Clinical and Forensic Interviewing of Children and Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder

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.

“…Therefore, Experiment 4 included expert information regarding the effects of autism on children's testimony. In Experiment 3, compared to the TD child witness, the ASD child witness was perceived as less credible and the defendant was perceived as less guilty, but jurors were not provided with a summary of the research related to ASD versus TD children's eyewitness abilities, which has determined that ASD children's autobiographical memory ability is actually compromised compared to TD children's autobiographical memory ability (for review see Krackow, 2018). Would knowledge of these findings diminish jurors' perceptions of children with ASD compared to TD children?…”

“…ASD, for example, can impair communicative, social, cognitive, intellectual, and emotional functioning relative to TD children (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Although children with ASD are often deemed competent to testify as witnesses and their testimony is admissible in courts (Goldfarb & Gonzalez, 2018), compared with children without an ASD diagnosis, their memory reports differ in narrative structure are less elaborate and contain more memory errors, and are more suggestible under highly coercive interviewing situations (see Krackow, 2018 review). Moreover, along with children with other developmental disabilities, children with ASD are more likely to be victims of maltreatment than their TD peers (see Stalker & McArthur, 2012 for review).…”

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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.

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Challenges in determining whether youth with autism spectrum disorder have been sexually abused: implications for forensic interviewing

“…They found that the children with ASD did not differ from the neurotypical children in length of narrative, semantic diversity of the grammar elements in the story, the coherence of the narrative or the accuracy of what was reported. However, it has been found that children with ASD report fewer details in their narratives than do neurotypical children (Henry et al , 2020; Krackow, 2018).…”

“…In the UK, Maras’ Witness-Aimed First Account (WAFA) interview created for use with adults with ASD has been shown to obtain detailed and accurate information from individuals with ASD who have difficulty responding to free narrative invitations seen in many protocols (Maras et al , 2020). Moreover, other researchers have demonstrated modifications to FIs that can and should be made when interviewing youth with ASD (Krackow, 2018).…”