NCs are the quiet contemplators. Implications for legal practice and policy are discussed.