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Children in Court: The Role of Discourse Processing and Production

NCJ Number
156959
Journal
Topics in Language Disorder Volume: 13 Issue: 4 Dated: (August 1993) Pages: 39-58
Author(s)
L S Snyder; R Nathanson; K J Saywitz
Date Published
1993
Length
20 pages
Annotation
This article examines the nature of courtroom discourse, and specifically the communication that occurs between children and adults in the courtroom and during investigative interviews, in terms of discourse processing and production.
Abstract
To have a more accurate understanding of what transpires when children testify, one must consider the discourse requirements of eyewitness testimony, the child's developing ability to produce the requisite discourse, the nature and development of autobiographical memory in children, sociocultural factors that may influence discourse production, and jurors' difficulty in processing the discourse of eyewitness testimony in general, and children's testimony in particular. The psycholinguistic analysis of narrative discourse reveals that narrative discourse production is a skill that children develop over the course of childhood, and that jurors' decisionmaking depends on their narrative processing, which is facilitated by complete and coherent testimony. 86 references