A team of researchers with expertise in developmental psychology, child and family law, and forensic psychology propose a series of studies to examine honesty in young maltreated and non-maltreated children. The proposal consists four interconnected projects. The first project will examine the development of children's understanding of concepts underlying honesty, including early conceptions of the distinction between the truth and lies, the evaluation of secret-keeping regarding transgressions, and the evaluation of the obligations underlying promises. The second project will examine the determinants of honesty, varying the actions of instigators who may encourage dishonesty and recipient-interviewers who encourage honesty, and assessing characteristics of the child that may have an influence, including maltreatment status, age, and attitudes about honesty. The third project will examine the verbal and nonverbal indices of honesty in children who were coached to lie by instigators or encouraged to be truthful by recipients. The fourth project will examine whether either lay or professional adults are able to distinguish honest from dishonest children. The research will test hypotheses that maltreated children's understanding is subject to underestimation due to insensitive tasks, that maltreated children's honesty can be increased through various means of truth induction, and that maltreated children's honesty can be discriminated through multidimensional analysis of verbal and nonverbal measures. The research is unique in its potential application to the investigation and adjudication of child maltreatment claims, insofar as it is the first sustained research program to uitilize tools for assessing and influencing honesty that are potentially useful to child maltreatment professionals and to examine the utility of those tools in children who are in fact the subject of intervention. The findings have potential to improve child maltreatment practice and thus to ensure that children who do in fact need protection from maltreatment are detected and their reports believed.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01HD047290-04
Application #
7586176
Study Section
Psychosocial Development, Risk and Prevention Study Section (PDRP)
Program Officer
Maholmes, Valerie
Project Start
2006-05-01
Project End
2011-02-28
Budget Start
2009-03-01
Budget End
2010-02-28
Support Year
4
Fiscal Year
2009
Total Cost
$353,146
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Southern California
Department
Type
Other Domestic Higher Education
DUNS #
072933393
City
Los Angeles
State
CA
Country
United States
Zip Code
90089
Ding, Xiao Pan; Heyman, Gail D; Fu, Genyue et al. (2018) Young children discover how to deceive in 10 days: a microgenetic study. Dev Sci 21:e12566
Quas, Jodi A; Castro, Amy; Bryce, Crystal I et al. (2018) Stress physiology and memory for emotional information: Moderation by individual differences in pubertal hormones. Dev Psychol 54:1606-1620
Cleveland, Kyndra C; Quas, Jodi A; Lyon, Thomas D (2018) The effects of implicit encouragement and the putative confession on children's memory reports. Child Abuse Negl 80:113-122
Stolzenberg, Stacia N; McWilliams, Kelly; Lyon, Thomas D (2018) Children's Conversational Memory Regarding a Minor Transgression and a Subsequent Interview. Psychol Public Policy Law 24:379-392
Quas, Jodi A; Stolzenberg, Stacia N; Lyon, Thomas D (2018) The effects of promising to tell the truth, the putative confession, and recall and recognition questions on maltreated and non-maltreated children's disclosure of a minor transgression. J Exp Child Psychol 166:266-279
Rush, Elizabeth B; Stolzenberg, Stacia N; Quas, Jodi A et al. (2017) The Effects of the Putative Confession and Parent Suggestion on Children's Disclosure of a Minor Transgression. Legal Criminol Psychol 22:60-73
Stolzenberg, Stacia N; McWilliams, Kelly; Lyon, Thomas D (2017) Ask versus tell: Potential confusion when child witnesses are questioned about conversations. J Exp Psychol Appl 23:447-459
Evans, Angela D; Stolzenberg, Stacia N; Lyon, Thomas D (2017) Pragmatic Failure and Referential Ambiguity when Attorneys Ask Child Witnesses ""Do You Know/Remember"" Questions. Psychol Public Policy Law 23:191-199
Stolzenberg, Stacia N; McWilliams, Kelly; Lyon, Thomas D (2017) Spatial language, question type, and young children's ability to describe clothing: Legal and developmental implications. Law Hum Behav 41:398-409
Klemfuss, J Zoe; Cleveland, Kyndra C; Quas, Jodi A et al. (2017) Relations between Attorney Temporal Structure and Children's Response Productivity in Cases of Alleged Child Sexual Abuse. Legal Criminol Psychol 22:228-241

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