Rogers Richard, Sharf Allyson J, Carter Rachel M, Winningham Darby B, Sternad Rose N
Department of Psychology, University of North Texas, 1155 Union Circle #311280, Denton, TX, 76203-5017, USA.
Behav Sci Law. 2018 Jan;36(1):1-11. doi: 10.1002/bsl.2328.
The Miranda Rights Comprehension Instruments (MRCI) are intended to be administered to legally involved youths in a setting free from distractions and stressors with the explicit goal of assessing the examinee's best understanding. However, marked disparities have been observed between juveniles' MRCI performance and their unassisted recall of a representative Miranda warning. We hypothesized that youths' very strong MRCI performance might be partially due to prompts and clarifications used whenever incomplete or ambiguous answers are provided. In this archival study, we systematically re-scored three MRCI instruments from 231 legally involved youths to evaluate their original responses (i.e., non-queried scoring). This approach is viewed as more ecologically valid because actual Miranda warnings are typically provided in a routine manner without assistance following each Miranda component. For the large majority of legally involved juveniles, only small differences were noted between standard and non-queried scoring. However, some dramatic decrements were observed, especially on the Comprehension of Miranda Rights-II (CMR-II). More specifically, 15.7% of CMR-II percentiles dropped precipitously by 60% or more, when using the non-queried scores. The results are discussed within the context of optimized performances versus ecological validity as applied to Miranda evaluations.
米兰达权利理解工具（MRCI）旨在在没有干扰和压力源的环境中对涉及法律事务的青少年进行测试，其明确目标是评估受测者的最佳理解程度。然而，已观察到青少年在MRCI测试中的表现与其对代表性米兰达警告的无辅助回忆之间存在显著差异。我们推测，青少年在MRCI测试中表现出色，部分原因可能是每当提供不完整或模糊的答案时所使用的提示和澄清。在这项档案研究中，我们对来自231名涉及法律事务的青少年的三份MRCI工具进行了系统的重新评分，以评估他们最初的回答（即未询问式评分）。这种方法被认为在生态上更有效，因为实际的米兰达警告通常是以常规方式提供的，在每个米兰达要素之后没有辅助。对于绝大多数涉及法律事务的青少年来说，标准评分和未询问式评分之间只发现了微小差异。然而，也观察到了一些显著的下降，特别是在米兰达权利理解-II（CMR-II）方面。更具体地说，在使用未询问式评分时，15.7%的CMR-II百分位数急剧下降了60%或更多。本文将在适用于米兰达评估的优化表现与生态有效性的背景下讨论这些结果。
