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Developmental Psychology

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Full-Text Articles in Child Psychology

Playing With Weplay!: Adapting A Caregiver-Child Group For Caregivers Of Young Children With Early Signs Of Autism Spectrum Disorder, Louisa A. Cahn-Gambino Jun 2024

Playing With Weplay!: Adapting A Caregiver-Child Group For Caregivers Of Young Children With Early Signs Of Autism Spectrum Disorder, Louisa A. Cahn-Gambino

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

WePlay! Denver, a collaboration between the University of Denver’s Graduate School of Professional Psychology and the Children’s Museum of Denver, Marsico Campus, began providing caregiver-infant playgroups to the community in 2019. WePlay! and Nosotros Jugamos, the English and Spanish-speaking groups, teach caregivers with young children about play-based exploration, provide psychoeducation, and offer resources. Qualitative data from WePlay! Denver’s initial groups and input from the WePlay! Denver team emphasized interest in expanding WePlay! to include families with children of varying developmental stages and who have specific developmental needs and considerations (Gross et al., 2021), such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD). ASD …


Helping Your Child Manage Anxiety: A Parent Education Workshop, Clarissa Aglaén Gallardo Aug 2023

Helping Your Child Manage Anxiety: A Parent Education Workshop, Clarissa Aglaén Gallardo

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Anxiety has become one of the most common mental health disorders in young children, and it has been shown to have a significant impact on their development. Anxiety can make a child more susceptible to a number of negative effects, including a weakened immune system, developing “negative” habits such as nail biting, increased proneness to anger or crying, as well as difficulties in learning and retaining information. Conversely, when parents/caregivers can prevent or decrease anxiety in their children, children can better regulate their emotions, have more successful relationships, take more risks, and cope better with challenges. The purpose of this …


Low-Income Caregivers With Young Children Experience Risk And Resilience Through Pandemic-Related Stressors, Nicole Kingdon, Molly Dubuc, Rosemarie Dibiase May 2023

Low-Income Caregivers With Young Children Experience Risk And Resilience Through Pandemic-Related Stressors, Nicole Kingdon, Molly Dubuc, Rosemarie Dibiase

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

In March 2020, United States government implemented health and safety mandates, including school closures, to prevent the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). As a result, some caregivers with young children were forced to take on new roles. Low-income households with young children appeared to be more highly impacted than other groups, experiencing acute pandemic-related stressors on top of previous vulnerabilities. Using qualitative analysis, this study examined how low-income caregivers with young children adapted to pandemic-related stressors and how stressors may have altered relationships and well-being in the household (Daks et al., 2020). Two research questions were examined: (1) how …


The Role Of Accuracy In Children’S Judgments Of Experts’ Knowledge., Allison J. Williams May 2022

The Role Of Accuracy In Children’S Judgments Of Experts’ Knowledge., Allison J. Williams

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Children prefer to trust people with expertise and people who are accurate. Because experts make mistakes and give incorrect information (e.g., predictions and diagnoses), this dissertation explores children’s judgments of knowledge for experts who provide inaccurate information. Across two studies, 6- to 9-years-olds (N = 160) were introduced to two experts in different domains (doctor and mechanic) and rated how much each expert knows about their relevant domain. Then, over four consecutive trials, participants heard one expert give inaccurate answers to easy questions in their domain. After each trial, children explained why they believed the expert gave inaccurate answers …


Young Children’S Tv Show Preferences And Perceptions Of Women In Stem, Lauren Berck Apr 2022

Young Children’S Tv Show Preferences And Perceptions Of Women In Stem, Lauren Berck

Undergraduate Theses

Women are joining STEM fields at higher rates, yet the stereotype of math and science being for men is still reinforced to children by their parents, their teachers, and especially what they watch. Children tend to trust characters of their same gender and are more likely to retain the lessons from the characters they trust. Since most of the shows children watch tend to display gender stereotypes, especially the stereotype of men being good in STEM, children are likely to enforce these stereotypes. The increase of women in STEM has increased interest in STEM for girls, but boys still tend …


Parenting Stress And Language Development In Children: Associations In Angelman Syndrome And Down Syndrome, Annalise Bland, Zainab Husain, Breanna Martin-O'Dell, Sarah Gronceski Oct 2021

Parenting Stress And Language Development In Children: Associations In Angelman Syndrome And Down Syndrome, Annalise Bland, Zainab Husain, Breanna Martin-O'Dell, Sarah Gronceski

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

One of the defining characteristics of neurogenetic syndromes such as Angelman syndrome (AS) and Down syndrome (DS) is delayed language development. Although it is commonly reported that parenting stress is associated with language development, these associations have not been widely studied in AS and DS despite other research showing elevated stress levels in the parents of these children. To fi ll this gap in research, the present study examined how parenting stress relates to language production in children with AS and DS. Daylong recordings were obtained from 72 participants using a Language Environment Analysis recording device, which was then processed …


Music Education, Child Development, And Academic Achievement: A Review Of Recent Literature, Connor M. Welsh Jun 2021

Music Education, Child Development, And Academic Achievement: A Review Of Recent Literature, Connor M. Welsh

University Honors Theses

In this literature review, the effect of music education on child development and academic success was evaluated. The claim that music education is beneficial to both child development and academic success has grown as a popular idea in recent decades. One example of this is the popular practice of having children or infants listen to classical music. This literature review aimed to evaluate this claim by examining a sample of the past ten years of research articles. The literature review was divided into two main categories: music education and cognitive development and music education and social-emotional development. Initially, it was …


Early Emotion Regulation In The Children Of Superstorm Sandy, Jessica L. Buthmann Jun 2021

Early Emotion Regulation In The Children Of Superstorm Sandy, Jessica L. Buthmann

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Rising prevalence of childhood psychopathology mandate investigation into the antecedents of symptom onset. Growing evidence shows prenatal maternal stress experienced in utero is a strong contributor to offspring neurodevelopmental deficits, including emotion dysregulation, a core feature of many types of psychopathology. This dissertation summarizes a body of work studying children prenatally exposed to maternal stress related to a natural disaster, Superstorm Sandy (i.e., storm stress). This work includes six experiments conducted in the framework of the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) hypothesis. The DOHaD hypothesis posits that developmental disruptions, like storm stress exposure, during a critical period of …


Achieving The Sustainable Development Goals: Evidence From The Longitudinal Parenting Across Cultures Project, Jennifer E. Lansford, W. Andrew Rothenberg, Sombat Tapanya, Liliana Maria Uribe Tirado, Saengduean Yotanyamaneewong, Liane Peña Alampay, Suha M. Al-Hassan, Dario Bacchini, Marc H. Bornstein, Lei Chang, Kirby Deater-Deckard, Laura Di Giunta, Kenneth A. Dodge, Sevtap Gurdal, Qin Liu, Qian Long, Patrick S. Malone, Paul Oburu, Concetta Pastorelli, Ann T. Skinner, Emma Sorbring, Laurence Steinberg Jan 2021

Achieving The Sustainable Development Goals: Evidence From The Longitudinal Parenting Across Cultures Project, Jennifer E. Lansford, W. Andrew Rothenberg, Sombat Tapanya, Liliana Maria Uribe Tirado, Saengduean Yotanyamaneewong, Liane Peña Alampay, Suha M. Al-Hassan, Dario Bacchini, Marc H. Bornstein, Lei Chang, Kirby Deater-Deckard, Laura Di Giunta, Kenneth A. Dodge, Sevtap Gurdal, Qin Liu, Qian Long, Patrick S. Malone, Paul Oburu, Concetta Pastorelli, Ann T. Skinner, Emma Sorbring, Laurence Steinberg

Psychology Department Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.


Profiles Of Adjustment Among Children In Institutional Care In Ghana: Predictors Of Positive Functioning, Anna W. Wright Jan 2020

Profiles Of Adjustment Among Children In Institutional Care In Ghana: Predictors Of Positive Functioning, Anna W. Wright

Theses and Dissertations

Worldwide, approximately 2-8 million children reside in institutional care, which can lead to developmental setbacks. Given the need for institutional care persists, it is important to continue investigating which improvements can be made to provide optimal care. The current mixed-methods study included participants from Accra, Ghana. Study 1 involved cluster analyses to determine patterns of adjustment for 100 children in institutional care (CIC) (M age = 13.31 years, SD = 3.14; 40% female) and 100 children in families (CIF) (M age = 13.37 years, SD = 3.08; 40% female) across several domains. ANOVA was used to evaluate whether …


Young Authoritarians? Trends And Individual Differences In Preschoolers' Perceptions Of Adult Authority, Ava Alexander May 2018

Young Authoritarians? Trends And Individual Differences In Preschoolers' Perceptions Of Adult Authority, Ava Alexander

Honors Projects

Although traditional stage theories (e.g., Piaget, 1965) postulate that preschool age children are guided entirely by punishment avoidance and absolute deference to authority, more recent research suggests that their concepts of adult authority are complex and vary based on social cognitive domain and the content of the commands (e.g., Tisak, 1986). Also, although past studies have shown that the majority of children will reject adult authority in certain contexts, much individual variation between children has been observed (e.g., Laupa, 1994). The current study expanded upon past research by exposing children to multiple typical and atypical commands across domains, while also …


All In The Family: The Role Of Sibling Relationships As Surrogate Attachment Figures, Tiffany Lagerstrom Jan 2018

All In The Family: The Role Of Sibling Relationships As Surrogate Attachment Figures, Tiffany Lagerstrom

Scripps Senior Theses

While several studies have analyzed the impact of mother-child attachment security on the child’s emotion regulation abilities, few studies have proposed interventions to help children improve emotion regulation abilities in the presence of an insecure mother-child attachment. This current study extends previous findings about the influence of mother-child attachment on the child’s emotion regulation abilities and contributes new research in determining whether an older sibling can moderate this effect. This study predicts that across points of assessments: 18 months, 5 years, 10 years, and 15 years, the quality of mother-child attachment security will influence the child’s performance on an emotion …


A Retro Development In Education: Evaluating The Feasibility Of Integrating Place-Based Education Into Mississippi Curriculum Standards, Colby K. Mcclain May 2017

A Retro Development In Education: Evaluating The Feasibility Of Integrating Place-Based Education Into Mississippi Curriculum Standards, Colby K. Mcclain

Honors Theses

This thesis evaluates the feasibility of integrating place-based environmental education activities from Think Green, Take Action: Books and Activities for Kids into the Mississippi Department of Education’s (MDE) Frameworks for Science and Social Studies for K-5. As children develop and experience the world, their ability to understand and interpret the surrounding environments expand; however, Mississippi schools are not focused on experiential environmental education, even though experiencing and understanding the surrounding environment is vital in fostering eagerness to learn. Due to a growing disconnect between humans and the natural world, this thesis examined 37 place- and environment-based activities for children, sixteen …


Adults’ Knowledge Of Child Development And Child Guidance, Daniela Perez Mar 2017

Adults’ Knowledge Of Child Development And Child Guidance, Daniela Perez

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Decades of research studies suggest that the quality of parenting skills and parenting knowledge about children’s development have profound effects on children’s development. Studies to date show that most adults lack knowledge of child development and developmentally-appropriate child guidance. These studies, however have focused on white, middle-class, well-educated women and are limited in the range of issues addressed. The purpose of this study was to gain a more accurate understanding about adults’ knowledge of child development and child guidance by assessing female and male adults using an ethnically diverse population. Data from 705 adult participants showed that adults knew more …


Impulsivity Symptoms As Core To The Developmental Externalizing Spectrum, Michelle M. Martel, Cheri A. Levinson, Christine A. Lee, Tess E. Smith Jan 2017

Impulsivity Symptoms As Core To The Developmental Externalizing Spectrum, Michelle M. Martel, Cheri A. Levinson, Christine A. Lee, Tess E. Smith

Psychology Faculty Publications

Impulsivity is posited to be a key part of the externalizing spectrum during childhood, but this idea has received minimal empirical attention. The goal of the present investigation was to utilize network analysis to determine whether behavioral impulsivity symptoms are key components of the externalizing network across several developmental periods from preschool into adolescence. Participants were 109 preschoolers (64 % male) ages 3 to 6, 237 children (59 % male) ages 6 to 9, 372 children (59 % male) ages 10 to 13, and 357 adolescents (59 % male) ages 13 to 17 and their parents. Parents completed ratings of …


Female Superiority In Social Cognition: Can Pretend Play Help The Boys Catch Up?, Maria Weiss Jan 2017

Female Superiority In Social Cognition: Can Pretend Play Help The Boys Catch Up?, Maria Weiss

Scripps Senior Theses

The effect of pretend play on 150 (~ 75 girls; 75 boys; M=3 yro) preschool children’s social cognition will be assessed through a semester long intervention study. Research has reported a trend of female superiority in empathy and ToM and a likelihood of young girls to engage in pretend play more frequently and to a higher degree than young boys. Previous research has also found a relationship between play and social cognition, as through the act of imagination, one is able to thoroughly take on the perspectives of someone other than the self. This study attempts to show a …


How International Research On Parenting Advances Understanding Of Child Development, Jennifer E. Lansford, Marc H. Bornstein, Kirby Deater-Deckard, Kenneth A. Dodge, Suha M. Al-Hassan, Dario Bacchini, Anna Silvia Bombi, Lei Chang, Bin-Bin Chen, Laura Di Giunta, Patrick S. Malone, Paul Oburu, Concetta Pastorelli, Ann T. Skinner, Emma Sorbring, Laurence Steinberg, Sombat Tapanya, Liane Peña Alampay, Liliana Maria Uribe Tirado, Arnaldo Zelli Jun 2016

How International Research On Parenting Advances Understanding Of Child Development, Jennifer E. Lansford, Marc H. Bornstein, Kirby Deater-Deckard, Kenneth A. Dodge, Suha M. Al-Hassan, Dario Bacchini, Anna Silvia Bombi, Lei Chang, Bin-Bin Chen, Laura Di Giunta, Patrick S. Malone, Paul Oburu, Concetta Pastorelli, Ann T. Skinner, Emma Sorbring, Laurence Steinberg, Sombat Tapanya, Liane Peña Alampay, Liliana Maria Uribe Tirado, Arnaldo Zelli

Psychology Department Faculty Publications

International research on parenting and child development can advance our understanding of similarities and differences in how parenting is related to children's development across countries. Challenges to conducting international research include operationalizing culture, disentangling effects within and between countries, and balancing emic and etic perspectives. Benefits of international research include testing whether findings regarding parenting and child development replicate across diverse samples, incorporating cultural and contextual diversity to foster more inclusive and representative research samples and investigators than has typically occurred, and understanding how children develop in proximal parenting and family and distal international contexts.


Early Childhood Ipad Use And Effects On Visual Spatial Attention Span, Maya Espiritu Jan 2016

Early Childhood Ipad Use And Effects On Visual Spatial Attention Span, Maya Espiritu

Scripps Senior Theses

Despite the rising prevalence of mobile media in young children’s lives, little research exists that examines the effects of mobile media use on early childhood cognitive development. This study will explore how mobile media use, specifically iPad use, in early childhood affects development of visual spatial attention span. Researchers will recruit 160 participants, ages 3 to 6, and categorize them into three groups: TV viewers only, interactive iPad users, and passive iPad users. Children will complete a computer task to measure the length of their visual spatial attention span. Parents will report on the average daily amount of media use, …


Do Actions Speak Louder Than Knowledge? Action Manipulation, Parental Discourse, And Children’S Mental State Understanding In Pretense, Dawn Melzer, Laura J. Claxton Dec 2014

Do Actions Speak Louder Than Knowledge? Action Manipulation, Parental Discourse, And Children’S Mental State Understanding In Pretense, Dawn Melzer, Laura J. Claxton

Psychology Faculty Publications

Studies on pretense mental state understanding in young children have produced inconsistent findings. These findings could potentially emerge from the confounding influences of action manipulation or the failure to examine possible influences on individual children’s performances. To address these issues, we created a task in which 68 3- and 4-year-olds viewed two actors, side by side, on a monitor. Children were told that one actor was knowledgeable about a specific animal, whereas the other actor was not. The actors performed identical movements that were either related or unrelated to the animal they were mimicking or engaged in different behaviors contradictory …


39. Young Children’S Difficulty With Indirect Speech Acts: Implications For Questioning Child Witnesses, Angela D. Evans, Stacia N. Stolzenberg, Kang Lee, Thomas D. Lyon Oct 2014

39. Young Children’S Difficulty With Indirect Speech Acts: Implications For Questioning Child Witnesses, Angela D. Evans, Stacia N. Stolzenberg, Kang Lee, Thomas D. Lyon

Thomas D. Lyon

Prior research suggests that infelicitous choice of questions can significantly underestimate children’s actual abilities, independently of suggestiveness. One possibly difficult question type is indirect speech acts such as “Do you know…” questions (DYK, e.g., “Do you know where it happened?”). These questions directly ask if respondents know, while indirectly asking what respondents know. If respondents answer “yes,” but fail to elaborate, they are either ignoring or failing to recognize the indirect question (known as pragmatic failure). Two studies examined the effect of indirect speech acts on maltreated and non-maltreated 2- to 7-year-olds’ post-event interview responses. Children were read a story …


A Micro-Level Analysis Of Behavioral Dynamics In Parent-Child Synchrony, Kadie L. Ausherman Aug 2014

A Micro-Level Analysis Of Behavioral Dynamics In Parent-Child Synchrony, Kadie L. Ausherman

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This study investigates parent-child synchrony, a multilevel construct that has not been operationalized in a precise or standardized way. Synchrony is frequently discussed theoretically, yet there still lacks a clear means of measuring it, even on the behavioral level. When parent-child synchrony is operationalized in a study, it is rarely analyzed in such a way that reflects the dyadic dynamics that unfold as the parent and child are interacting. The aim of this study is to operationalize parent-child synchrony in terms of the dyadic behavior patterns. An overview of the current literature with regard to synchrony as a multilevel construct …


38. Social And Cognitive Factors Associated With Children's Secret-Keeping For A Parent., Heidi M. Gordon, Thomas D. Lyon, Kang Lee Jul 2014

38. Social And Cognitive Factors Associated With Children's Secret-Keeping For A Parent., Heidi M. Gordon, Thomas D. Lyon, Kang Lee

Thomas D. Lyon

This study examined children’s secret-keeping for a parent and its relation to trust, theory of mind, secrecy endorsement, and executive functioning (EF). Children (N = 107) between 4 and 12 years of age participated in a procedure wherein parents broke a toy and asked children to promise secrecy. Responses to open-ended and direct questions were examined. Overall, secret-keeping increased with age and promising to keep the secret was related to fewer disclosures in open-ended questioning. Children who kept the secret in direct questioning exhibited greater trust and better parental ratings of EF than children who disclosed the secret. Findings highlight …


"Monstrous Children As Harbingers Of Mortality: A Psychological Analysis Of Doris Lessing's The Fifth Child,, Kirby Farrell Dec 2013

"Monstrous Children As Harbingers Of Mortality: A Psychological Analysis Of Doris Lessing's The Fifth Child,, Kirby Farrell

kirby farrell

A Review of Lessing's novel _The Fifth Child_ from _The Ernest Becker Foundation Newsletter


12. Interviewing Victims And Suspected Victims Who Are Reluctant To Talk., Irit Irit Hershkowitz, Michael E. Lamb, Thomas D. Lyon Nov 2013

12. Interviewing Victims And Suspected Victims Who Are Reluctant To Talk., Irit Irit Hershkowitz, Michael E. Lamb, Thomas D. Lyon

Thomas D. Lyon

Most professionals know that many alleged victims do not disclose abuse when formally interviewed and that disclosure is affected by a variety of factors, among which the relationship between suspects and children appears to be especially important (see Pipe, Lamb, Orbach, & Cederborg, 2007, for reviews). Children––especially boys and preschoolers––are hesitant to report abuse by parents and guardians, particularly when sexual rather than physical abuse is suspected. For example, Pipe, Lamb, Orbach, Stewart, Sternberg, and Esplin (2007) reported that only 38% of the preschoolers interviewed disclosed sexual abuse by a parent even when the allegations were independently substantiated by corroborative …


31. How Attorneys Question Children About The Dynamics Of Sexual Abuse And Disclosure In Criminal Trials., Stacia N. Stolzenberg, Thomas D. Lyon Sep 2013

31. How Attorneys Question Children About The Dynamics Of Sexual Abuse And Disclosure In Criminal Trials., Stacia N. Stolzenberg, Thomas D. Lyon

Thomas D. Lyon

Little is known about how the dynamics of sexual abuse and disclosure are discussed in criminal court. We examined how attorneys ask child witnesses in sexual abuse cases (N #1; 72, 6–16 years of age) about their prior conversations, both with suspects and with disclosure recipients. Prosecutors’ questions were more open-ended than defense attorneys, but most questions asked by either attorney were yes/no questions, and children tended to provide unelaborated responses. Prosecutors were more inclined to ask about children’s prior conversations with suspects than defense attorneys, but focused on the immediate abuse rather than on grooming behavior or attempts to …


26. “How Did You Feel?”: Increasing Child Sexual Abuse Witnesses’ Production Of Evaluative Information., Thomas D. Lyon, Nicholas Scurich, Karen Choi, Sally Handmaker, Rebecca Blank Dec 2011

26. “How Did You Feel?”: Increasing Child Sexual Abuse Witnesses’ Production Of Evaluative Information., Thomas D. Lyon, Nicholas Scurich, Karen Choi, Sally Handmaker, Rebecca Blank

Thomas D. Lyon

In child sexual abuse cases, the victim’s testimony is essential, because the victim and the perpetrator tend to be the only eyewitnesses to the crime. A potentially important component of an abuse report is the child’s subjective reactions to the abuse. Attorneys may ask suggestive questions or avoid questioning children about their reactions, assuming that children, given their immaturity and reluctance, are incapable of articulation. We hypothesized that How questions referencing reactions to abuse (e.g., “howdid you feel”) would increase the productivity of children’s descriptions of abuse reactions. Two studiescompared the extent to which children provided evaluative content, defined as …


25. Maltreated Children’S Ability To Estimate Temporal Location And Numerosity Of Placement Changes And Court Visits., Lindsay Wandrey, Thomas D. Lyon, Jodi A. Quas, William J. Friedman Sep 2011

25. Maltreated Children’S Ability To Estimate Temporal Location And Numerosity Of Placement Changes And Court Visits., Lindsay Wandrey, Thomas D. Lyon, Jodi A. Quas, William J. Friedman

Thomas D. Lyon

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 …


24. Interviewing Children Versus Tossing Coins: Accurately Assessing The Diagnosticity Of Children’S Disclosures Of Abuse., Thomas D. Lyon, Elizabeth C. Ahern, Nicholas Scurich Jul 2011

24. Interviewing Children Versus Tossing Coins: Accurately Assessing The Diagnosticity Of Children’S Disclosures Of Abuse., Thomas D. Lyon, Elizabeth C. Ahern, Nicholas Scurich

Thomas D. Lyon

We describe a Bayesian approach to evaluating children’s abuse disclosures and review research demonstrating that children’s disclosure of genital touch can be highly probative of sexual abuse, with the probative value depending on disclosure spontaneity and children’s age. We discuss how some commentators understate the probative value of children’s disclosures by: confusing the probability of abuse given disclosure with the probability of disclosure given abuse, assuming that children formally questioned about sexual abuse have a low prior probability of sexual abuse, misstating the probative value of abuse disclosure, and confusing the distinction between disclosure and nondisclosure with the dstinction between …


15. Assessing The Competency Of Child Witnesses: Best Practice Informed By Psychology And Law., Thomas D. Lyon Jun 2011

15. Assessing The Competency Of Child Witnesses: Best Practice Informed By Psychology And Law., Thomas D. Lyon

Thomas D. Lyon

Truth-lie competency, which concerns the child's understanding of the difference between truth and lies and the importance of telling the truth, can be demonstrated by asking the child whether simple statements are the truth, and by asking the child to promise to tell the truth. Tests of children's truth-lie competency do not predict honesty, but eliciting a child's promise to tell the truth does increase honesty.


23. Assessing Children’S Competency To Take The Oath In Court: The Influence Of Question Type On Children’S Accuracy., Angela D. Evans, Thomas D. Lyon Dec 2010

23. Assessing Children’S Competency To Take The Oath In Court: The Influence Of Question Type On Children’S Accuracy., Angela D. Evans, Thomas D. Lyon

Thomas D. Lyon

This study examined children’s accuracy in response to truth–lie competency questions asked in court.The participants included 164 child witnesses in criminal child sexual abuse cases tried in Los AngelesCounty over a 5-year period (1997–2001) and 154 child witnesses quoted in the U.S. state and federalappellate cases over a 35-year period (1974 –2008). The results revealed that judges virtually never foundchildren incompetent to testify, but children exhibited substantial variability in their performance based on question-type. Definition questions, about the meaning of the truth and lies, were the most difficultlargely due to errors in response to “Do you know” questions. Questions about …