Klemfuss J Zoe, Cleveland Kyndra C, Quas Jodi A, Lyon Thomas D
Florida International University; Department of Psychology and Social Behavior, University of California, Irvine, California, USA.
University of California, Irvine.
Legal Criminol Psychol. 2017 Sep;22(2):228-241. doi: 10.1111/lcrp.12096. Epub 2016 Jul 5.
Previous research has demonstrated that attorney question format relates to child witness' response productivity. However, little work has examined the relations between the extent to which attorneys provide temporal structure in their questions, and the effects of this structure on children's responding. The purpose of the present study was to address this gap in the literature in order to identify methods by which attorneys increase children's response productivity on the stand without risking objections from opposing counsel for "calling for narrative answers".
In the present study we coded criminal court transcripts involving child witnesses (5-18 years) for narrative structure in attorney questions and productivity in children's responses. Half of the transcripts resulted in convictions, half in acquittals, balanced across key variables: child age, allegation severity, the child's relationship to the perpetrator, and the number of allegations.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys varied substantially in their questioning tactics. Prosecutors used more temporal structure in their questions and varied their questioning by the age of the child. These variations had implications for children's response productivity.
Results indicate that temporal structure is a novel and viable method for enhancing children's production of case-relevant details on the witness stand.
先前的研究表明，律师提问的形式与儿童证人的回答效率有关。然而，几乎没有研究探讨律师在提问中提供时间结构的程度与这种结构对儿童回答的影响之间的关系。本研究的目的是填补文献中的这一空白，以确定律师在不冒被对方律师以“要求叙述性回答”为由提出反对风险的情况下提高儿童在证人席上回答效率的方法。
在本研究中，我们对涉及儿童证人（5至18岁）的刑事法庭记录进行编码，分析律师提问中的叙述结构以及儿童回答的效率。一半的记录涉及有罪判决，一半涉及无罪判决，关键变量（儿童年龄、指控严重程度、儿童与犯罪者的关系以及指控数量）保持平衡。
检察官和辩护律师的提问策略有很大差异。检察官在提问中使用了更多的时间结构，并根据儿童年龄改变提问方式。这些差异对儿童的回答效率有影响。
结果表明，时间结构是一种新颖且可行的方法，可提高儿童在证人席上提供与案件相关细节的能力。
