NCJ Number
136756
Journal
Children and Society Volume: 5 Issue: 2 Dated: (Summer 1991) Pages: 123-135
Date Published
1991
Length
13 pages
Annotation
A sample of adult observers in Great Britain saw a number of boys and girls aged 7-8 or 10-11 years old describing a visit to the Natural History Museum; their task was to select which children had actually visited the museum and which had only seen a video recording of the trip.
Abstract
The experiment investigated the accuracy of adult observers in distinguishing between true and false statements made by children, the grounds on which the adults made their judgments, and the relationship of such decisions to the confidence of the adult judges. Raters were just above chance in detecting truth and deception. In general, they were better able to detect truth than falsehood and were more successful in catching deception among boys and younger children. Most accuracy-confidence relationships were not significant. These findings should be discussed in light of the debate over allowing videotaped testimony from juvenile witnesses in child sexual abuse cases which is now permitted under the British Criminal Justice Act 1988. Tightly controlled laboratory experiments can be used to investigate and understand the complex dynamics of children's testimony. 2 tables and 28 references