Should Children Be Allowed To Testify In Court? Essay -- Children Cour

Should Children Be Allowed To Testify In Court?Over the past ten years, more research has been done involvingchildrens testimony than that of every(prenominal) the prior decades combined. Ceci & Bruck(93) have cited four reasons for this - The opinion of psychology experts is increasingly existence accepted by courts astestimony,- Social research is more comm barely being applied to the issues of childrensrights,- More research into adult suggestibility in accordance with reason naturallyleads to more research into child suggestibility,- Children are more commonly being used as witnesses in cases where they aredirectly involved (i.e. sexual abuses cases), requiring the development ofbetter ways for dealing with them as special cases. Some psychologists reserve children to be Highly resistant to suggestion,as unlikely to lie, and as received as adult witnesses about acts perpetratedon their bodies (Ceci & Bruck 1993). However, children are as well as described as Having difficul ty distinguishing reality from fantasy, as being susceptible tocoaching by powerful authority figures, and therefore as being potentially lessreliable than adults (Ceci & Bruck 1993). The suggestibility of child witnesses,the effects of participation on childrens reports, and the effects of posteventinformation on a prior memory representation must be taken into nib when itcomes to seeking answers to the reliability of their testimony, especiallybecause sexual abuse and sexual assault cases are a big part of childrenstestimony and they are often the only witness.Those psychologists who feel that children can be rated as Highlyresistant to suggestion.... etc. seem to have a good argument, whereas thosewho take the opposite view also seem to have just as valid an argument. Whichpsychologists are right? Maybe both. It seems that without outside influences,social encounters, or other interferences, childrens testimony has thepotential to be quite valid. This is under ideal situations, however, whichunfortunately rarely occur.One of the major problems when assessing the validity of child witnessesis the suggestibility of the child. Ceci & Bruck (1993) define suggestibilityas The degree to which childrens encoding, storage, retrieval, and reportingof events can be influenced by a range of social an... ...t that no children should be allowed to testifyon account of the malleability of their recollection. However, children canplay a vital share in the legal system, and indeed there are many cases in whicha child is the only witness to a crime, but until the time that ableresearch has been done to achieve a system of questioning that will eliminatethe suggestibility and social aspects of a childs testimony, all suchtestimonies should be treated with caution. industrial plant CitedBernstein, D. A., Roy, E. J., Srull, T. K., Wickens, C. D. (1994)Psychology, 3rd edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, MA.Ceci, S & Bruck, M. (1993). Suggestibility of the Child Witness AHist orical Review and Synthesis, Psychological Bulletin. 113, 403 - 439Lefrancois, G. R. (1992). Psychology, 2nd edition. Wadsworth PublishingCompany. California.Luus, C. A. E., Wells, G. L., & Turtle, J. W. (1995). Childeyewitnesses Seeing is believing. Journal of Applied Psychology, 80, 317 - 326Rovee-Collier, C. et al. (1993). Infants witness Testimony Effectsof Postevent Information on a Prior Memory Representaion, Memory and Cognition,21, 267 - 279