Should Children Be Allowed To Testify In Court?

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children's reports, and the effects of postevent
information on a prior memory representation must be taken into account when it
comes to seeking answers to the reliability of their testimony, especially
because sexual abuse and sexual assault cases are a big part of children's
testimony and they are often the only witness.

Those psychologists who feel that children can be rated as �Highly
resistant to suggestion....� etc. seem to have a good argument, whereas those
who take the opposite view also seem to have just as valid an argument. Which
psychologists are right? Maybe both. It seems that without outside influences,
social encounters, or other interference's, children's testimony has the
potential to be quite valid. This is under ideal situations, however, which
unfortunately rarely occur.

One of the major problems when assessing the validity of child witnesses
is the suggestibility of the child. Ceci & Bruck (1993) define suggestibility
as �The degree to which children's ...

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questions and accepted the fabricated information as
being the truth.

This study clearly shows that children can be manipulated by clever
questioning about a witnessed event. However, this study did not involve the
child interacting with the event i.e. the child did nit participate on any
emotional level by simply watching a video.

Rudy & Goodman (1991) conducted an experiment involving the effects of
participation on children's testimony. The main purpose of Rudy & Goodman's
work being to see whether the factors of age or participation influenced the
recall of a child. Their experiment involved thirty-six children (eighteen 7-
year olds and eighteen 4-year olds) going in pairs into ...

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