Effects Of Domestic Violence And Evaluation Of Testimony

一项研究方案涉及发展和评估提高儿童证人的信息量和评价其陈述的可信性的技术。与美国、英国和以色列的调查机构合作，采访者在遵循ssed设计的访谈协议时获得了更高质量的信息。使用儿童发展中心协议，使用开放式提示从4至13岁的据称受害者那里检索到的信息数量大大增加，尽管儿童提供的信息类型（例如关于时间背景的信息）存在重要的年龄差异。初步分析还表明，年轻的证人回忆起的全部信息，以及对开放式提示的反应，与据称的受害者一样多。同意谈话的嫌疑人提供的关于他们经历的信息与被指控为受害者的同龄伴侣一样多。其他现场实验表明，心理环境的恢复和在协议指导下的访谈中引入性别中立的解剖图，都有助于儿童提供有关所指控的虐待事件的大量额外细节。其他非暗示性的记忆提取技巧也在评估中。目前正在制订程序，以提高从调查面谈中得出的结论的敏感性和特异性，并评价用于评价儿童可信度的技术的优点和局限性。另一个研究项目是关于虐待儿童和配偶对儿童和青少年发展的影响。在童年中期和青春期，家庭暴力似乎会影响子女对父母的看法。儿童/青少年对虐待他们的父母的依恋程度较低，而配偶虐待对儿童对父母任何一方的依恋都没有明显影响。

One program of research has involved the development and assessment of techniques for enhancing the informativeness of child witnesses and for evaluating the credibility of their accounts. In collaboration with investigative agencies in the US, UK, and Israel, interviewers elicited higher quality information when they following SSED-designed interview protocols. Use of the NICHD protocol dramatically increased the amount of information retrieved from four- to 13-year-old alleged victims using open-ended prompts, although there were important age differences in the types of information (e.g., regarding temporal context) that children provided. Preliminary analyses also show that young witnesses recall as much information in total, as well as in response to open-ended prompts, as alleged victims do. Alleged suspects who agree to talk provide as much information about their experiences as age mates who are alleged victims. Other field experiments have shown that mental context reinstatement and the introduction of gender-neutral anatomical drawings in the context of protocol-guided interviews both help children provide substantial numbers of additional details about the alleged incidents of abuse. Other non-suggestive techniques for prompting memory retrieval are being evaluated as well. Procedures are being developed to enhance the sensitivity and specificity of the conclusions drawn from investigative interviews and evaluate the strengths and limitations of techniques designed to evaluate children's credibility. Another program of research is concerned with the effects of child and spouse abuse on the development of children and adolescents. In both middle childhood and adolescence, family violence appears to affect the offsprings' views of their parents. Children/adolescents feel less closely attached to parents who have abused them, whereas spouse abuse has no apparent effects on the children's attachments to either parent.