Publications
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Article: How Children Report True and Fabricated Stressful and Non-Stressful Events
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ABSTRACT: As children can be victims or witnesses to crimes and may be required to testify about their experiences in court, the ability to differentiate between children’s true and fabricated accounts of victimization is an important issue. This study used automated linguistic analysis software to detect linguistic patterns in order to differentiate between children’s true and false stressful bullying reports and reports of non-stressful events. Results revealed that children displayed different linguistic patterns when reporting true and false stressful and non-stressful stories, with non-stressful stories being more accurately discriminated based on linguistic patterns. Results suggest that it is difficult to discriminate accurately and consistently between children’s true and false stories of victimization.Psychiatry Psychology and Law 02/2013; · 0.35 Impact Factor -
Article: The Effects of Repetition on Children's True and False Reports
Psychiatry Psychology and Law 02/2013; · 0.35 Impact Factor -
Article: An interfering dot-probe task facilitates the detection of mock crime memory in a reaction time (RT)-based concealed information test.
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ABSTRACT: The present study aimed to test the hypothesis that an interfering task in the concealed information test will help the detection of concealed memory based on participants' behavioral performance (e.g. reaction time, error rate). Here, after participants enacted a mock crime, they were introduced to a concealed information test either with or without an interfering dot-probe task. Results showed that the RT-based pure-CIT (without interference) can detect concealed memory well above chance (AUC=.88). The detection efficiency was higher (AUC=.94) in the interference-CIT based on participants' performance of the interfering task. The findings suggested that the elevation of cognitive workload could possibly increase the detection efficiency of concealed memory based on behavioral measures.Acta psychologica 01/2013; 142(2):278-285. · 2.19 Impact Factor -
Article: Emergence of Lying in Very Young Children.
Angela D Evans, Kang Lee[show abstract] [hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: Lying is a pervasive human behavior. Evidence to date suggests that from the age of 42 months onward, children become increasingly capable of telling lies in various social situations. However, there is limited experimental evidence regarding whether very young children will tell lies spontaneously. The present study investigated the emergence of lying in very young children. Sixty-five 2- to 3-year-olds were asked not to peek at a toy when the experimenter was not looking. The majority of children (80%) transgressed and peeked at the toy. When asked whether they had peeked at the toy, most 2-year-old peekers were honest and confessed to their peeking, but with increased age, more peekers denied peeking and thus lied. However, when asked follow-up questions that assessed their ability to maintain their initial lies, most children failed to conceal their lie by pretending to be ignorant of the toy's identity. Additionally, after controlling for age, children's executive functioning skills significantly predicted young children's tendency to lie. These findings suggest that children begin to tell lies at a very young age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).Developmental Psychology 01/2013; · 3.21 Impact Factor -
Article: Young children can tell strategic lies after committing a transgression.
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ABSTRACT: This study investigated whether young children make strategic decisions about whether to lie to conceal a transgression based on the lie recipient's knowledge. In Experiment 1, 168 3- to 5-year-olds were asked not to peek at the toy in the experimenter's absence, and the majority of children peeked. Children were questioned about their transgression in either the presence or absence of an eyewitness of their transgression. Whereas 4- and 5-year-olds were able to adjust their decisions of whether to lie based on the presence or absence of the eyewitness, 3-year-olds did not. Experiments 2 and 3 manipulated whether the lie recipient appeared to have learned information about children's peeking from an eyewitness or was merely bluffing. Results revealed that when the lie recipient appeared to be genuinely knowledgeable about their transgression, even 3-year-olds were significantly less likely to lie compared with when the lie recipient appeared to be bluffing. Thus, preschool children are able to make strategic decisions about whether to lie or tell the truth based on whether the lie recipient is genuinely knowledgeable about the true state of affairs.Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 06/2012; 113(1):147-58. · 3.12 Impact Factor -
Article: 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[show abstract] [hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: 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 Angeles County over a 5-year period (1997-2001) and 154 child witnesses quoted in the U.S. state and federal appellate cases over a 35-year period (1974-2008). The results revealed that judges virtually never found children 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 difficult largely due to errors in response to "Do you know" questions. Questions about the consequences of lying were more difficult than questions evaluating the morality of lying. Children exhibited high rates of error in response to questions about whether they had ever told a lie. Attorneys rarely asked children hypothetical questions in a form that has been found to facilitate performance. Defense attorneys asked a higher proportion of the more difficult question types than prosecutors. The findings suggest that children's truth-lie competency is underestimated by courtroom questioning and support growing doubts about the utility of the competency requirements.Law and Human Behavior 06/2012; 36(3):195-205. · 2.16 Impact Factor -
Article: 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[show abstract] [hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: 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 Angeles County over a 5-year period (1997–2001) and 154 child witnesses quoted in the U.S. state and federal appellate cases over a 35-year period (1974–2008). The results revealed that judges virtually never found children 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 difficult largely due to errors in response to “Do you know” questions. Questions about the consequences of lying were more difficult than questions evaluating the morality of lying. Children exhibited high rates of error in response to questions about whether they had ever told a lie. Attorneys rarely asked children hypothetical questions in a form that has been found to facilitate performance. Defense attorneys asked a higher proportion of the more difficult question types than prosecutors. The findings suggest that children’s truth–lie competency is underestimated by courtroom questioning and support growing doubts about the utility of the competency requirements. KeywordsCompetency–Children–Oath–Question typeLaw and Human Behavior 04/2012; · 2.16 Impact Factor -
Article: Cultural differences in the development of cognitive shifting: East-West comparison.
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ABSTRACT: Prior research has documented that Japanese children's performance on the Dimensional Change Card Sorting (DCCS) task can be influenced by their observation of another person completing the task, which is referred to as social transmission of disinhibition. The current study explored whether Canadian children would also show a social transmission of disinhibition and whether their performance would be comparable to that of Japanese children. In this study, 3- and 4-year-olds in Canada and Japan were given both the standard version and social version of the DCCS. Results indicated that Canadian children displayed the social transmission of disinhibition, but their effects were significantly weaker than those with Japanese children. On the other hand, performance on the standard DCCS was comparable between children in the two countries. We discuss the results in terms of cultural differences in the relationship between self and other.Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 10/2011; 111(2):156-63. · 3.12 Impact Factor -
Article: Verbal deception from late childhood to middle adolescence and its relation to executive functioning skills.
Angela D Evans, Kang Lee[show abstract] [hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: The present investigation examined 8- to 16-year-olds' tendency to lie, the sophistication of their lies, and related cognitive factors. Participants were left alone and asked not to look at the answers to a test, but the majority peeked. The researcher then asked a series of questions to examine whether the participants would lie about their cheating and, if they did lie, evaluate the sophistication of their lies. Additionally, participants completed measures of working memory, inhibitory control, and planning skills. Results revealed that the sophistication of 8- to 16-year-olds' lies, but not their decision to lie, was significantly related to executive functioning skills.Developmental Psychology 05/2011; 47(4):1108-16. · 3.21 Impact Factor -
Article: Exploring the ability to deceive in children with autism spectrum disorders.
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ABSTRACT: The present study explored the relations among lie-telling ability, false belief understanding, and verbal mental age. We found that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), like typically developing children, can and do tell antisocial lies (to conceal a transgression) and white lies (in politeness settings). However, children with ASD were less able than typically developing children to cover up their initial lie; that is, children with ASD had difficulty exercising semantic leakage control--the ability to maintain consistency between their initial lie and subsequent statements. Furthermore, unlike in typically developing children, lie-telling ability in children with ASD was not found to be related to their false belief understanding. Future research should examine the underlying processes by which children with ASD tell lies.Journal of Autism and Childhood Schizophrenia 02/2011; 41(2):185-95. · 3.06 Impact Factor -
Article: When all signs point to you: lies told in the face of evidence.
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ABSTRACT: Young children's ability to tell a strategic lie by making it consistent with the physical evidence of their transgression was investigated along with the sociocognitive correlates of such lie-telling behaviors. In Experiment 1, 247 Chinese children between 3 and 5 years of age (126 boys) were left alone in a room and asked not to lift a cup to see the contents. If children lifted up the cup, the contents would be spilled and evidence of their transgression would be left behind. Upon returning to the room, the experimenter asked children whether they peeked and how the contents of the cup ended up on the table. Experiment 1 revealed that young children are able to tell strategic lies to be consistent with the physical evidence by about 4 or 5 years of age, and this ability increases in sophistication with age. Experiment 2, which included 252 Chinese 4-year-olds (127 boys), identified 2 sociocognitive factors related to children's ability to tell strategic lies. Specifically, both children's theory-of-mind understanding and inhibitory control skills were significantly related to their ability to tell strategic lies in the face of physical evidence. The present investigation reveals that contrary to the prevailing views, even young children are able to tell strategic lies in some contexts.Developmental Psychology 01/2011; 47(1):39-49. · 3.21 Impact Factor -
Article: The neural correlates of reasoning about prosocial-helping decisions: an event-related brain potentials study.
Ivy Chiu Loke, Angela D Evans, Kang Lee[show abstract] [hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: Providing help to others is a highly valued social practice. This study used neurophysiological methods to explore the neural correlates of individuals' reasoning about prosocial-helping behaviors and the relation between these correlates and self-reports of prosocial personality. Event-related potentials (ERP) were recorded while individuals reasoned about others' decisions to provide help or not provide help in situations where help was either obviously needed or not necessarily needed. Specific examination of the relation between self-reports of prosocial personality and the peak amplitude and latency of the P3, an ERP component considered to represent the perception and processing of a salient response, revealed that individuals' self-ratings of prosocialness were related to their ERPs. The findings from this study suggest that there are neural correlates for reasoning about prosocial-helping decisions and that there is a relation between these neural correlates and individuals' prosocial personality.Brain research 11/2010; 1369:140-8. · 2.46 Impact Factor -
Article: Promising to tell the truth makes 8- to 16-year-olds more honest.
Angela D Evans, Kang Lee[show abstract] [hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: Techniques commonly used to increase truth-telling in most North American jurisdiction courts include requiring witnesses to discuss the morality of truth- and lie-telling and to promise to tell the truth prior to testifying. While promising to tell the truth successfully decreases younger children's lie-telling, the influence of discussing the morality of honesty and promising to tell the truth on adolescents' statements has remained unexamined. In Experiment 1, 108 youngsters, aged 8-16 years, were left alone in the room and asked not to peek at the answers to a test. The majority of participants peeked at the test answers and then lied about their transgression. More importantly, participants were eight times more likely to change their response from a lie to the truth after promising to tell the truth. Experiment 2 confirmed that the results of Experiment 1 were not solely due to repeated questioning or the moral discussion of truth- and lie-telling. These results suggest that, while promising to tell the truth influences the truth-telling behaviors of adolescents, a moral discussion of truth and lies does not. Legal implications are discussed.Behavioral Sciences & the Law 09/2010; 28(6):801-11. · 0.96 Impact Factor -
Article: The use of paraphrasing in investigative interviews.
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ABSTRACT: Young children's descriptions of maltreatment are often sparse thus creating the need for techniques that elicit lengthier accounts. One technique that can be used by interviewers in an attempt to increase children's reports is "paraphrasing," or repeating information children have disclosed. Although we currently have a general understanding of how paraphrasing may influence children's reports, we do not have a clear description of how paraphrasing is actually used in the field. The present study assessed the use of paraphrasing in 125 investigative interviews of allegations of maltreatment of children aged 4-16 years. Interviews were conducted by police officers and social workers. All interviewer prompts were coded into four different categories of paraphrasing. All children's reports were coded for the number of details in response to each paraphrasing statement. "Expansion paraphrasing" was used significantly more often and elicited significantly more details, while "yes/no paraphrasing" resulted in shorter descriptions from children, compared to other paraphrasing styles. Further, interviewers more often distorted children's words when using yes/no paraphrasing, and children rarely corrected interviewers when they paraphrased inaccurately. CONCLUSIONS AND PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: Investigative interviewers in this sample frequently used paraphrasing with children of all ages and, though children's responses differed following the various styles of paraphrasing, the effects did not differ by the age of the child. The results suggest that paraphrasing affects the quality of statements by children. Implications for investigative interviewers will be discussed and recommendations offered for easy ways to use paraphrasing to increase the descriptiveness of children's reports of their experiences.Child abuse & neglect 08/2010; 34(8):585-92. · 2.34 Impact Factor -
Article: The effects of different paraphrasing styles on the quality of reports from young child witnesses
Angela D. Evans, Kim RobertsPsychology. 07/2009; Crime & Law(Vol. 15):531-546. -
Article: Complex questions asked by defense lawyers but not prosecutors predicts convictions in child abuse trials.
Angela D Evans, Kang Lee, Thomas D Lyon[show abstract] [hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: Attorneys' language has been found to influence the accuracy of a child's testimony, with defense attorneys asking more complex questions than the prosecution (Zajac & Hayne, J. Exp Psychol Appl 9:187-195, 2003; Zajac et al. Psychiatr Psychol Law, 10:199-209, 2003). These complex questions may be used as a strategy to influence the jury's perceived accuracy of child witnesses. However, we currently do not know whether the complexity of attorney's questions predict the trial outcome. The present study assesses whether the complexity of questions is related to the trial outcome in 46 child sexual abuse court transcripts using an automated linguistic analysis. Based on the complexity of defense attorney's questions, the trial verdict was accurately predicted 82.6% of the time. Contrary to our prediction, more complex questions asked by the defense were associated with convictions, not acquittals.Law and Human Behavior 06/2009; 33(3):258-64. · 2.16 Impact Factor -
Article: Lying in the name of the collective good: a developmental study.
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ABSTRACT: The present study examined the developmental origin of 'blue lies', a pervasive form of lying in the adult world that is told purportedly to benefit a collective. Seven, 9-, and 11-year-old Chinese children were surreptitiously placed in a real-life situation where they decided whether to lie to conceal their group's cheating behavior. Children were also assessed in terms of their willingness in hypothetical situations to endorse lying or truth-telling that benefits a collective but at the same time harms an individual. Results showed that as age increased, children became more inclined to endorse lying in the name of the collective good, and to tell lies for their group themselves. Furthermore, children's endorsement about blue lies in hypothetical situations predicted their actual lying behavior.Developmental Science 08/2008; 11(4):495-503. · 3.89 Impact Factor
