How to prepare for conversations with children about suspicions of sexual abuse? Evaluation of an interactive virtual reality training for student teachers.

Background: Training for child interviewing in case of suspected (sexual) abuse must include ongoing practice, expert feedback and performance evaluation. Computer-based interview simulations including these components have shown efficacy in promoting open-ended questioning skills.

Objective: We evaluated ViContact, a training program for childcare professionals on conversations with children in case of suspected abuse.

Recovered memories in psychotherapy: a survey of practicing psychotherapists in Germany.

We report on a survey of 258 psychotherapists from Germany, focusing on their experiences with memory recovery in general, suggestive therapy procedures, evaluations of recovered memories, and memory recovery in training and guidelines. Most therapists (78%) reported instances of memory recovery encompassing negative and positive childhood experiences, but usually in a minority of patients. Also, most therapists (82%) reported to have held assumptions about unremembered trauma.

International perspective on guidelines and policies for child custody and child maltreatment risk evaluations: A preliminary comparative analysis across selected countries in Europe and North America.

Little knowledge exists on how evaluators in child custody and child maltreatment cases are informed by guidelines, the kinds of qualifications required and the types of training provided in different countries. The purpose of this paper is to provide an international preliminary comparison on how child custody and child maltreatment risk assessments are conducted in selected Western countries, and how the assessments are informed by best practice guidelines. Another aim is to increase knowledge on how the guidelines and best-practice standards could be developed further to reflect recent research findings.

Only true and fabricated baseline statements combined might improve lie, but not truth, detection.

Objectives: We tested the effect of true and fabricated baseline statements from the same sender on veracity judgments.

Hypotheses: We predicted that presenting a combination of true and fabricated baseline statements would improve truth and lie detection accuracy, while presenting a true baseline would improve only truth detection, and presenting a fabricated baseline would only improve lie detection compared with presenting no baseline statement.

Method: In a 4 × 2 within-subjects design, 142 student participants ( = 23.

Predicting disclosure latency in substantiated cases of child sexual abuse.

Objective: Children who experience sexual abuse (CSA) often delay disclosure, thus impeding early interventions. This study explores predictors of disclosure latency in a sample of forensically substantiated cases.

Methods: Court files were analyzed for a total of 124 cases of CSA.

Assessing the Individual Interviewer Rapport-Building and Supportive Techniques of the R-NICHD Protocol.

The use of the rapport-building and supportive techniques formulated by the R-NICHD protocol is intended to support children and increase the quality of their statements as well as disclosures without possessing suggestive potential. While the effectiveness of the entire R-NICHD protocol for children who have actually experienced child sexual abuse (CSA) has been supported by research, to date no study assessed the effect of each individual socio-emotional interview technique in both interviewees with and without CSA experiences. The current study aimed to address this gap in research by means of an online vignette-study, asking participants to rate the identified rapport-building and supportive techniques on the scales well-being, willingness to talk, and perceived pressure.

What Judges Want to Know From Forensic Evaluators in Child Custody and Child Protection Cases: Analyzing Forensic Assignments With Latent Dirichlet Allocation.

This study analyzes the questions on aspects of child custody, visitation rights, or child endangerment that judges pose to forensic psychologists in family law proceedings. Before conducting a psychological evaluation, the legal question in the referral has to be translated into case-specific, forensically relevant issues. The only overarching principle guiding this process is the "best interests of the child" criterion.

How Information on a Motive to Lie Influences CBCA-Based Ratings and Veracity Judgments.

We investigated how information on a motive to lie impacts on the perceived content quality of a statement and its subsequent veracity rating. In an online study, 300 participants rated a statement about an alleged sexual harassment on a scale based on Criteria-based Content Analysis (CBCA) and judged its veracity. In a 3 × 3 between-subjects design, we varied prior information (motive to lie, no motive to lie, and no information on a motive), and presented three different statement versions of varying content quality (high, medium, and low).

Confessions and Denials When Guilty and Innocent: Forensic Patients' Self-Reported Behavior During Police Interviews.

Several self-report studies together with analyses of exoneration cases suggest that suspects with mental disorder are especially prone to making false confessions. The present study asked 153 forensic patients in Germany about their behavior during suspect interviewing by the police. Self-reported ground truth of guilt and innocence was asked for, thereby taking into account that the risk of false confession is present only if a person has ever been interviewed when innocent.

The Strategic Meaning of CBCA Criteria From the Perspective of Deceivers.

In 2014, Volbert and Steller introduced a revised model of Criteria-Based Content Analysis (CBCA) that grouped a modified set of content criteria in closer reference to their assumed latent processes, resulting in three dimensions of and . In this model, it is assumed that deceivers try to integrate memory-related criteria-but will not be as good as truth tellers in achieving this-whereas out of strategic considerations they will avoid the expression of the other criteria. The aim of the current study was to test this assumption.