Evans and Lyon (2012)

Assessing children's competency to Take the Oath in Court
1. Judges virtually never found children incompetent to testify
2. Attorneys rarely asked hypothetical Q's in a way found to facilitate performance.
3. Defence attorneys used a higher proportion of more difficult Q types than prosecutors
Examined children's accuracy in response to T/L competency questions
1. Participants
  1. 164 from criminal child sex abuse cases over 5 years
  2. 154 quoted in U.S state and federal appelate cases over 35 yrs.
2. Results
  1. T/L competency is underestimated by courtroom Q'ing
    1. Supports doubts about the utility of the competency requirements
3. Children exhibited variability in performance based on question type
  1. Definition questions - meaning of T&L hardest - Errors in response to 'Do you know' Q's
  2. Q's about consequences of lying harder than Q's evaluating morality or lying.
  3. High rates of error to Q's about whether they had ever told a lie.

Resource summary

	Created by maggie almost 11 years ago