Author: Kamala London

Kristina Todorovic will be presenting her paper Does Metasuggestibility Predict Memory Distortion Among School-aged Children? at the annual meeting of the American Psychology-Law Society (AP-LS). The conference will be held in New Orleans, LA March 5th to March 7th.

Abstract: Metacognition is defined in short as ‘thinking about thinking.’ Knowledge about memory has received extensive research attention and found to predict the development of children’s memory strategies. In the current study, we explored children’s metasuggestibility as an underlying mechanism of memory suggestibility. Ninety-four 7- to 9-year-olds participated in a metasuggestibility task and a standard misinformation paradigm, with task order randomly assigned. Results revealed 7-year-olds profited more from the metasuggestibility-first order task than older children. We believe because 7-year-olds are not at the threshold of concept attainment they cannot reflect on previous experiences to make this link. Implications are discussed.

Dr. London will appear in an upcoming  5-part docu-series that will be airing on Showtime. The network has announced the air date for the first episode on Friday, April 3rd at 8:00pm ET.

The documentary has been accepted at into the South by Southwest film festival and will have its world premiere there. For more information on the docs-series, click here.

We were honored to meet one of the men falsely convicted in the Central Park Jogger case, one of the exonerated five! Hopefully this case reminds us to conduct proper investigative interviews and not rush to judgment.

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Quincy Miller successfully defended her masters thesis entitled: Jurors’ Perceptions of Sexual and Gender Minority Victims of Child Sexual Abuse.

Thank you to all of the RA’s for your hard work this semester! We look forward to another semester with those who are staying and best of luck to those graduating!! 🙂

Title: The Role of Contextual Pre-Interview Information in Child Sexual Abuse Forensic Interviews

Abstract

Forensic interviewers are expected to conduct unbiased investigations of crime. In the field of child sexual abuse, interviewers are often provided pre-interview information, increasing the risk of confirmation bias. The purpose of the present study is to investigate if pre-interview information pertaining to an alleged victim’s psychosocial history affects interviewers’ perceived credibility of the abuse allegation and interviewing style. Forensic interviewers will read a case summary in which pre-interview information is manipulated and conduct a mock forensic interview with the alleged victim. Interviewers will also provide subjective base rate estimates pertaining to behavioral indicators among abused and non-abused children. 

Kristina Todorovic and Christina Perez are collecting data at our local children’s museum (Imagination Station) as part of our new partnership.