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Loftus, Loftus, and Messo examine weapon focus by showing participants slides of a fast-food restaurant event in which a customer either pointed a gun or handed over a check. Participants looked longer and more often at the gun, and those who saw it recalled fewer details about the event than participants who saw the check.
Lyon, Ahern, and Scurich present a Bayesian framework for assessing how diagnostic a child’s disclosure of abuse may be, with attention to the child’s age and whether the disclosure was spontaneous. They review interviewing approaches that can improve the evidentiary value of disclosures and argue that evaluations must distinguish the probability of abuse given a disclosure from related but different probabilities.
McWilliams and colleagues analyze a case in which children testified about their mother’s murder to illustrate the accuracy and suggestibility of children’s memories for a traumatic event. They describe the children’s police interviews and later testimony, considering how interview conditions and exposure to suggestion may affect what children remember and how they resist misleading information.
Olafson reviews the evidence base for child forensic interviewing and the challenges of reaching children who do not disclose, disclose only partly, or later recant. She calls for developing and testing adaptations or additional approaches for very young children, children with developmental disabilities, and interviews arising in custody or visitation disputes.
