Adults’ perceptions of child maltreatment allegations: The influence of autism spectrum disorder diagnosis, parental coaching, accuracy of children’s autobiographical recall and expert witness testimony.

Abstract

Four experiments examined mock jurors' perceptions of a child witness with and without a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a developmental disorder that can heighten vulnerability to the provision of sparser, more erroneous memory reports, and greater levels of suggestibility under coercive interviewing conditions (Krackow, 2018). This series of experiments varied combinations of the following other variables and examined whether these variables interacted with ASD: (a) mention of parental coaching as the origin of the child's maltreatment allegation; (b) the strength of the evidence that the child witness's accusations were coached (allegations of parental coaching vs. allegations of parental coaching + expert witness testimony that the child showed evidence of being coachable); (c) the accuracy of the child's responses to basic autobiographical questions (consistently correct vs. made some errors); and (d) inclusion of expert witness testimony regarding how the diagnostic status of the child witness (a diagnosis of ASD versus typically developing) generally impacts eyewitness memory performance. Diagnostic status did not impact perceptions of child witness coachability. In some, but not all experiments, there was a significant effect of diagnostic status. Across experiments, the strongest effects were for the accuracy of the child's responses to autobiographical questions. In Experiment 2, accusations of parental coaching were not taken seriously by jurors until expert witness testimony was included. In Experiment 4, expert witness testimony regarding children's memory and suggestibility did not influence jurors' perceptions. In addition, this article examined mechanisms by which factual autobiographical response accuracy influences juror decision making.