Mock Juror Perceptions of Eyewitness Reports Given by Children with Intellectual Disabilities.

Previous research suggests that an eyewitness credibility bias can arise when mock jurors are informed of a child's disability diagnosis. The aim of the present study was to examine mock jurors' lie-detection accuracy and credibility perceptions when assessing eyewitness testimonies provided by children diagnosed with an intellectual disability. Adult mock jurors (N = 217; half informed of the child's disability status) read four transcriptions from interviews with children (ages 10 to 15) diagnosed with an intellectual disability before evaluating the credibility and truthfulness of each eyewitness report. The mock jurors' lie-detection accuracy of the eyewitness reports produced by children with an intellectual disability (55.76%) was found to be similar to prior lie-detection research involving typically developing populations. Furthermore, there were no differences in the lie-detection accuracy and credibility ratings between mock-jurors who were informed of the child's disability when compared to those who were not informed. Although mock jurors perceived the children's testimony to have low credibility, they seemed reluctant to consider many of these testimonies to be false. The current findings also suggest that the disclosure of a disability may not independently cause worsened perceptions of child eyewitnesses.

Making memories: The gestural misinformation effect in children aged 11-16-years-old with intellectual/developmental difficulties.

BACKGROUND: In 2016, global records documented around 1 billion child abuse cases, with higher rates among children with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD), and most recorded offenses not proceeding to court. Accurate eyewitness testimony is vital for the justice system. Yet, while children with IDD are known to be influenced by verbal misinformation, the effect of gestures on their testimony is still unknown. AIMS: The present study assessed the extent to which gesture can mislead children with IDD, alongside comparisons to prior research in typically developing (TD) children. METHOD: A sample of children with moderate IDD aged 11-16 years (n = 21, M=12.95 years) were recruited from a UK school, and compared to TD 5-6-year-olds (n = 31, M=5.77 years) and 7-8-year-olds (n = 32, M=7.66 years) from previous published research. After watching a video participants underwent an interview containing 12 questions, some of which contained suggestive gestures. OUTCOMES AND IMPLICATIONS: Results demonstrated that in children with IDD, gesture observation significantly influenced responses given, with 18 of 21 children being misled at least once. Comparisons to TD children indicated no difference in suggestibility. This study is the first to examine how leading gestural information affects children with IDD, broadening previous research to a more representative sample for the justice system. Discussion centres on implications for police interview guidelines.

From guidelines to clinical practice in care for ischaemic stroke patients: A systematic review and expert opinion.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Guidelines help physicians to provide optimal care for stroke patients, but implementation is challenging due to the quantity of recommendations. Therefore a practical overview related to applicability of recommendations can be of assistance. METHODS: A systematic review was performed on ischaemic stroke guidelines published in scientific journals, covering the whole acute care process for patients with ischaemic stroke. After data extraction, experts rated the recommendations on dimensions of applicability, that is, actionability, feasibility and validity, on a 9-point Likert scale. Agreement was defined as a score of ≥8 by ≥80% of the experts. RESULTS: Eighteen articles were identified and 48 recommendations were ultimately extracted. Papers were included only if they described the whole acute care process for patients with ischaemic stroke. Data extraction and analysis revealed variation in terms of both content and comprehensiveness of this description. Experts reached agreement on 34 of 48 (70.8%) recommendations in the dimension actionability, for 16 (33.3%) in feasibility and for 15 (31.3%) in validity. Agreement on all three dimensions was reached for seven (14.6%) recommendations: use of a stroke unit, exclusion of intracerebral haemorrhage as differential diagnosis, administration of intravenous thrombolysis, performance of electrocardiography/cardiac evaluation, non-invasive vascular examination, deep venous thrombosis prophylaxis and administration of statins if needed. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: Substantial variation in agreement was revealed on the three dimensions of the applicability of recommendations. This overview can guide stroke physicians in improving the care process and removing barriers where implementation may be hampered by validity and feasibility.

Goal inference in moral narratives.

We often form beliefs about others based on narratives they tell about their own moral actions. When constructing such moral narratives, narrators balance multiple goals, such as conveying accurate information about what happened ('informational goals') and swaying audiences' impressions about their moral characters ('reputational goals'). Here, we ask to what extent audiences' detection of narrators' reputational goals guide or prevent them from making moral character judgments intended by narrators. Across two pre-registered experiments, audiences read narratives written by real narrators about their own moral actions. Each narrator was incentivized to write about the same action twice while trying to appear like a morally good or bad person (positive and negative reputational goals). Audiences detected narrators' reputational goals with high accuracy and made judgments about moral character that aligned with narrators' goals. However, audiences were more suspicious toward positive than negative reputational goals, requiring more evidence of high informational goals. These results demonstrate how audiences' inferences of reputational goals can both support and hinder narrators: accurate goal recognition increases the chance that audiences will make judgments intended by narrators, but inferred positive reputational goals can lead to doubts about accuracy. More generally, this provides a novel approach to studying how moral information about people is transmitted through naturalistic narratives.

Attorneys' Questions About Time in Criminal Cases of Alleged Child Sexual Abuse.

In cases of alleged child sexual abuse, information about the timing of events is often needed. However, published developmental laboratory research has demonstrated that children struggle to provide accurate and reliable testimony about time and there is currently a lack of field research examining how attorneys actually question child witnesses about time in court. The current study analyzed 130 trial transcripts from cases of alleged child sexual abuse containing a child witness between the ages of 5-17 years old to determine the frequency, style, and content of attorneys' questions and child responses about time. We found that attorneys primarily ask closed-ended temporal location questions (i.e., asking when an event took place using a temporal construct such as day, month, and year) to child witnesses. Additionally, children, of all ages, rarely said "I don't know" or expressed uncertainty in response to temporal questions. These findings are concerning as researchers find that children tend to struggle with temporally locating past events.

If you express it in the form of a negation, you can expect an effect similar to misinformation.

The primary goal of the presented research was to investigate how processing post-event information affects memory of details in an event viewed on video. We used two forms of post-event information: classic misinformation (changing or implanting new information into memory) and a new form that involves a correct explicit or implicit negation of the existence of an object in the video. We followed the three-step procedure used in studies on the misinformation effect, with a final memory test that was either immediate or delayed by a week and consisted in indicating which objects appeared in the video. We replicated the misinformation effect. More importantly, in the delayed test condition, both explicitly and implicitly negated objects were falsely recalled more often than unmentioned objects. These results indicate that it is possible to induce negation-related false memories; they also show that memory is impaired by negated post-event information or misleading post-event information.

An exploration of Italian laypeople's belief in how human memory works.

We present the first study to measure the beliefs held by Italian laypeople about how human memory works, using a newly developed tool: the Italian Memory Belief Questionnaire (IMBQ). Research conducted in other countries has demonstrated that beliefs about memory vary widely between different professional and non-professional groups, indicating that limitations exist regarding the dissemination of empirically researched scientific knowledge. To ascertain what Italian people understand about memory-related topics, including eyewitness testimony, repression of traumatic memories and factors influencing memory recall, 301 native Italian participants completed the IMBQ in Study 1. In Study 2, 346 additional participants completed the IMBQ, alongside various additional measures, to examine the construct validity of our new instrument and investigate socio-demographic predictors of memory beliefs. Exploratory factor analysis in Study 1 identified three distinct belief factors that were present in the dataset: eyewitness and memory reliability, trauma and remembering and aspects that improve remembering. Study 2 partially confirmed this factor structure and found IMBQ scores to correlate with existing memory belief questionnaires. Correlations were also found between the IMBQ subscales and measures of fantasy proneness, but not dissociation. In both studies, many Italian laypeople strongly endorsed the notion that controversial topics (i.e., repression) are possible. Contrastingly, Italian laypeople do appear to understand the conceivable inaccuracies of memory in eyewitness settings. Sex, age and education were shown to predict beliefs about memory. Findings are discussed in relation to the importance of addressing misinformation about memory, especially in clinical and forensic settings.

Clinical perspectives on sampling and processing approaches for the management of infection in diabetic foot ulceration: A qualitative study.

Diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) often become infected and are treated with antimicrobials, with samples collected to inform care. Swab samples are easier than tissue sampling but report fewer organisms. Compared with culture and sensitivity (C&S) methods, molecular microbiology identifies more organisms. Clinician perspectives on sampling and processing are unknown. We explored clinician perspectives on DFU sampling-tissue samples/wound swabs-and on processing techniques, culture and sensitivity or molecular techniques. The latter provides information on organisms which have not survived transport to the laboratory for culture. We solicited feedback on molecular microbiology reports. Qualitative study using semi-structured interview, with analysis using a Framework approach. CODIFI2 clinicians from UK DFU clinics. Seven consultants agreed to take part. They reported, overall, a preference for tissue samples over swabbing. Clinicians were not confident replacing C&S with molecular microbiology as the approach to reporting was unfamiliar. The study was small and did not recruit any podiatrists or nurses, who may have discipline-specific attitudes or perspectives on DFU care. Both sampling approaches appear to be used by clinicians. Molecular microbiology reports would not be, at present, suitable for replacement of traditional culture and sensitivity.

When is it appropriate to ask a question? The role of age, social context, and personality.

How do children decide when it is appropriate to ask a question? In Study 1 (preregistered), 50 4- and 5-year-olds, 50 7- and 8-year-olds, and 100 adults watched vignettes featuring a child who had a question, and participants indicated whether they thought the child should ask the question "right now." Both adults and children endorsed more question-asking to a well-known informant than to an acquaintance and to someone doing nothing than to someone busy working or busy socializing. However, younger children endorsed asking questions to someone who was busy more often than older children and adults. In addition, Big Five personality traits predicted endorsement of question-asking. In Study 2 (preregistered, N = 500), mothers' self-reports showed that children's actual question-asking varied with age, informant activity, and informant familiarity in ways that paralleled the results of Study 1. In Study 3 (N = 100), we examined mothers' responses to their children's question-asking and found that mothers' responses to their children's question-asking varied based on the mother's activity. In addition, mothers high in authoritarianism were less likely to answer their children's questions when they were busy than mothers low in authoritarianism. In sum, across three studies, we found evidence that the age-related decline in children's question-asking to their parents reflects a change in children's reasoning about when it is appropriate to ask a question.

The "Personalising Actinic Keratosis Treatment for Immunocompromised Patients" (IM-PAKT) Project: An Expert Panel Opinion.

Actinic keratosis (AK) is an intraepithelial condition characterized by the development of scaly, erythematous lesions after repeated exposure to ultraviolet radiation. Significant immunosuppression is a risk factor for the development of AK and subsequent lesion progression to squamous cell carcinoma. Immunocompromised patients (ICPs), particularly organ transplant recipients, often have more advanced or complex AK presentations and an increased risk of skin carcinomas versus non-ICPs with AK, making lesions more difficult to treat and resulting in worse treatment outcomes. The recent "Personalising Actinic Keratosis Treatment" (PAKT) consensus reported that delivering patient-centric care may play a role in supporting better clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction with treatments for chronic dermatologic conditions such as AK, which require repeated cycles of treatment. Additionally, currently published guidance and recommendations were considered by the PAKT panel to be overly broad for managing ICPs with their unique and complex needs. Therefore, the "Personalising Actinic Keratosis Treatment for Immunocompromised Patients" (IM-PAKT) panel was established to build upon general recommendations from the PAKT consensus. The panel identified current gaps in guidance for AK care in ICPs, offered practical care approaches based on typical ICP scenarios, and highlighted the need to adapt AK management to optimize care and improve treatment outcomes in ICPs. In particular, dermatologists should establish collaborative and transparent relationships with patients' multidisciplinary teams to enhance overall care for patients' comorbidities: given their increased risk of progression to malignancy, earlier assessments/interventions and frequent follow-ups are vital.The panel also developed a novel "triage" tool outlining effective treatment follow-up and disease surveillance plans tailored to patients' risk profiles, guided by current clinical presentation and relevant medical history. Additionally, we present the panel's expert opinion on three fictional ICP scenarios to explain their decision-making process for assessing and managing typical ICPs that they may encounter in clinical practice.

Witnessing-condition information differentially affects evaluations of high- and moderate-confidence eyewitness identifications.

Recent research on the eyewitness confidence-accuracy relationship reveals that confidence can be highly diagnostic of accuracy when the identification evidence is collected using pristine procedures (Wixted & Wells, 2017) and in the absence of suspect bias (Smalarz, 2021). Some researchers have further argued that eyewitnesses who make high-confidence suspect identifications are highly likely to be accurate even if they experienced suboptimal witnessing conditions (Semmler et al., 2018). The current research examined evaluations of eyewitness identification evidence in cases involving suboptimal witnessing conditions. Students (Experiments 1 & 2) and community members (Experiment 3) read eight crime vignettes involving an eyewitness's identification. We manipulated information about poor witnessing conditions (present vs. absent), the eyewitness's confidence level (high vs. moderate), and the format of the confidence statement (verbal vs. numeric) and measured evaluations of eyewitness-identification accuracy. Across all three experiments, information about suboptimal witnessing conditions disproportionately reduced evaluators' belief of highly confident compared to moderately confident eyewitnesses. This differential-discrediting pattern occurred for both numeric and verbal confidence-statement formats. Expert testimony describing the imperviousness of high-confidence suspect-identification accuracy to suboptimal witnessing conditions reduced, but did not eliminate, the differential-discrediting effect. Given that crime eyewitnesses frequently experience suboptimal witnessing conditions (e.g., Behrman & Davey, 2001; Wright & McDaid, 1996), the current findings have widespread implications for the capacity of the legal system to correctly classify suspects as guilty or innocent based on eyewitness identification testimony.

Scientific and religious beliefs are primarily shaped by testimony.

Understanding why individuals are more confident of the existence of invisible scientific phenomena (e.g., oxygen) than invisible religious phenomena (e.g., God) remains a puzzle. Departing from conventional explanations linking ontological beliefs to direct experience, we introduce a model positing that testimony predominantly shapes beliefs in both scientific and religious domains. Distinguishing direct experience (personal observation) from cultural input (testimony-based evidence), we argue that even apparently direct experiences often stem from others' testimony. Our analysis indicates that variability in direct experience cannot explain belief disparities between science and religion, within each domain, or across cultures. Instead, variability in testimony is the primary driver of ontological beliefs. We present developmental evidence for testimony-based beliefs and elucidate the mechanisms underlying their impact.

Prescribing Justice: A Close Examination of Physicians Acting As Expert Witnesses in Saudi Arabia.

INTRODUCTION: An expert witness is a person who provides testimony on issues that the court finds to be outside the scope of their expertise and experience. Any physician who has performed an independent medical evaluation or written medical records can and should expect to be requested as an expert witness. Medical malpractice, workers' compensation, and personal injury are the most prominent areas where medical expert witnesses participate and provide opinions and testimony. To our knowledge, this is the first study to be conducted in Saudi Arabia on physicians acting as expert witnesses. METHODS: This observational descriptive cross-sectional study conducted in Saudi Arabia from November 2022 to July 2023 aimed to assess physicians' experiences, education, training, willingness, self-competency, attitude, and perception as expert witnesses. The study population consisted of physicians working in Saudi Arabia, with at least a specialist level of professional expertise. Participants completed a self-administered online survey, utilizing a researcher-designed questionnaire. RESULTS: In total, 417 participants, with males comprising 51.3% of the sample, responded to the survey. More than half of the physicians (58.3%) had never produced a medical report for the court. Among those who had, the majority had done so one to twice. Similarly, the majority had never testified in court (77.5%), with only a small percentage having done so once or twice. Approximately 80% of participants had no prior education or training as expert witnesses, but among those who did, courses and workshops were the most common forms of education or training. Most participants expressed interest in learning or training for this role (69.1%) and were willing to provide medical reports or court testimony (73.9%). However, half of the participants did not feel competent in writing a medical report for the court, and more than half lacked confidence in giving testimony. CONCLUSION: The findings highlight the need for increased engagement, education, and training among physicians, particularly early and mid-career professionals, to enhance their confidence and competence as expert witnesses and ensure ethical practices in the medicolegal domain in Saudi Arabia.

The semantic structure of accuracy in eyewitness testimony.

In two studies, we examined if correct and incorrect statements in eyewitness testimony differed in semantic content. Testimony statements were obtained from participants who watched staged crime films and were interviewed as eyewitnesses. We analyzed the latent semantic representations of these statements using LSA and BERT. Study 1 showed that the semantic space of correct statements differed from incorrect statements; correct statements were more closely related to a dominance semantic representation, whereas incorrect statements were more closely related to a communion semantic representation. Study 2 only partially replicated these findings, but a mega-analysis of the two datasets showed different semantic representations for correct and incorrect statements, with incorrect statements more closely related to representations of communion and abstractness. Given the critical role of eyewitness testimony in the legal context, and the generally low ability of fact-finders to estimate the accuracy of witness statements, our results strongly call for further research on semantic content in correct and incorrect testimony statements.

Evaluating layperson interpretation of actuarial sexual violence risk data: A multi-method comparison of risk communication with attention to gender bias.

Forensic clinicians are often called upon to help courts determine the likelihood that someone will continue to commit sexually violent acts in the future. The utility of these evaluations depends largely on how effectively the results are communicated to and understood by the trier of fact. Actuarial results, such as those commonly reported in sexual offense risk assessments, appear particularly challenging for laypersons to understand. Using a representative sample of 206 U.S. adults, this study examines three methods of communicating actuarial risk via simulated expert testimony on participants' ratings of a hypothetical evaluee's risk of sexual re-offending. The results suggested that all participants, regardless of how results were communicated, over-estimated the examinee's risk level relative to the expert's probabilistic findings, but tended to agree with the expert's categorical predictions. Participants who were only shown actuarial data consistently rated the evaluee as more dangerous and likely to commit future sexually violent acts. Additionally, it was found that gender significantly impacted participants' perceptions, such that women found the evaluee more dangerousness and desired greater social distance from him. This study has implications for best practices regarding expert communication of actuarial results in cases involving sexual violence.

The effect of mood on shaping belief and recollection following false feedback.

The current study examined how mood affects the impact of false feedback on belief and recollection. In a three-session experiment, participants first watched 40 neutral mini videos, which were accompanied by music to induce either a positive or negative mood, or no music. Following a recognition test, they received false feedback to reduce belief in the occurrence of the events displayed in some of the videos (Session 2). This was followed by an immediate memory test and a delayed memory assessment one week later (Session 3). The results revealed that participants in negative mood reported higher belief scores compared to those in positive moods, despite an overall decline in belief scores for all groups following the false feedback. Notably, individuals in negative moods exhibited less reduction in their belief scores after encountering challenges, thereby maintaining a higher accuracy in their testimonies. Over time, a reduction in the clarity of participants' memory recall was observed, which correspondingly reduced their testimony accuracy. This study thus indicates that mood states play a role in shaping belief and memory recall under the influence of false feedback.

New Insights on Expert Opinion About Eyewitness Memory Research.

Experimental psychologists investigating eyewitness memory have periodically gathered their thoughts on a variety of eyewitness memory phenomena. Courts and other stakeholders of eyewitness research rely on the expert opinions reflected in these surveys to make informed decisions. However, the last survey of this sort was published more than 20 years ago, and the science of eyewitness memory has developed since that time. Stakeholders need a current database of expert opinions to make informed decisions. In this article, we provide that update. We surveyed 76 scientists for their opinions on eyewitness memory phenomena. We compared these current expert opinions to expert opinions from the past several decades. We found that experts today share many of the same opinions as experts in the past and have more nuanced thoughts about two issues. Experts in the past endorsed the idea that confidence is weakly related to accuracy, but experts today acknowledge the potential diagnostic value of initial confidence collected from a properly administered lineup. In addition, experts in the past may have favored sequential over simultaneous lineup presentation, but experts today are divided on this issue. We believe this new survey will prove useful to the court and to other stakeholders of eyewitness research.

Role of psychopathology on children credibility of sexual abuse testimony.

When an alleged victim has a pre-existing psychopathological diagnosis, this can affect the rating of their version of the abuse in terms of credibility. The objective of this work is to analyze the relationship between the assessment of the credibility of the testimony of a CSA victim, the psychological problems that the child may have presented prior to sexual abuse and the possible psychological sequelae that she may present as a result of the abuse. 109 cases were selected in which the credibility of the testimony could be determined. Through forensic interviews and the study of the corresponding professional reports, the following were obtained: sociodemographic data, data on their previous psychological state and data on their psychological state after the reported events. The psychological state of the child after the reported events shows no relation to the forensic evaluation of the credibility of her testimony. The existence of a relationship between the absence of previous psychopathology and the fact that the victim's testimony is valued as a credible account is confirmed. This study reveals that children who presented psychological manifestations prior to their experience of abuse receive a lower credibility rating than those without previous psychopathological symptoms or diagnoses.