Unpacking insanity defence standards: an experimental study of rationality and control tests in criminal law / Descifrar los criterios de defensa de la vesania: estudio experimental de las pruebas de racionalidad y control en derecho penal

The present study investigated the impact of different legal standards on mock juror decisions concerning whether a defendant was guilty or not guilty by reason of insanity. Undergraduate students (N=477) read a simulated case summary involving a murder case and were asked to make an insanity determination. The cases differed in terms of the condition of the defendant (rationality deficit or control deficit) and the legal standard given to the jurors to make the determination (Model Penal Code, McNaughten or McNaughten plus a separate control determination). The effects of these variables on the insanity determination were investigated. Jurors also completed questionnaires measuring individualism and hierarchy attitudes and perceptions of facts in the case. Results indicate that under current insanity standards jurors do not distinguish between defendants with rationality deficits and defendants with control deficits regardless of whether the legal standard requires them to do so. Even defendants who lacked control were found guilty at equal rates under a legal standard excusing rationality deficits only and a legal standard excluding control and rationality deficits. This was improved by adding a control test as a partial defence, to be determined after a rationality determination. Implications for the insanity defence in the Criminal Justice System are discussed (AU)

Este estudio ha investigado la repercusión de los diversos cánones legales en las decisiones simuladas acerca de si un acusado es culpable o no por motivos de vesania. Una muestra de 477 estudiantes universitarios leyeron el resumen de caso relativo a un asesinato, pidiéndoseles luego que determinasen si había enajenación mental. Los casos diferían en cuanto a la condición del acusado (déficit de racionalidad o de control) y el criterio legal proporcionado a los jurados para que tomaran la determinación (Código penal modelo, McNaughten o McNaughten mas una determinación sobre el control). Se investigó el efecto de estas variables en la determinación de vesania. Los jurados rellenaron también cuestionarios que medían actitudes de individualismo y jerarquía y la percepción de los hechos del caso. Los resultados indican que con los criterios de demencia actuales los jurados no distinguen entre acusados con déficit de racionalidad y aquellos con déficit de control, aunque los criterios legales se lo exijan. Incluso los acusados que carecían de control fueron hallados culpables en la misma proporción con un criterio legal que disculpaba el déficit de racionalidad y con otro que excluía los déficit de control y racionalidad. Consiguió mejorarse añadiendo una prueba de control como defensa parcial a determinar tras la decisión sobre la racionalidad. Se comentan las implicaciones para la defensa de la enajenación mental en el sistema de justicia penal (AU)

Evidentiality and suggestibility: a new research venue.

Recent research suggests that acquisition of mental-state language may influence conceptual development. We examine this possibility by investigating the conceptual links between evidentiality in language and suggestibility. Young children are disproportionately suggestible and tend to change their reports or memories when questioned. The authors discuss the extent to which components of mental-state understanding, specifically representational understanding and understanding origins of knowledge, are implicated in improvements in resistance to suggestions and comprehending evidentiality. The authors also review social-psychological evidence that has implications for evidential understanding. Integration of the literature on both topics is followed by suggestions for new research directions.

Unwarranted Assumptions about Children's Testimonial Accuracy.

We examine eight unwarranted assumptions made by expert witnesses, forensic interviewers, and legal scholars about the reliability of children's eyewitness reports. The first four assumptions modify some central beliefs about the nature of suggestive interviews, age-related differences in resistance to suggestion, and thresholds necessary to produce tainted reports. The fifth unwarranted assumption involves the influence of both individual and interviewer factors in determining children's suggestibility. The sixth unwarranted assumption concerns the claim that suggested reports are detectable. The seventh unwarranted assumption concerns new findings about how children deny, disclose, and/or recant their abuse. Finally, we examine unwarranted statements about the value of science to the forensic arena. It is important not only for researchers but also expert witnesses and court-appointed psychologists to be aware of these unwarranted assumptions.

Representational constraints on children's suggestibility.

In a multistage experiment, twelve 4- and 9-year-old children participated in a triad rating task. Their ratings were mapped with multidimensional scaling, from which euclidean distances were computed to operationalize semantic distance between items in target pairs. These children and age-mates then participated in an experiment that employed these target pairs in a story, which was followed by a misinformation manipulation. Analyses linked individual and developmental differences in suggestibility to children's representations of the target items. Semantic proximity was a strong predictor of differences in suggestibility: The closer a suggested distractor was to the original item's representation, the greater was the distractor's suggestive influence. The triad participants' semantic proximity subsequently served as the basis for correctly predicting memory performance in the larger group. Semantic proximity enabled a priori counterintuitive predictions of reverse age-related trends to be confirmed whenever the distance between representations of items in a target pair was greater for younger than for older children.

The perceived credibility of older adults as witnesses and its relation to ageism.

In experiment 1, 267 undergraduates read a case summary and witness statement. Sex and age of the witness (49, 69, 79 or 89 years) were varied. Participants rated the witness's perceived convincingness, confidence, quality of observation, accuracy, honesty, competence, memory, suggestibility, and cognitive functioning. As well as an age effect for honesty, age by sex interactions were observed for several characteristics, particularly for comparisons of the 79-year-olds versus the 49-year-olds, and 89-year-olds versus the 49-year-olds. In experiment 2, 94 undergraduates read the same testimony given by a 79-year-old male or female witness, and completed the Fraboni Scale of Ageism and the Aging Semantic Differential. Participants who evidenced stronger aging stereotypes on these measures rated the witness less favorably than did participants who were less prejudiced. This experiment is the first to show a link between perceived credibility of older adults and ageist attitudes. Practical applications regarding how older witnesses are viewed by jurors, and the criminal justice system more generally, are discussed.

Believing is seeing: how rumors can engender false memories in preschoolers.

This study examined how an erroneous rumor circulated among preschoolers can influence their memory. One fourth of the children overheard a rumor from an adult conversation in which it was alleged that an event the children had not experienced themselves had occurred. A second fourth were the classmates of those who overheard the rumor. A third group had no exposure to the rumor. The remaining children actually experienced the event suggested by the rumor. One week later, the children were interviewed in either a neutral or a suggestive manner. Results from a second interview after a 2-week delay revealed that under both interview conditions, children who overheard the rumor, either from the adult conversation or during naturally occurring interactions with classmates, were as likely to report experiencing the rumored but nonexperienced event as were those who actually experienced it. Most reports of the rumored but nonexperienced event were in children's free recall and were accompanied by high levels of fictitious elaboration.

Reconceptualizing children's suggestibility: bidirectional and temporal properties.

Forty-one children (3 to 7 years) were exposed to a staged event and later interviewed by 1 of 41 professional interviewers. All interviews were coded with a detailed, mutually exclusive, and exhaustive coding scheme capturing adult behaviors (leading questions vs. neutral) and child behaviors (acquiescence vs. denial) in a temporally organized manner. Overall, interviewers' use of leading questions did not result in increased acquiescence as previously found. However, one specific type of leading question (i.e., inaccurate misleading) was followed by acquiescence. Lagged sequential analyses showed that it was possible to predict directly from child-to-child behavior, effectively skipping the intervening adult behavior. This result raises questions about the current conceptualization that suggestibility is driven by adult behaviors.

"I saw it with my own ears": the effects of peer conversations on preschoolers' reports of nonexperienced events.

The study was designed to explore the effects of naturally occurring peer interactions and repeated suggestive interviews on preschoolers' (N=96, Meanage=54 months) memories for a personally experienced event, namely a staged archaeological dig. During the dig, one third of the children witnessed two "target" activities. A second third of the children were the classmates of those in the first group, but did not witness the target activities. The remaining children were not the classmates of those who witnessed the target activities, nor did they witness the target activities themselves, and thus served to provide a baseline against which to assess the effects of peer contact. Following the dig, the children were interviewed in either a neutral or suggestive manner on three occasions. Results from a fourth interview by a new examiner revealed that the combination of suggestive interviews and peer exposure led to claims of witnessing the target activities by the classmate group that were comparable to the children who actually did witness these activities. Further, assent rates to misleading questions employing peer pressure and false claims of actually seeing versus merely hearing about the target activities were elevated following opportunities to discuss these activities with peers.

Measurement of individual differences in children's suggestibility across situations.

The authors attempted to use scores on the Video Suggestibility Scale for Children (VSSC, M. H. Scullin & S. J. Ceci, 2001) to predict 50 preschool children's performance during a field study in which they were interviewed suggestively 4 times about both a true event and a suggested event. Among the 25 children over age 4 years 6 months, tendencies on the VSSC to respond affirmatively to suggestive questions ("yield"), change answers in response to negative feedback ("shift"), and the sum of these ("total suggestibility") were all related to lack of accuracy about the true event in the field study and to both accuracy and lack of accuracy about the suggested event. Results support a 2-factor model of suggestibility.