Perceived credibility and eyewitness accounts of children with intellectual disabilities

1. Perceived credibility and eyewitness accounts of children with intellectual disabilities Anne Ridley, Lucy Henry, Jemma Perry and Laura Crane

2. Introduction • Individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID) are particularly vulnerable to certain types of crime (e.g. Reiter et al., 2007) • Perceptions of self and others mean that many crimes involving individuals with ID are not reported to the Police • Successful prosecution of crimes against individuals with ID relatively rare (Williams, 1995)

3. Introduction • Given the right conditions, individuals with ID can give accurate testimony • Although they may not recall as much information as children of the same mental age • Findings are mixed as to whether children with ID are more suggestible than typically developing children (e.g. Henry & Gudjonsson, 1999, 2003; Agnew & Powell, 2004) • Accuracy tends to be greatest during free recall

4. Introduction • Juror perceptions • Stereotypes can have a major impact: relative maturity leads jurors to perceive children as more credible (Ross et al. 1990); relatively poor language skills has the opposite effect (Schmidt & Brigham, 1996) • Mock jurors presented with witness statement attributed to either a 15 year-old with mild ID, a typically developing 15 year-old or a typically developing 10 year old (same MA) found the child with ID to be less credible than either other group (Peled et al., 2004)

5. Objectives of the present study • To extend the work of Peled et al. (2004) • To see if mock juror perceptions are biased if they do not know whether a child has ID or not • To use a number of different transcripts of both ID and typically developing (TD) children (CA) rather than using one transcript and assigning it to children with or without ID • To use members of the public eligible for jury service rather than undergraduate students • To determine whether perceptions of credibility were associated with accuracy of free recall, anxiety level and/or mental age

6. Method Child participants (60 total: 31 ID, 29 TD)

7. Method • Adult participants • 130: 54 male, 76 female • Age range 20 – 69 (mean = 38.61, SD = 13.74) • Opportunity sampling via friends and family • All jury eligible

8. Method Materials and procedure for children • Session 1 • 3 minute non-violent video clip • Verbal Similarities and Matrices subtests: British Ability Scales II (BASII; Elliott, 1996). Verbal reasoning assessed • Unexpected interview in line with ABE: free recall (FR) (children asked to tell as much as they could remember about video viewed earlier); followed by general and specific questions. Interview recorded and transcribed. FR = number of correct items. • Spielberger et al. 1973: ‘How I feel’ questionnaire (anxiety) • Session 2 • Non-verbal reasoning assessed

9. Method • Materials and procedure for mock jurors • A random sample of six transcripts (FR) per mock juror. Three from an ID and three from a TD child • Completed questionnaire on eight credibility criteria • Believability, witness confidence, honesty, perceived convincingness of statement, capability to testify, credibility, completeness of the account and cognitive functioning (alertness) • Likert scale used: 1 = not at all; 4 = somewhat, 7 = extremely (credible) • Completed online via Bristol Online Survey or on paper • Answered open-ended questions about how the child’s testimony could be improved

10. Example of typically developing child’s response to initial prompt • Ok Katie, what I would like to do now is to ask you a few questions about the DVD that you’ve just seen. So what I would like you to do is to tell me everything that you can remember about that DVD. • Well there were three children, two boys and a girl and they had taken their dad’s car but it was running out of petrol, so they knew that they were going to have to fill it up. They drove to the petrol station. The biggest boy was driving and they stole some petrol. The petrol man asked then who was gonna pay. The big boy pointed to a man at the cash point and said that was their dad. The petrol man was fat. He went away again and then when they had filled it up they quickly drove off. They didn’t pay but the girl threw a note out of the window promising to pay later. That’s it.

11. Example of child with ID’s transcript • Ok, what I would like you to do is that I would like you to tell me everything you can remember about that video. • It was a car in it, it was a dad and it was a petrol man and it was two at the back and two in the front and they was trying to put the petrol in and then they was driving away. • Can you explain to me what they looked like? • One was a girl with like long hair and the other one….the boy was just like…short hair and the other one was short hair too. That’s it. • So, think about those people again, can you remember what they did, tell me what they did. • They went to there and the one who was driving, he said to tell them lot to go to sleep yeah. When he got out the car yeah, when he put the petrol in, then the man came over and he said who is gonna pay for it and he said his dad over there, and when the other man got in the car and drived, then he put the petrol away and then he drived away and then the man was chasing him.

12. Results • Data from children • Scores were significantly different between the groups of children on all measures (p < .001)

13. Results • Data from mock jurors on credibility of children Means and (SD) • All differences between groups significant (p < .001)

14. Results • We explored three factors that might have contributed to the credibility ratings (average of all measures): free recall score, mental age and anxiety • Correlations within the ID and TD groups separately showed that: ID group : credibility related to FR (.82) and MA (.48); MA related to anxiety (-.57); FR related to MA (.58) TD group: only significant relationship was between credibility and FR (.51)

15. Results • The three factors (free recall, MA, anxiety) combined predicted credibility for both TD and ID groups. (20.8% and 65.6% of the variance respectively) • The only individual predictor of credibility was free recall for both groups.

16. Results • Qualitative comments for children with ID • Recall was ‘confused’, ‘unclear’ , ‘vague’ • Children needed to pay more attention: ‘more attention needs to be paid to what’s going on’, ‘[the child] doesn’t seem too interested’, ‘seemed distracted’ • TD children • Recall was ‘very observant’, ‘detailed memory’, ‘consistent’ • Credibility: ‘the amount of detail given help[ed] to increase the child’s credibility’

17. Discussion • Children with ID are perceived as being less credible than TD children on all measures • This effect was driven by the free recall of the child (rather than mental age or anxiety) • Supported by qualitative comments • Findings suggest that methods that improve the quantity of free recall are also likely to improve the credibility of children with ID who tend to give less complete accounts than TD children

18. Discussion • Limitations • The study did not simulate conditions in a real trial in a number of ways • Only free-recall transcripts were used • Strengths: • Sample comprised jury eligible adults from a wide age range. • The mock jurors were not aware that the children might or might not have an ID, which might well also be the case in real trials • Study provides a basis for future research on perception of credibility of child witnesses with ID

19. References Agnew, S.E. & Powell, M.B. (2004). The effect of intellectual disability on children’s recall of an event across different question types. Law and Human Behavior, 28(3), 273-294. Elliot, C. D> (1996) British Ability Scales II: Administration and Socring Manual. NFER-Nelson, Windsor, Berkshire Henry, L.A. & Gudjonsson, G.H. (1999). Eyewitness memory and suggestibility in children with mental retardation. American Journal on Mental Retardation, 104(6), 491-508. Henry, L.A. & Gudjonsson, G.H. (2003). Eyewitness memory, suggestibility and repeated recall sessions in children with mild and moderate intellectual disabilities. Law and Human Behavior, 27, 481-505 Peled, M., Iarocci, G. & Connolly, D.A. (2004). Eyewitness testimony and perceived credibility of youth with mild intellectual disability. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 48(7), 699-703 Reiter, S., Bryen, D.N. & Shachar, I. (2007). Adolescents with intellectual disabilities as victims of abuse. Journal of Intellectual Disabilities, 11(4), 371-387 Ross, D. F., Dunning, D., Toglia, M. P., & Ceci, S. J. (1990). The child in the eyes of the jury: Assessing mock jurors’ perceptions of the child witness. Law and Human Behavior, 14, 5-23 Schmidt, C.W. & Brigham, J.C. (1996). Jurors’ perceptions of child victim-witnesses in a simulated sexual abuse trial. Law and Human Behavior, 20(6), 581-606 Spielberger, C.D., Edwards, C.D., Montuori, J. & Lushene D. (1973) State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children. Counseling Psychologists Press, PaloAlto, CA Williams, C. (1995). Invisible victims: Crime and abuse against people with learning disabilities. London: Jessica Kingsley Subject matter of presentation now published as follows: Henry, L.C., Ridley, A., Perry, J., & Crane, L. (2011). Perceived credibility and eyewitness testimony of children with intellectual disabilities. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 55, 385-391