Wandrey Lindsay, Lyon Thomas D, Quas Jodi A, Friedman William J
Department of Psychology and Social Behavior, University of California, Irvine.
Psychol Public Policy Law. 2012 Feb 1;18(1):79-104. doi: 10.1037/a0024812.
Research examining children's temporal knowledge has tended to utilize brief temporal intervals and singular, neutral events, and is not readily generalizable to legal settings in which maltreated children are asked temporal questions about salient, repeated abuse that often occurred in the distant past. To understand how well maltreated children can describe temporal location and numerosity of documented, personal experiences, we assessed 167 6- to 10-year-old maltreated children's temporal memory for changes in their living arrangements and prior visits to court. Small percentages of children were capable of providing exact temporal location information (age, month, or season) regarding their first or last placement or court experience, or numerosities for placements or court visits. Greater knowledge of current temporal locations did not predict better performance. However, older children's performance for several temporal judgments was better than chance, and their reports were not largely discrepant from the truth. Findings suggest caution when questioning maltreated children about when and how many times prior events occurred.
研究儿童的时间知识往往使用短暂的时间间隔和单一、中性的事件，并且不容易推广到法律场景中，在这些场景中，受虐待儿童会被问及关于过去遥远时期经常发生的突出、反复虐待事件的时间问题。为了了解受虐待儿童对记录在案的个人经历的时间位置和数量的描述能力如何，我们评估了167名6至10岁受虐待儿童对其生活安排变化和之前出庭情况的时间记忆。只有小部分儿童能够提供关于他们第一次或最后一次安置或出庭经历的确切时间位置信息（年龄、月份或季节），或者安置或出庭次数的信息。对当前时间位置的更多了解并不能预测更好的表现。然而，年龄较大的儿童在几项时间判断上的表现优于随机水平，并且他们的报告与事实并没有很大差异。研究结果表明，在询问受虐待儿童之前事件发生的时间和次数时要谨慎。
