Hawaii Forensic Psychology

Back in September 2011, I mused about how help­ful psy­cho­log­i­cal experts are in CSA tri­als. Testimony will inevitably have to address devel­op­ments in sev­eral areas, includ­ing pat­terns of dis­clo­sure, mem­ory, sug­gestibil­ity, qual­ity of foren­sic inter­views, and error rates of CSA decision-making, highly tech­ni­cal stuff. The work of Bruck and Ceci has remained author­i­ta­tive for almost 20 years.

Here are sev­eral of their recent papers.

The superb chap­ter, Forensic Developmental Psychology in the Courtroom, is found in the 6th edi­tion of Ziskin’s clas­sic text, Coping with Psychiatric and Psychological Testimony. The review is a con­cise, hard-hitting expose of the sta­tus of CSA behav­ioral sci­ence. The heart of the paper are Misconceptions and Qualifications of Research on Children’s Suggestibility. Bottom line: inter­views do not have to include direct or lead­ing ques­tions to be sug­ges­tive and not only young chil­dren are sug­gestible. The vol­ume is an update of Ziskin’s clas­sic text debunk­ing (poor) men­tal health testimony.

A related paper is found in the Annual Review of Clinical Psychology debunk­ing many assump­tions that are com­monly found in expert tes­ti­mony. They assert a pri­mary find­ing: there is no sci­en­tif­i­cally valid method to dis­tin­guish true and false reports (Unwarranted assump­tion 6: “false reports pro­duced by sug­ges­tive inter­view­ing are dis­tin­guish­able from accu­rate reports”). This is also the cases in true and false con­fes­sions, an issue I have addressed before an will adsress again.

In the spirit of Ziskin, their paper in the fine text book edited by Skeem, Douglas, & Lilienfeld, 2009, reviews the behav­ioral sci­ence research on trau­matic mem­ory, “con­di­tions likely to elicit false reports, the psy­cho­log­i­cal sta­tus of false reports, and devel­op­men­tal trends in both.” The book has sev­eral oth­ers chap­ters crit­i­cally review­ing foren­sic topics.

Bruck and Ceci’s most sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions in the last 5 years addresses dis­clo­sure, a con­tro­ver­sial topic in the court­room when defense and pros­e­cu­tion attor­neys try to prove or dis­prove cases based on dis­clo­sure pat­terns. Two immensely schol­arly papers in pres­ti­gious jour­nals reprise these issues includ­ing method­olog­i­cal impli­ca­tions for foren­sic interviewers.

References:

London, K., Bruck, M., Ceci, S., & Shuman, D. (2005). Disclosure of child sex­ual abuse: What does the research tell us about the ways that chil­dren tell? Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 11, 1, 194–226.

Ceci, S., Kulkofsky, S., Klemfuss, J., Sweeney, C., & Bruck, M. (2007). Unwarranted assump­tions about children’s tes­ti­mo­nial accu­racy. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 3, 311–328.

Bruck, M., Ceci, S. Reliability of child wit­ness reports. In Skeem, J., Douglas, K., & Lilienfeld, S. (2009). Psychological sci­ence in the court­room: Consensus and con­tro­versy. New York: Guilford Press.

Bruck, M., & Ceci, S. Forensic devel­op­men­tal psy­chol­ogy in the court room. In D. Faust (Ed.)(2012). Coping with psy­chi­atric and psy­cho­log­i­cal tes­ti­mony. New York: Oxford University Press.