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In‐court versus out‐of‐court testimonies: Children's experiences and adults' assessments
Author(s) -
Landström Sara,
Granhag Pär Anders
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
applied cognitive psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.719
H-Index - 100
eISSN - 1099-0720
pISSN - 0888-4080
DOI - 10.1002/acp.1606
Subject(s) - psychology , presentation (obstetrics) , perception , closed circuit , social psychology , developmental psychology , medicine , telecommunications , neuroscience , computer science , radiology
The study examined the effects of different presentation modes on child witnesses' experiences and adults' perception and assessments of the same witnesses. Child witnesses ( N = 108) were interviewed about an event that they had either experienced or imagined. Adult mock jurors ( N = 240) watched the children's testimonies live, via two‐way closed‐circuit television (CCTV), or via a pre‐recorded video. The results showed that the live observers perceived the children in more positive terms than did the two‐way CCTV observers, who in turn perceived the children in more positive terms than did the video observers. Briefly, it seems as the more proximal the presentation mode, the more positive the observers' perception. Somewhat in contrast to these results, a significantly smaller proportion of the children who testified on video stated that they were nervous, compared to the children who testified live or via two‐way CCTV. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.