WASHINGTON -- More than 200,000 children may be involved in the legal system in any given year; upwards of 13,000 of them -- disproportionately preschool-age -- may be testifying in sexual abuse trials. But according to the authors of a new book, Jeopardy in the Courtroom: A Scientific Analysis of Children's Testimony, published by the American Psychological Association (APA), while even preschool-age children are quite capable of providing accurate testimony, they are also more vulnerable to having their testimony and their memories distorted to the point that, in some cases, the truth may never be known.

Award-winning developmental psychologists Stephen J. Ceci, Ph.D., of Cornell University, and Maggie Bruck, Ph.D., of McGill University, say they wrote the book in an attempt to educate professionals who deal with child witnesses, including mental health professionals who assess and/or treat children suspected to have been sexually abused, forensic investigators who interview child witnesses, attorneys and judges. It is also intended for nonprofessionals who have become captivated by highly publicized cases involving accusations of childhood sexual abuse. While the book focuses on children's testimony in sexual abuse cases, its message is relevant for the entire range of cases involving children as witnesses, including acrimonious custody decisions, neglect proceedings and witnesses to crimes.

Public and professional opinion about the credibility of children as witnesses in sexual abuse cases has been sharply divided, the authors note. One side contends that when children disclose details of sexual abuse, no matter what techniques were used to obtain their disclosure, they must be believed because children do not generate false reports of their own sexual victimization. The other side depicts children as helpless sponges who soak up interviewers' suggestions and regurgitate these suggestions in court.

In the authors' view, 'such extreme positions about children's credibility are more appropriately categorized under the rubric of 'partisan advocacy' than under the heading of 'scientifically derived insights.''

Drs. Ceci and Bruck base their conclusions on a thorough review of the entire body of scientific literature on children's suggestibility and memory and they illustrate many of their points with excerpts from the records of actual cases which involved children's testimony; cases as old as the Salem Witch Trials and as recent as the Little Rascals Day Care case in Edenton, North Carolina, in which two convictions were overturned on appeal in early May.

Among their conclusions:

• While preschool-age children are capable of providing forensically relevant testimony, they are more suggestible than older children who are, in turn, more suggestible than adults.
• Through suggestive interviewing techniques and repeated questioning, children can be led to get wrong not only peripheral details, but the central gist of events they experienced, even events affecting their bodies that could have sexual implications.
• There is no 'Pinocchio Test' (scientifically acceptable test or procedure analogous to Pinocchio's nose growing longer when he didn't tell the truth) to determine whether allegations that emerge after repeated interviews using suggestive techniques are accurate or merely the product of the suggestive interview procedures.
• Whenever possible (and as soon as possible) interviews with children in cases where sexual abuse is suspected should be electronically preserved (audio- or videotaped), ideally from the first interview on -- not just transcripts or notes and not just from the point when a child begins to disclose.
• Although anatomically detailed dolls are seen by some therapists and investigators as useful tools in helping young children who were sexually abused describe what happened to them, the authors conclude: 'We feel at this point that there has been sufficient concern raised in the literature and enough evidence of potential misuse, without sufficiently counterbalanced evidence to the contrary, to urge that dolls not be used diagnostically, at least not with very young children.'

The authors examine in detail the constellation of factors, gleaned from laboratory research and elsewhere, that can affect children's testimony. These include:

• Interviewer bias -- when the interviewer (parent, therapist, investigator) believes he or she knows what happened and attempts to get the child to confirm it, ignoring anything the child says that does not conform with the interviewer's bias and encouraging anything that does.
• Repeated questions -- children, especially younger children, are more likely to change their answers when asked the same yes or no question repeated during a single interview. Answers from children to yes or no questions repeated over several interviews are likely to become more firm and confident, regardless of whether they are correct.
• Stereotype induction -- children's reports can be influenced by stereotypes suggested by the interviewer (or by others before the interview takes place). An interviewer telling a child that '[the suspect] is a bad man who does bad things' is an example of stereotype induction. Similarly, children can come to assume and report bad things about someone they had previously heard described in negative terms.
• Encouragement to imagine and visualize -- when asked to 'think real hard' about or to visualize events they don't remember, children can come to 'remember' and then present a detailed, coherent narrative of events that never occurred.
• Peer pressure -- children's reports can be influenced by the application of peer pressure ('Johnny told me all about it, and he said you were there, too.') Studies also show that children can incorporate into their own memories experiences that their peers told them about, but which they did not witness themselves.
• Authority figures -- children tend to regard adults generally as all- knowing and trustworthy, which can influence how they respond to questioning by adults. But they may also be sensitive to status and power differentials among adults -- an important issue when children are interviewed by police officers, judges and medical personnel.

Much of what has been learned about the influence of suggestive interviewing techniques on children has come from laboratory research, which the authors acknowledge is not a perfect analog to real-life sexual abuse and real-life questioning. However, they also note that it would be ethically impermissible to interview children in the laboratory as intensively as they have been in real cases, much less to sexually abuse them in the name of science.

In a chapter on ethical and professional issues, the authors discuss the roles of mental health professionals as therapists, forensic interviewers and expert witnesses in cases involving children's testimony. They recommend that each of those roles be occupied by different people in a given case as each has a distinctly different job to do.

For expert witnesses, they offer suggestions on how both mental health professionals and social scientists can be most helpful to judges and juries (as opposed to the prosecution or defense), recommending that they thoroughly familiarize themselves with the relevant literature but learn only enough about the case at hand to assure that their expertise is relevant.

They note that studies have found very little agreement and very low rates of accuracy among expert witnesses who are asked to evaluate cases and make a judgment about whether children were or were not abused, and urged that attorneys and judges 'put their feet to the coals, forcing them to provide scientifically adequate evidence for their interpretations. In light of the research, to do otherwise would seem akin to accepting the testimony of a forensic astrologer.'

Book: Jeopardy in the Courtroom: A Scientific Analysis of Children's Testimony by Stephen J. Ceci, Ph.D., and Maggie Bruck, Ph.D., Published by the American Psychological Association (Item No. 4318350, ISBN: 1-55798-282-1 Available from the APA Order Department, P.O. Box 2710, Hyattsville, MD 20784-0710 or 1-800-374-2721; Price: $29.95 List/$24.95 for APA Members)

The American Psychological Association (APA), in Washington, DC, is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States and is the world's largest association of psychologists. APA's membership includes more than 132,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its divisions in 49 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 58 state and territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance psychology as a science, as a profession and as a means of promoting human welfare.