David F. Ross

Perceptions of Repressed Memories: A Reappraisal

College students read a trial summary of a sexual abuse case. The victim in the case either claimed that (a) her memory for the abuse had been repressed for 20 years and only recently recovered during therapy, or (b) she consciously remembered the abuse for 20 years but never discussed it until recently in therapy. Participants were significantly more likely to convict the defendant when the testimony was described as nonrepressed (67%) versus repressed (58%). This effect was not modified by the age of the victim at the time the alleged abuse occurred (either 3, 8, or 13 years of age), although the younger and older victims were significantly less believable than the 8-year-old victim. Compared to female participants, male participants were significantly less likely to convict the defendant and rated the victim as significantly less believable. These findings are discussed in the context of recent research on juror reactions to repressed memory testimony.

Child Witness Policy: Law Interfacing with Social Science

Dorothy F. Marsil (*) Jean Montoya (**) David Ross (***) Louise Graham (****) I INTRODUCTION The number of children testifying in court has posed serious practical and legal problems for the judicial system. One problem confronting the courts is how to protect children from experiencing the psychological trauma resulting from a face-to-face confrontation with a defendant who may have physically harmed the child or threatened future harm to the child. Another concern is that this trauma may impair childrens memory performance and their willingness to disclose the truth. In response to these concerns, child witness innovations proliferated throughout the United States in the 1980s and 1990s. (1) Among the innovations were: placing a screen between child witnesses and the defendant during childrens testimony; (2) transmitting childrens testimony into the courtroom by closed-circuit television; (3) and admitting childrens otherwise inadmissible hearsay, (4) including childrens videotaped interviews. (5) These innovations spawned a fair amount of appellate litigation regarding their constitutionality . Much of the litigation focused on whether a given innovation violated the Confrontation Clause, (6) but questions about due process arose as well. Court decisions regarding the constitutionality of child witness innovations rest on a number of assumptions that are subject to empirical testing. This article examines many of these assumptions and evaluates whether they are supported by social science evidence. Part II of the article examines the use of shielding procedures in child sexual abuse prosecutions. It begins by exploring the Supreme Courts analysis of state laws providing protection by shielding the child witness from the defendant. Next, it explores various questions: Do child witnesses need protection from confrontational stress? Does shielding prejudice the defendant? Does it impact juror perception of the proceedings fairness? Does shielding impact juror perception of the child witness? How reliable is childrens shielded testimony? Does shielding impair juror ability to detect deception in the child witness? Part III examines the use of hearsay testimony in child sexual abuse prosecutions. As with Part II, it begins by painting a picture of the legal landscape. Specifically, it considers the evidentiary and constitutional implications of using hearsay when children are witnesses. Part III then addresses various questions: Does admitting hearsay testimony protect the child witness? Does admitting hearsay testimony prejudice the defendant? How reliable is hearsay testimony offered in trials involving child witnesses? How accurate are the hearsay witnesses? Are they able to reconstruct details of their out-of-court exchange with the child witness? Does the eyewitness report deteriorate as it is transmitted down the hearsay chain from the child to the hearsay witness? Part IV concludes the article. It highlights the insights gained from the interface of law and social science and makes suggestions for legal practice and future social science research. II CHILDRENS SHIELDED TESTIMONY Using shielding procedures is distinct from admitting hearsay statements. With shielding procedures, the childs view of the defendant is obstructed during the childs testimony at trial. When a screen is used, the child testifies from behind a screen placed between the child and the defendant. When one-way closed-circuit television is used, the child testifies from a separate testimonial room, and the childs testimony is transmitted into the courtroom where the defendant, jury, and judge are able to view the testimony. (7) In either case, the child witness testifies under oath and is subject to cross-examination. In contrast, when hearsay is admitted in lieu of the childs testimony, not only does the child avoid physical confrontation with the defendant, but the child witness is also not subject to cross-examination, because the prosecution relies on the testimony of a hearsay witness who reports the childs out-of-court statements. …

Borderline personality traits correlate with death penalty decisions

This study tested the hypothesis that borderline personality characteristics, including the use of splitting as a defense mechanism, would predict support for the death penalty. A sample of 262 undergraduates responded to the Self-, Other- and Family-Splitting factors of the Splitting Index along with the Borderline Syndrome Index (BSI), the Juror Bias Scale, and a number of instruments measuring support of capital punishment. Instead of the hypothesized direct relationships, Family-Splitting and the BSI correlated inversely with death penalty support. Males were slightly more likely than females to favor capital punishment, and only males displayed an inverse association of Other-Splitting with death penalty support. These unexpected outcomes suggested that complexities in relationships and processes associated with identity formation might require additional research attention as potentially important sources of bias in capital jury trials.

Using a modified lag task to measure adult age differences in working memory.

Four groups of adults, ages 40 to 70+ years, took the Modified Lag Task which requires that participants remember lists of words and subsequently recall the first, second, or third word from the end of the list. Previously, the task showed convergent validity with the operation span (a complex span measure) and a divergent validity with the digit span (a simple span measure). To establish predictive validity, the present study was designed to assess if this task could separate four age groups in working memory performance. The present study found support for the validity of the Modified Lag Task; however, additional research is warranted to further develop the construct validity of this task.

On Legal Validity, Internal Validity, and Ecological Validity: Comment on Wasby and Brody

The comment by Wasby and Brody (1997) discusses what was termed a major problem in research involving repressed memories in the courtroom. Specifically, the authors note their concern with the legal validity of an experimental control condition in research by Golding, Sego, Sanchez, and Hasemann (1995) and Key, Warren, and Ross (1996), in which an adult brings child sexual assault charges against a defendant after many years, although the adult never forgot about the assault over the years (i.e., a no-repressed condition). Wasby and Brody state that it is important to discuss this major problem, so that others avoid making the same error in the future. In fact, they stated that using this control condition takes this research in the wrong direction. Wasby and Brodys criticism is rooted in the belief that legal validity is all that matters in a psychological study investigating a legal issue. It seems as though they have forgotten, however, that all research must also be concerned with developing well-designed, internally valid experiments that can be clearly interpreted by researchers and lawyers alike. In the present context of research on recovered memories in court, the no-repressed condition is critical to a well-designed experiment, especially in the two studies that are mentioned by Wasby and Brody. For example, in Golding et al. (1996), the no-repressed and repressed conditions were included as well as a control condition in which a child reported the sexual assault immediately. In this study, it would not have been enough to know that mock jurors believe the plaintiff less in a repressed condition compared to a child condition (i.e., the plaintiff testifying immediately). If these were the only conditions included in the experiment, one would not be sure if the lower believability was due to the claim of repression or whether having a delay (regardless of the reason for the delay) led to lower believability. By including the no-repressed condition, Golding