Despite wide variations in child witness behavior while on the stand, little research has focused on how that behavior influences jurors' perceptions of the child's credibility or the case itself. In the current study, the impact of a child's emotional displays on credibility judgments and verdict preferences was examined in jury-eligible college students and jurors released from jury duty. No significant differences emerged in perceptions or verdicts based on whether a child was shown as crying or not while participants read a transcript of the child's testimony. However, participants who rated the child as more emotional (regardless of whether the image showed a crying child) were more likely to render guilty verdicts, were more certain of guilt, and found the child more credible and the defendant less credible than participants who rated the child as less emotional. Also, when the child was perceived as low in emotion, older children were rated as less credible than younger children. The results have implications for understanding how children's emotional displays and jurors' perceptions of children's emotionality influence decisions in sexual abuse cases.
The current study examined age differences in maltreated and nonmaltreated children's knowledge of juvenile dependency court vocabulary and proceedings. One hundred and sixty-seven children aged 4-14 years were questioned about their understanding of legal vocabulary and about the content of a story depicting a child involved in dependency court. Age-related increases emerged across all measures of children's legal understanding. Direct experience with the dependency system was also related to the accuracy of children's legal knowledge. Children with greater experience in the dependency system were more knowledgeable than children with no such experience, although even the oldest maltreated children with considerable dependency system experience evidenced some deficits in legal knowledge. Overall, findings suggest children and adolescents involved in dependency proceedings need help understanding some aspects of the dependency process, and this need exists regardless of whether children have been involved in cases ongoing for some time.
a predetermined duration resulted in (a) a change in the stimulus projected on the response key from the white triangle to black and white diagonal stripes, and (b) a simultaneous removal of the punishment contingency, aIIowing completion of the remainder of the FR requirement in the absence of punishment. Following reinforcement delivery, the triangle reappeared on the operandum, the punishment contingency was in effect, and the pause in responding was again required for the removal of the punishment contingency and associated stimulus change. Responses which occurred in the presence of the triangle restarted the time interval necessary for the removal of the punishment contingency. These responses also advanced the programming equipment the appropriate number of responses toward positive reinforcement delivery. Any pause of the required length, regardless of where it occurred du ring the FR requirement, resulted in the above changes. Since the escape requirement was defmed only by the nonoccurrence of key-peck responses, the schedule is a conjoint FR25 + punishment (positive reinforcement) DRO (escape from punishment) reinforcement schedule (cf. Catania, Deegan, & Cook, 1966 Responses on a second operandum were maintained with both .FR and fIXed interval (FI) schedules when such behavior resulted in a temporary rem oval of the punishment contingency, aIIowing the S to complete the FR requirement for positive reinforcement without the occurrence of punishment. This escape behavior was observed on FI escape schedules of up to 5 min in length for unspecified numbers of sessions.Several investigators (Azrin, 1956;DeArmond, 1966;Hoffman & Fleshler, 1965) have reported that organisms will passively avoid response-contingent electric shock by omitting responding in the presence of stimuli associated with such delivery ofpunishment. Hoffman & Fleshler (1965) periodically superimposed a fIXedduration waming stimulus upon a variable interval schedule of positive reinforcement. The delivery of punishment following each response during the last 2 min of the warning stimulus resulted in a cessation of responding which often continued until the warning stimulus, and associated punishmen t con tingency, terrninated. Although the Ss in each of these investigations avoided the delivery of punishment by omitting responding on the operandum, responding or failing to respond had no consequence on the removal of either the punishment contingency or the stimuli associated with the punishment. This experiment examined the occurrence of escape from a punishmen t contingency and its associated stimuli by the omission of responding on the operandum during a FR schedule of positive reinforcement.Psychon. Sei., 1969, Vol. 15 (5) METHOD Two adult Silver King pigeons served as Ss and were maintained at 75% of their free-feeding weights. One S was experimentally naive (161) and the secondS (130) had a history of exposure to a conditionedsuppression paradigm.Asound attenuated operant conditioning chamber of the type described by Ferster & Sk...
Three rats were trained to respond on a two-component multiple schedule, with identical variable-interval 1.5-min components for 32% sucrose reinforcement. Subsequent reduction in the sucrose concentration of reinforcement to 8% in one component resulted in positive behavioral contrast for two Ss. Response rate facilitation was observed in both components for the third S. SUBJECTS AND APP ARATUS The Ss were three male Holtzman albino rats, approximately 150 days old at the start of the experiment. They had received previous training in a two-compartment box under water deprivation 20 days before the start of the experiment. Throughout the experiment they were maintained at 80% (± 2%) of free-feeding body weight. The experimental space was a 20.32 x 33.66 x 31.75 cm wooden chamber equipped with a ventilation fan and white noise. The response panel contained a response bar, horizontally centered 11.43 cm above the chamber floor, and two solenoid-operated liquid dippers with 5.72-cm-diam apertures, the centers of which were 5.40 cm above the floor and 11.11 cm to either side of the response panel midline. The dipper cups held approximately 0.30 cc. Located 12.06 cm directly above each dipper was a 28-V dc signal light. During reinforcement, neither of these lights was on and illumination was provided by a 6-W 110-V ac light behind the appropriate dipper. A 28-V dc relay located behind the response panel provided response feedback. Associated control and recording equipment was located in aseparate room. The sucrose mixtures were prepared from tap water and commerical sugar and are expressed in terms of percentage of sucrose by weight (Guttman, 1953). PROCEDURE The signal lights served as discriminative stimuli for the schedule components. During the left component (L), the left signal light was on and responses were reinforced with presentation of the left dipper. Similarly, du ring the right component (R), the right light was on and the right dipper was operative. Reinforcement duration was always 5 sec. Following two sessions of training with continuous reinforcement, the mean interreinforcement intervat was i ncreased over approximately 13 sessions to 1.5 min, The baseline condition was a two-component multiple schedule, with VI 1.5-min schedules of reinforcement associated with each component. The components alternated every 3 min and were separated by a 2-sec timeout. During timeout and during reinforcement, responses were neither recorded nor produced response feedback and the component timers did not operate. These schedule parameters remained unaltered throughout the experiment. During the baseline condition, both dippers presented a 32% sucrose solution. This condition remained in effect until stable performance was observed (R1, 13 sessions; R2, 15 sessions; R3, 15 sessions). Stability was defined in terms of the difference between the mean response rate for six consecutive sessions and the mean rate for either the first or last three sessions. A difference of less than 3% of the si x-session mean was reg...
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