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The goal of our study was to examine whether differences in the sensitivity and intrusiveness of fathers and mothers from gay-, lesbian-, and heterosexual-parent families (57 French couples, 47 Dutch couples, and 31 British couples) with their first-born infants were explained by gender or caregiver role, while controlling for nesting within families, infant temperament, and twinship. We assessed the sensitivity and intrusiveness of 147 primary caregivers (45 fathers, 102 mothers) and 123 secondary caregivers (68 fathers and 55 mothers). All infants were conceived using assisted reproductive techniques and averaged 4 months of age. They were videotaped at home with both parents while engaged in play, feeding, and other childcare (bathing or changing) and these videotapes were coded for sensitivity and intrusiveness. Information about relative levels of caregiving, infant temperament, and twinship was collected via parent report questionnaires. Mixed linear models showed that sensitivity while playing, cleaning, and feeding were not predicted by parental gender, relative parental involvement, and the interaction between parental gender and parental caregiver role. Models for intrusiveness while playing and feeding showed similar results. However, intrusiveness during cleaning was predicted by parental gender and the interaction between parental gender and caregiver role. Post-hoc analyses showed that secondary caregiving fathers showed more intrusive behavior during cleaning (M = 1.51, SD = 0.09) than secondary caregiving mothers (M = 1.26, SD = 0.10). Our results also showed that contextual factors, such as having singletons or twins, infant temperament, and country of residence were related to parenting behavior. In sum, our findings do not support presumptions that mothers are more capable of providing better quality care than fathers, or that, at this early stage, primary caregiving parents are better attuned to their infants than those who are less involved.

Peer reviewed: True, Funder: Jacobs Foundation; FundRef: https://doi.org/10.13039/501100003986, Funder: Nuffield Foundation; FundRef: https://doi.org/10.13039/501100000279, Statements by alleged victims are important when child abuse is prosecuted; triers-of-fact often attend to nonverbal emotional expressions when evaluating those statements. This study examined the associations among interviewer supportiveness, children's nonverbal emotions, and informativeness during 100 forensic interviews with alleged victims of child abuse. Raters coded the silent videotapes for children's nonverbal emotional expressions while other raters coded the transcripts for interviewer support, children's verbal emotions, and informativeness. Results showed that children's nonverbal signals were more common than and preceded the verbal signs. Interviewer support was associated with children's expressivity. When children expressed more nonverbal emotions, they were more responsive during the pre-substantive phases and more informative about the abuse. Nonverbal emotions partially mediated the association between support and informativeness. The findings underline the value of nonverbal emotional expression during forensic interviews and demonstrate how the interviewers' supportive demeanor can facilitate children's emotional displays and increase informativeness.

One hundred and one transcripts of conversations between volunteer workers purporting to be minors and convicted offenders in the United States of America who had groomed minors online for offline ...

The purpose of this study was to examine the developmental course and implications of the personality metatraits ego resiliency and ego control across the first 3 decades of life. The sample consisted of 139 participants who were assessed 9 times between ages 2 and 33. Participants completed measures of ego resiliency, ego control, Big Five personality traits, identity development, and positive and negative well-being. The findings indicated strong stability of ego resiliency, in terms of both rank-order and mean-level change. Ego control also demonstrated stability over the full time span, but there was greater change in childhood relative to adolescence and adulthood. Ego resiliency and control were associated with adult well-being, but these associations were generally accounted for by the Big Five traits. Finally, there were small relations between ego resiliency and control in childhood and later adult identity development processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

This prospective longitudinal study investigated father involvement relative to mother involvement in parent dyads across two generations from the same family. Relative parental involvement was operationalized using measures of how much parents shared parenting responsibilities and to whom their children turned preferentially in various situations. We hypothesized mean level increases towards more equal involvement for fathers and mothers across generations as well as intergenerational continuity of within-family patterns for both aspects of parental involvement. The longitudinal study involved 144 families and their first-born children, followed since 1982. The analyses involved the families of the 74 children who were parents themselves by age 33. Father involvement was lower than mother involvement in both generations. Results revealed mean level changes towards more equal sharing of responsibilities in the second generation, but no intergenerational changes in the likelihood that children would be more likely to turn to their fathers in various situations. There was intergenerational continuity within families in child preferences but not in the sharing of responsibilities. Together these findings imply that child preferences are related to within-family influences whereas other factors affect parents' sharing of responsibilities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Attachment theory and research are drawn upon in many applied settings, including family courts, but misunderstandings are widespread and sometimes result in misapplications. The aim of this consensus statement is, therefore, to enhance understanding, counter misinformation, and steer family-court utilisation of attachment theory in a supportive, evidence-based direction, especially with regard to child protection and child custody decision-making. The article is divided into two parts. In the first, we address problems related to the use of attachment theory and research in family courts, and discuss reasons for these problems. To this end, we examine family court applications of attachment theory in the current context of the best-interest-of-the-child standard, discuss misunderstandings regarding attachment theory, and identify factors that have hindered accurate implementation. In the second part, we provide recommendations for the application of attachment theory and research. To this end, we set out three attachment principles: the child’s need for familiar, non-abusive caregivers; the value of continuity of good-enough care; and the benefits of networks of attachment relationships. We also discuss the suitability of assessments of attachment quality and caregiving behaviour to inform family court decision-making. We conclude that assessments of caregiver behaviour should take center stage. Although there is dissensus among us regarding the use of assessments o attachment quality to inform child custody and child-protection decisions, such assessments are currently most suitable for targeting and directing supportive interventions. Finally, we provide directions to guide future interdisciplinary research collaboration. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

BACKGROUND: Emotions can powerfully affect memory retrieval although this effect has seldom been studied in everyday contexts. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to explore the association between children's verbal emotional expressions and the type of information reported during forensic interviews. PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING: The sample included 198 interviews with 4- to 14-year-old (M = 9.36, SD = 2.37) alleged victims of repeated physical abuse perpetrated by family members conducted using the Revised NICHD Protocol which emphasizes a supportive interviewing style. METHODS: Interview videos were transcribed and each conversational turn was coded to reflect the amount and type of children's verbal emotional expressions, forensic information provided, interviewers' demeanor, and type of question asked. RESULTS: The verbal expression of negative emotions was positively associated with the production of more central details (β = 0.29, SE = 0.05, p < 0.001) and peripheral details (β = 0.66, SE = 0.07, p < 0.001), while the verbal expression of positive emotions was correlated with peripheral details (β = 0.29, SE = 0.15, p = 0.047). The verbal expression of negative emotions was associated with the production of more specific details (β = 0.73, SE = 0.06, p < 0.001]) and less generic information (β = -0.39, SE = 0.18, p = 0.029) whereas positive emotions were associated only with increased specific information (β = 0.28, SE = 0.12, p = 0.025). CONCLUSIONS: These findings highlight how emotional expression, especially of negative emotions, enhances the quantity and quality of children's reports in forensic contexts.

In this article, we present our ongoing work in the field of training police officers who conduct interviews with abused children. The objectives in this context are to protect vulnerable children from abuse, facilitate prosecution of offenders, and ensure that innocent adults are not accused of criminal acts. There is therefore a need for more data that can be used for improved interviewer training to equip police with the skills to conduct high-quality interviews. To support this important task, we propose to research a training program that utilizes different system components and multimodal data from the field of artificial intelligence such as chatbots, generation of visual content, text-to-speech, and speech-to-text. This program will be able to generate an almost unlimited amount of interview and also training data. The goal of combining all these different technologies and datatypes is to create an immersive and interactive child avatar that responds in a realistic way, to help to support the training of police interviewers, but can also produce synthetic data of interview situations that can be used to solve different problems in the same domain.

Differences between prosecutors and defense lawyers with respect to the centrality of the information sought and topic of the questions asked, and the effects on witnesses’ responses, were examined...

Wellbeing of gay fathers with children born through surrogacy A study of parental wellbeing in the U.K., France, and the Netherlands compared parents in 38 gay father families, 61 lesbian mother families, and 42 heterosexual parent families. In all family types, the parents had just become parents for the first time and had an infant aged around 4 months. The infants in the gay father families were born through surrogacy, and those in the lesbian mother families were conceived after insemination with donor sperm. The heterosexual parent families had used in vitro fertilization without sperm or egg donation. Standardized measures of parental wellbeing (parental stress, psychological adjustment, and partner relationship satisfaction) were used to collect data via a password-protected online survey. Both parents in all families completed the survey. The parents’ scores on the studied variables were similar regardless of family type or caregiver role. The findings of the present study contribute to the theoretical understanding of the role of family type and caregiver role in families whose first child was conceived by means of assisted reproductive technologies, and especially our knowledge of gay fathers who became parents through surrogacy.

Macro-ratings of socio-emotional and cognitive qualities of interactions between children and forensic interviewers were examined in 95 interviews of 4- to-13-year-olds who disclosed sexual abuse. Lower quality interactions were more evident when children were recounting the abuse than during rapport-building or when children were discussing past disclosures. Older children expressed less discomfort and had more synchronous interactions with interviewers than younger children. The findings highlight room for improvement in the provision of cognitive and emotional support by forensic interviewers. The study showed the importance of considering multiple dimensions when assessing the socio-emotional and cognitive dynamics of forensic interviews and illustrated the value of macro-level coding.

Children often answer questions when they do not have the requisite knowledge or when they do not understand them. We examined whether ground rules instruction-to say "I don't know," to tell the truth, and to correct the interviewer when necessary-assisted children in applying those rules during an interview about a past event and whether doing so was associated with more accurate accounts. We compared children with intellectual disabilities (mild or moderate severity, n = 44, 7-12 years) with 3 groups of typically developing children (2 matched for mental age, and 1 for chronological age, n = 55, 4-12 years) on their understanding of 3 ground rules, their use of these rules in an interview, and their accuracy in recalling a personally experienced event. Many children were able to demonstrate proficiency with the rules following simple instruction but others required additional teaching. Children applied the rules sparingly in the interview. Their scores on the practice trials of each rule were unrelated to each other, and to the use of the rules in context. Their developmental level was significantly related to both of these skills. Regression models showed that developmental level was the best predictor of children's accuracy when they recounted their experience during the interview but that use of responses consistent with the rules, in conjunction with developmental level, predicted accurate resistance to suggestive questions. Future research should identify how best to prepare children of different ages and cognitive abilities to answer adults' questions appropriately. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

During the transition from home to childcare, 70 15-month-old infants were videotaped, and their negative emotions were rated. Infants' attachments to mothers were assessed prior to child care entry and to care providers five months later using the Strange Situation Procedure (SSP). Infant heart rate was monitored at home, during adaptation to childcare (mothers present), and during subsequent separations. Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) was computed from the beat-to-beat measures of heart rate to reflect vagal tone, which is reduced during chronic states of stress, and was collected upon Arrival, during in-group Play, and when in the Group more generally. All infants responded to childcare entry with low RSA levels indicating stress. However, during adaptation with the mother present, RSA was higher for securely attached infants. On the first separation day, 35.3% of the infants fussed and cried extensively. These intense protests predicted later secure attachments to care providers, which adaptively helped to reduce stress, especially in infants who protested extensively, as if summoning their mothers back. Because extensive protest suggests limited regulatory capacities, infants risk overburdening the stress system when left unsupported.

Findings are presented from the second phase of a UK longitudinal study of 33 gay father, 35 lesbian mother, and 43 heterosexual parent families when their adopted children reached early adolescence. Participants predominantly lived in urban/suburban areas and were mostly white and well‐educated. Standardized interviews, observations, and questionnaires of parental mental health, parent–child relationships, and adolescent adjustment were administered to parents, children, and teachers between 2016 and 2018. There were few differences between family types. However, adjustment problems had increased in all family types, with better parenting quality and parental mental health associated with fewer adjustment problems. The findings contribute to adoption policy and practice, and to theoretical understanding of the role of parental gender in child development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because intensely reluctant children often fail to report being abused even when they are supportively interviewed, the Revised NICHD (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development) Protocol (RP) guides interviewers to delay discussion of sensitive topics and build rapport before scheduling a follow-up interview in which children might feel more comfortable. We sought to determine whether adherence to these recommendations was associated with the children’s propensity to make allegations. Repeated forensic interviews were conducted with 202 Israeli children aged 3-14 who did not make allegations in the first interview, but of whom 104 made allegations during the second interview. The interviews were coded to identify interviewers’ provision of support and types of substantive questions (invitations vs. closed-ended), as well as children’s signs of reluctance, responsiveness, and informativeness. Interviewer behavior was represented with a latent variable reflecting the interviewers’ expression of support, use of invitations, and the avoidance of closed-ended questions. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) showed that adherence to the suggested interviewing model was positively associated with children being more likely to allege abuse (total effect: β = .29). This association was mediated by children’s enhanced cooperativeness in the second interview (indirect effect: β = .16). These findings suggest that repeated interviews can be useful despite the additional financial costs.

Supportive forensic interviews conducted in accordance with the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Revised Protocol (RP) help many alleged victims describe abusive experiences. When children remain reluctant to make allegations, the RP guides interviewers to (a) focus on rapport building and nonsuggestive support in a first interview, and (b) plan a second interview to allow continued rapport building before exploring for possible abuse. We explored the dynamics of such two-session RP interviews. Of 204 children who remained reluctant in an initial interview, we focused on 104 who made allegations when re-interviewed a few days later. A structural equation model revealed that interviewer support during the first session predicted children's cooperation during the rapport-building phase of the second session, which, in turn, predicted more spontaneous allegations, which were associated with the interviewers’ enhanced use of open-ended questions. Together, these factors mediated the effects of support on children's free recall of forensically important information. This highlighted the importance of emphasizing rapport with reluctant children, confirming that some children may need more time to build rapport even with supportive interviewers.

This study examined the effects of pre‐trial preparation and pre‐recorded cross‐examinations on the linguistic complexity of recognition prompts (i.e., option‐posing or suggestive questions) used when questioning child victims in English criminal courts. The study also compared the linguistic complexity of recognition prompts that did and did not contain suggestive content. Analyses compared 43 cases that involved pre‐recorded cross‐examinations with pre‐trial preparation and 44 cases that did not, which occurred between 2012 and 2016. Cases utilizing the “special measures” contained fewer linguistically complex prompts with and without suggestive content than did their counterparts, demonstrating the benefits of those special measures. Overall, linguistically complex recognition prompts were more likely to contain suggestive content than other recognition prompts. However, linguistically complex prompts with and without suggestive content were still frequently used despite the special measures, demonstrating the need for further professional training to improve the quality of children's evidence.

Background: The division of non-paid labor in heterosexual parents in the West is usually still gender-based, with mothers taking on the majority of direct caregiving responsibilities. However, in same-sex couples, gender cannot be the deciding factor. Inspired by Feinberg’s ecological model of co-parenting, this study investigated whether infant temperament, parent factors (biological relatedness to child, psychological adjustment, parenting stress, and work status), and partner relationship quality explained how first-time gay, lesbian, and heterosexual parents divided labor (childcare and family decision-making) when their infants were 4 and 12 months old. We also tested whether family type acted as a moderator. Method: Participants were drawn from the new parents study. Only those who provided information about their biological relatedness to their child (N = 263 parents) were included. When infants were 4 months (T1), parents completed a password-protected online questionnaire exploring their demographic characteristics including work status and standardized online-questionnaires on task division (childcare and family decision-making), infant temperament, parental anxiety, parental depression, parental stress, and partner relationship satisfaction. When infants were 12-months-old (T2), parents provided information about task division and their biological relatedness to their children. Results: Linear mixed models showed that no factor explained the division of family decision making at T1 and T2. For relative time spent on childcare tasks at T1, biological relatedness mattered for lesbian mothers only: biologically related mothers appeared to spend more time on childcare tasks than did non-related mothers. Results showed that, regardless of family type, parents who were not working or were working part-time at T1 performed more childcare tasks at T1. This was still true at T2. The other factors did not significantly contribute to relative time spent on childcare tasks at T2. Conclusion: We had the opportunity to analyze the division of non-paid tasks in families where parenting was necessarily planned and in which gender could not affect that division. Although Feinberg’s model of co-parenting suggests that various factors are related to task division, we found that paid work outside the home was most important during the first year of parenthood in determining caregiving roles.

This study examined the quality of forensic interviews conducted by specially trained police officers in the Norwegian Barnahus between 2015 and 2017, using the sequential interview (SI) model, a Norwegian version of the extended interview model that has not previously been studied. Two hundred and seven interviews of alleged abused preschool children (3–7 years old) were selected from around the country. Developmental trends in interview dynamics and the pattern of disclosure were analyzed. Analyses showed that the interviews were long but involved few open-ended and many suggestive questions, especially in interviews with the youngest children who did not disclose. Because similar findings were obtained in previous studies of Norwegian interviews not using this model, the findings suggest that the SI interview model does little to improve the formal quality of forensic interviews with very young children, and show the need to develop new forms of interviewer training which are more intensive than those currently employed. The Norwegian Ministry of Justice and Public Security provided funding for this study.

본 연구는 한국 경찰관이 성폭력 피해아동 조사면담 시 사용 하는 질문유형에 대해 얼마나 정확하게 이해하고 있는지 확인하기 위해 실시되었다. 추가적으로 질문유형의 정확도에 영향을 미치는 요인에 대해 살펴보았다. 총 120명의 한국 경찰관들은 50개의 질문에 대해 다섯 가지의 질문유형(진술권유, 촉진어, 구체적 질문, 선택형 질문, 암시적 질문) 중 어느 질문에 해당하는지 답하였다. 연구결과, 전체 정확율은 65.6%로 나타났다. 진술 권유(85.5%)에 대한 정확도는 가장 높은 반면, 암시적 질문(42.3%)에 대한 정확도는 가장 낮은 것으로 나타났다. 경찰관들은 종종 구체적 질문을 진술권유로 잘못 구별하는 방식으로 진술권유에 대한 사용을 과대 추정하는 경향을 나타냈다. 암시적 질문의 경우, 선택형 질문으로 잘못 이해되는 경우가 22.2%이었으며, 구체적 질문으로 오해되는 경우는 15.1%이었다. 암시적 질문을 진술권유로 잘못 이해하는 경우도 5.6% 존재하였다. 이전 NICHD 조사면담 프로토콜에 대한 교육 경험은 더 높은 정확성을 예측할 수 있는 유일한 요인으로 나타났다.

This study systematically assessed children’s disclosure processes and lawyers’ questioning about children’s disclosures in the courtroom. We analysed transcripts of 72 trials in which 5- to 17-year-old children testified as alleged victims of sexual abuse and found that children typically delayed disclosing abuse for over 6 months, with the length of delay greater when the alleged perpetrator-victim relationships were closer. When questioning children about disclosure, prosecutors used more directive and option-posing questions, and sought to establish the plausibility, credibility, reliability, and consistency of children’s disclosures. On the other hand, defence lawyers used more suggestive questions than prosecutors, and sought to undermine children’s testimony by accusing them of lying or being coached. Children’s responses to questions about their disclosure differed depending on who was questioning them: notably, children contradicted themselves more during cross-examinations than direct-ex...

Purpose. The new citizen judge system in Japan was implemented in 2009. Further, a revision to the Code of Criminal Procedures, announced in 2016, stipulated that, from 2019, police interviews of suspects tried by citizen judges had to be recorded. Anticipating these changes to the criminal justice system in Japan, this study investigated public perceptions of the various suspect interviewing techniques in use. Methods. A total of 761 jury-eligible Japanese participants completed an online survey that included items about five suspect interviewing techniques (Presentation of Evidence, Confrontation, Active Listening, Rapport Building, and Discussion of the Crime). The participants were asked to rate the fairness of these techniques and the likelihood that they would elicit true and false confessions from guilty and innocent suspects. Results. Participants believed that Active Listening was the fairest of the five interviewing techniques, most and least likely to elicit true and false confessions, respectively. Contrastingly, they viewed Confrontation as the most unfair interviewing technique, least and most likely to elicit true and false confessions, respectively. The fairer the participants perceived the interviewing techniques, the more likely they were to believe these techniques would elicit true confessions. Conclusions. These findings could have important implications for decisions regarding the interviewing techniques used to elicit confessions admitted as evidence in Japanese courts.

This article summarizes panel discussions that took place at an international conference on shared parenting (SP) held in May 2017. The panelists were internationally recognized experts on the legal and psychological implications of custody arrangements and parenting plans. Seven broad themes dominated the discussions: whether or not there was persuasive evidence that SP provides real benefits to children whose parents separate; what specific factors make SP beneficial; what symbolic value SP might have; whether there should be a legal presumption in favor of SP, and if so, what factors should make for exceptions; whether high parental conflict, parents’ failure to agree on the parenting plan, or dynamics of parental alienation should preclude SP; and what should happen when a parent wants to relocate away from the other parent.

In England and Wales, suspects must be given a police caution before they are questioned. The purpose of the caution is to explain a suspect's right to silence as a protection against self-...

The changing family roles and evidence that most infants form attachment relationships with both of their parents have sparked a debate about parenting arrangements when the parents of infants and toddlers separate. Misunderstanding of attachment theory and the available empirical evidence has obscured rather than clarified evidence-based decision-making. In this report, I closely examine the five studies most frequently referenced in this context and show what they do and do not tell us about the ways in which children’s adjustment can be promoted when their parents separate. Consistent with attachment theory, the evidence suggests that children benefit when parenting plans allow them to maintain meaningful and positive relationships with both of their parents.

This study aimed to examine police officers’ accuracy in classifying guilty and innocent participants using 3 interviewing styles (evidence-focused, relationship-focused, and control). In a modified version of Russano, Meissner, Narchet, and Kassin’s (2005) deception paradigm, participants who had violated a rule (i.e., cheating while solving problems) were considered guilty, whereas those who had followed the rule were considered innocent. After interviewing 234 adult men, 11 experienced male police officers accurately classified over 90% of them as guilty or innocent. Of 160 participants who did not admit to cheating, 140 (87.5%) were correctly classified. There was no statistically significant relationship between interviewing style and police officers’ identifications of guilty deniers (i.e., liars) and innocent deniers (truth tellers). However, interviewers were more likely to believe guilty deniers in the evidence-focused condition, and they tended to believe innocent deniers in the relationship-focused condition. These findings suggest that the ability to detect deception might be influenced by interviewing style.

Summary: Although many children are reluctant to disclose abuse due to embarrassment, fear, and the anticipation of negative consequences, researchers have only recently begun to examine whether forensic interviewers can be trained to manage children's reluctance. In this study, the supportiveness of 53 experienced interviewers was assessed in their interviews with 321 3- to 14-year-old alleged victims, each conducted during the course of training to use the Revised Protocol (RP). The use of support increased, especially between levels evident at baseline and in the last two interviews assessed. Over time, instances of inadequate support and insensitivity to children's reluctance became less common. Younger children received proportionally more support, including inadequate support, than older children. The RP training did not affect the extensive use of free recall-based questions. Findings highlight the benefits of continued supervision and training.Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.