Effects Of Domestic Violence And Evaluation Of Children

该项目包括两个研究项目。主要方案的目标是开发和评估提高儿童证人信息量和评估其陈述可信度的技术。该研究项目中的大多数研究都集中在访谈者风格与幼儿提供的信息质量之间的关系上。几项研究证实，开放式问题比更集中的问题得到更长和更详细的回答，无论经历的事件数量和语言（英语，瑞典语或希伯来语）进行采访。我们还显示了相似的问题类型，可能会引出准确和不准确的信息，在模拟和法医conexts，从而加强了在许多实验室研究中获得的结果的概括性。在其他研究中，我们已经表明，采访者可以增加儿童的帐户的长度和丰富性，而不是儿童的年龄，通过遵循SSED设计的协议，旨在探测回忆记忆，并减少对更容易引出错误信息的更集中的问题的依赖。以色列、美国和联合王国的调查机构正在对这些面谈程序进行评估。计划于2001年在瑞典开始实施。以色列和美国的独立研究表明，使用NICHD协议大大增加了使用开放式提示从4至13岁的据称受害者检索的信息量。这样的信息比使用更集中的提示引出的信息更可能准确。目前正在对幼儿以及不愿透露的儿童的表现进行更密切的调查，因为这些群体在之前的研究中代表性不足。 在最近的其他研究中，我们已经表明，心理背景恢复比物理背景恢复更有利于回忆。这些程序可以在法医环境中非强制性地实现，因此这些结果可能很重要。 另一个研究方案的目标是探讨家庭暴力对儿童的影响，这些儿童要么是身体虐待的受害者，要么是配偶虐待的证人，要么既是受害者又是证人，要么既不是受害者也不是证人。1988/1989年首次对一组8至12岁的儿童进行了评估。1995年和1996年再次对这些儿童、他们的父母和教师进行了访谈，目前正在对数据进行分析。以前的报告说明了不同举报人关于家庭暴力和儿童适应的报告之间的重大差异所产生的影响。

This project involves two programs of research. The goal of the major program is to develop and assess techniques for enhancing the informativeness of child witnesses and for evaluating the credibility of their accounts. Most studies in the research program are focused on the relationship between interviewer style and the quality of information provided by young children. Several studies have confirmed that open-ended questions elicit longer and more detailed responses than more focused questions, regardless of the number of incidents experienced and the language (English, Swedish, or Hebrew) in which the interview was conducted. We have also shown similarities between the types of questions that are likely to elicit accurate and inaccurate information in analog and forensic conexts, thereby strengthening the generalizability of the results obtained in many laboratory studies. In other studies, we have shown that interviewers can increase the length and richness of children's accounts, regardess of the children's ages, by following SSED-designed protocols designed to probe recall memory and reduce the reliance on more focused questions which are more likely to elicit erroneous information. These interview protocols are being evaluated by investigative agencies in Israel, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Implementation is scheduled to begin in Sweden in 2001. Independent studies in Israel and the USA have shown that use of the NICHD protocol dramatically increases the amount of information retrieved from 4- to 13-year-old alleged victims using open-ended prompts. Such information is more likely to be accurate than information elicted using more focused prompts. The performance of very young children, as well as children who are reluctant to disclose, are currently under closer investigation as these groups were under-represented in prior studies. In other recent studies, we have shown that mental context reinstatement facilitates recall better than physical context reinstatement. These procedures can be implemented nonsuggestively in forensic settings, so these results are potentially important. The goal of the other program of research is to explore the effects of domestic violence on children who were either victims of physical abuse, witnesses of spousal abuse, both victims and witnesses, or neither victims nor witnesses. A group of children were first assessed in 1988/9 when they were between 8 and 12 years of age. The children, their parents, and their teachers were reinterviewed in 1995 and 1996 and analyses of the data are being conducted. Earlier reports illustrated the implications of major discrepancies between reports by different informants concerning both family violence and children's adjustment.