Amye Warren

ABSTRACT Recognition accuracy for faces of an individual's own race typically exceeds recognition accuracy for other-race faces. The categorization–individuation model (Hugenberg, Young, Bernstein, & Sacco, 2010) attributes this cross-race effect to motivation to encode distinctive features of own-race faces but category defining features for other-race faces. Two experiments using different stimuli tested hypotheses generated from this model with both Black and White participants. For White participants, instructions to individuate reduced the cross-race effect in both studies but did not eliminate it in Study 1. Black participants did not exhibit the cross-race effect in either study, but individuation instructions improved both their same-race and other-race sensitivity. The present quality of interracial contact moderated the relationship between instructions and other-race sensitivity for both Black and White participants in Study 1 but not in Study 2. Overall, results provide mixed support for this social categorization model. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

ABSTRACT Motivational and cognitive aspects of children's reports of an event to which they were the only "witness" and the prime "suspect" were examined. Subjects were 67 children of 3 to 10 years of age. After a test and play session to assess the children's receptive vocabulary and their understanding of the term "believe," each child was asked to perform a task with a collection of figures constructed from play dough. During a brief period in which the child was left alone, a man entered, broke one of the figures (a snake), and left hurriedly, and left behind some books he had brought with him. In semistructured interviews, questions such as "What happened to the snake?" and "What did you do?" were asked of each child. Other questions assessed the child's perceptions of his or her believability, understanding of the utility of corroborating evidence, and knowledge of legal concepts. The majority of the children accurately reported the way in which the figure was broken. Children's expectations that they would be believed by unfamiliar adults decreased with age. Older children were more likely than younger children to corroborate their stories by describing the man and mentioning his books. Children younger than age 7 had little familiarity with, or understanding of, legal concepts. Adults' perceptions of the credibility of child witnesses, developmental influences on children's perceptions of their credibility, and implications for children's court testimony are discussed. (AC)

ABSTRACT Concern about the accuracy of children's responses to "yes-no" questions has created controversy regarding the appropriateness of these questions for forensic interviews. To evaluate response patterns, 56 children (3-7 years old) were twice asked a set of yes-no questions, either in standard or in a modified, forced-choice format, about a videotaped event. Younger children were less accurate and consistent than were older children. Unlike the older children, the younger children were less accurate on questions that adults rated as probing central information compared to those involving more peripheral details. Question format did not alter children's accuracy, their tendency to answer "I don't know," or their consistency across repeated questions. No clear response biases were observed for the majority of children regardless of question format, and accuracy was equivalent on "yes-correct" and "no-correct" questions. Consistency and answers to suggestibility check questions were notpredictive of performance. Because multiple mechanisms underlie errors on yes-no questions, the goal of postdicting the accuracy of children's responses remains elusive.

Motivational and cognitive aspects of children's reports of an event to which they were the only "witness" and the prime "suspect" were examined. Subjects were 67 children of 3 to 10 years of age. After a test and play session to assess the children's receptive vocabulary and their understanding of the term "believe," each child was asked to perform a task with a collection of figures constructed from play dough. During a brief period in which the child was left alone, a man entered, broke one of the figures (a snake), and left hurriedly, and left behind some books he had brought with him. In semistructured interviews, questions such as "What happened to the snake?" and "What did you do?" were asked of each child. Other questions assessed the child's perceptions of his or her believability, understanding of the utility of corroborating evidence, and knowledge of legal concepts. The majority of the children accurately repo...

The present study evaluates the knowledge of jury-eligible college students (n = 192), investigative interviewers (n = 44), forensic psychologists (n = 39), and public defenders (n = 137) in regard to the research on interviewing children. These groups' knowledge was compared with the scientific research on the impact of interview techniques and practices on the accuracy of child witnesses. Jury-eligible students were the least knowledgeable, but their accuracy varied widely across items. Both interviewers and public defenders performed better than jury-eligible students, but they lacked substantial knowledge about the research on interviewing children on certain topics (e.g., using anatomically detailed dolls); forensic psychologists were the most knowledgeable. These findings suggest that professionals in the legal system need substantial professional development regarding the research on interviewing strategies with child witnesses. They also highlight the need for experts to provide case-relevant information to juries who lack basic information about the validity and reliability of children's reports.

ABSTRACT Allowing hearsay testimony in child abuse cases represents a dramatic and controversial change to the legal system, yet little scholarly and empirical work has been devoted to the topic. This special theme issue contains 12 articles written by psycholegal scholars from the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. It is organized to address 3 basic issues that should be of interest to psycholegal. researchers, as well as police officers, judges, lawyers, and other members of the legal community. (a) How often is hearsay testimony used? How is it used in comparison to other innovations designed to protect the psychological welfare of the child witness? (b) How accurate is hearsay testimony? Is it as accurate as the child's own account? (c) Do jurors believe hearsay testimony? How much weight do or should jurors give to hearsay testimony? Two critical commentaries, one legal and one psychological, follow these articles. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

... Amye R. Warren, Psychology Department, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Cara E. Woodall, Psychology Department, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. ... The participants represented nine different states. Various levels of education were represented. ...

Children do not acquire language in a void; their hypothesized language learning devices typically operate within conversations with more mature language users. These sources provide children with the primary linguistic data for incorporation in their own speech. ...

The present study simultaneously assessed the relative contributions of feedback indicative of comprehension and the apparent age of the listener, either an adult or a doll which resembled a toddler, in a 2 (listeners) × 2 (types of feedback, C = comprehension, NC = ...

Hearsay testimony from children's interviewers is increasingly common in sexual abuse trials, but little is known about its effects on juries. In 2 studies, the authors examined college students' perceptions of 3 types of hearsay testimony (an actual interview with a child or an adult interviewer providing either the gist of what that child had said or a verbatim account of the interview). Interviewers were rated as more accurate and truthful than the children. The interview was rated as higher quality, and children's statements, including their false statements, were sometimes rated as more believable in the interviewer gist hearsay condition. Mock jurors reacted differently to various types of hearsay testimony, and interviewer gist testimony may favor a child's case.

ABSTRACT The authors review research on children's suggestibility as it applies to the investigative sexual abuse interview. They focus on identifying the optimal conditions for securing an account of a child's remembered experience that will be equally or more reliable than that of an adult. The discussion is divided into four major sections, corresponding to the questions of how, when, where, and by whom a child witness should be interviewed to diminish potential distortions and enhance the trustworthiness of the child's remembered account.

... Who's your granny? Child: (states name) Interviewer: (restates name). Where does she live? Child: In (area) in the mountains. Interviewer: Oh, in (area), up in the mountains? Mm-hmm, I bet it's nice up there. Do you like goin'? Child: (nods) Interviewer: Good. ...

Awareness: Relations to Socioeconomic Status and Reading Readiness Skills. CHILD DEVELOP-MENT, 1988, 59, 728-742. 3 types of metalinguistic awareness (phonemic, word boundary, and word order in sentences) and their relation to socioeconomic status, ...

BOHANNON, JOHN NEIL III; WARREN-LEUBECKER, AMYE; AND HEPLER, NANCY. Word Order Aware-ness and Early Reading. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1984, 55, 1541-1548. Previous research has sug-gested that metalinguistic awareness may be important in learning to ...

... Citation. Database: PsycINFO. [Chapter]. Adults' liability for children's "lie-ability": Can adults coach children to lie successfully?. Cognitive and social factors in early deception. Tate, Carol Satterfield; Warren, Amye R.; Hess, Thomas M. Ceci, Stephen J. (Ed); Leichtman, Michelle ...

ABSTRACT Over the past 25 years, many researchers have studied children's testimony with a particular focus on children's capacities to provide reliable and valid information about their past experiences (see reviews by Ceci & Bruck, 1995; Ceci, Leichtman, & Putnick, 1992; Dent & Flin, 1992; McGough, 1994; Memon & Bull, 1999; Perry & Wrightsman, 1991; Poole & Lamb, 1998; Spencer & Flin, 1990). Initially, most researchers conducted controlled studies in the laboratory, but their ecological validity was often questioned (Doris, 1991; Lamb & Thierry, 2005). Since then, studies conducted in both field and laboratory circumstances have focused more narrowly on issues of particular relevance to forensic application--and have helped generate a remarkable consensus about children's competencies and limitations. In brief, the research shows that although children clearly can remember incidents they have experienced, the relationship between age and memory is complex; a variety of factors influence the quality of information provided. For our present purposes, perhaps the most important of these factors pertain to the interviewers' ability to elicit information and the child's willingness and ability to express it, rather than the child's ability to remember it. Our goal in this chapter is to summarize current understanding of the factors that influence children's ability to provide accurate information about events they have experienced and to demonstrate how application of this knowledge in forensic settings in fact enhances their informativeness. In the next section, we thus examine the ways that rapport, language and communicative capacity, memory development, and suggestibility shape children's informativeness. In the course of our selective literature review, we also discuss aspects of our own research program, mostly conducted with the use of transcripts of actual forensic interviews with alleged child abuse victims, to illustrate how informative children can be when interviewers build on their capacities and strengths. Most of the interviews had been conducted in Israel by youth investigators who are statutorily mandated to conduct all investigative interviews of children (Sternberg, Lamb, & Hershkowitz, 1996), and in the United States, Britain, and Sweden by social workers, sheriffs, or police officers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

Thirty 7-year-olds, 30 12-year-olds, and 39 adults were administered the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale, which consists of a story followed by 20 questions, 15 of which are misleading. After subjects were told that their answers were not all correct, the questions were readministered to look for “shifts.” Approximately half of the subjects in each age group had been warned that the questions were difficult or tricky and that they should only answer with what they confidently remembered. Results indicated that younger children recalled less of the story and were more likely to acquiesce to leading questions than older children and adults. Children also changed more of their answers upon the second questioning. Recall was negatively correlated with both acquiescence to leading questions and likelihood of changing answers, even within age groups. The warning significantly reduced the effect of misleading questions across all age groups.

... Funding for this research was suppolted by a UC Foundation Fac-ulty Research Grant to Mary Lyn Huffman and Amye R. Warren from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. ... Why is that a -? Was it okay for Jim/Jane to say hisher mother was not at home? WhyIWhy not? ...

... Jennifer M. Keeney, Susan M. Larson, and Julie A. Stadfeld The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga ... Ceci and Helene Hembrooke for their assistance with data collection, and Charity Cowger, Beverly Smith, Becky Stocker, Brooke Simmons, Sheitel Bhagat, Iris Thornbeny ...