声明有效性评估(SVA)是一种工具,旨在确定儿童证人在性犯罪试验中的证词的信誉。SVA评估被接受为一些北美法院和西欧国家的刑事法院的证据。该工具起源于瑞典和德国,由四个阶段组成。SVA研究的许多研究都涉及基于标准的内容分析(CBCA)的能力,这是四个SVA阶段之一,区分真相柜员和骗子。有效性清单是SVA程序的另一个阶段,也引起了研究人员的关注。
已经开发了一种技术来验证孩子是否遭受性虐待并不奇怪。通常很难确定对性虐待指控的事实,因为通常没有医疗或身体证据。通常,被指控的受害者和被告会做出矛盾的证词,而且通常没有独立的证人来提供客观的事件。这使得被告的可信度和据称受害者的信誉很重要。如果他或她还是个孩子,则据称的受害者处于不利地位,因为成年人倾向于不信任儿童的信任声明。
SVA由四个阶段组成:(1)案例文件分析;(2)半结构化访谈;(3)系统评估陈述质量的CBCA;(4)通过一组问题(有效性清单)评估CBCA结果。
案例分析
The SVA procedure starts with the analysis of the case file. A case file should include information about the child witness (e.g., his or her age, cognitive abilities, relationship to the accused person); the nature of the event in question, and previous statements of the child and other parties involved. The case-file analysis gives the SVA expert insight into what may have happened and the issues that are disputed. The SVA analysis focuses on these disputed elements in the subsequent three stages.
半结构化访谈
SVA的第二阶段是半结构化的采访,孩子提供了自己对指控的描述。进行适当的面试绝不是一件容易的事,但是面试幼儿特别困难,因为他们对过去事件的描述显然是不完整的。因此,访调员通常需要比最初提供的更多信息,他们必须提出更多的特定问题,以了解有关事件的更多信息。面试官面临的危险是,他们的质疑可能会引人注目 - 也就是说,问题向孩子提出了什么答案,随后导致孩子提供答案。基于心理原则的特殊访谈技术旨在以自由叙事风格从受访者那里获得尽可能多的信息,而没有不适当的提示或建议。
基于标准的内容分析
对孩子的访谈是录音带和转录的,成绩单用于SVA的第三部分:CBCA。在第三部分中,SVA评估人员在19个标准的转录本中寻找存在。假设是,真实的陈述所包含的这些标准要比制造的陈述更多。这些CBCA标准的示例是非结构化的生产(是否以时间顺序排列的时间顺序提供信息),上下文嵌入(参考时间和空间:“他在暑假期间第一次在花园里接近我”),描述of interactions (statements that interlink at least two actors with each other: “The moment my mother came into the room, he stopped smiling”), and reproduction of speech (speech in its original form: “And then he asked: ‘Is that your coat?’”). These criteria are more likely to occur in truthful statements than in fabricated statements because it is thought to be cognitively too difficult for liars to fabricate them. Other criteria are more likely to occur in truthful statements than in fabricated statements for motivational reasons. Truthful persons will not be as concerned with making a credible impression on the interviewer as deceivers, because truth tellers often believe that their honesty will shine through. Therefore, liars will be keener to try to construct a report that they believe will make a credible impression on others and will leave out information that, in their view, will damage their image of being a sincere person. As a result, a truthful statement is more likely to contain information that is inconsistent with people’s stereotypes of truthfulness. Examples of these so-called “contrary-to-truthfulness-stereotype” criteria are spontaneous corrections (corrections made without prompting from the interviewer: “He wore a black jacket, no sorry, it was blue”) and raising doubts about one’s own testimony (anticipated objections against the veracity of one’s own testimony: “I know this all sounds really odd”).
The Validity Checklist
A CBCA evaluation itself is not sufficient to draw conclusions about the truthfulness of a statement, because CBCA scores may be affected by factors other than the veracity of the statement. For example, older children produce statements that typically contain more CBCA criteria than younger children, and statements are unlikely to contain many CBCA criteria if the interviewer did not give the child enough opportunity to tell the whole story. The fourth and final phase of the SVA method is to examine whether any of these alternative explanations might have affected the presence of the CBCA criteria in the transcripts. For this purpose a checklist, the Validity Checklist, has been compiled, which consists of 11 issues that are thought to possibly affect CBCA scores. By systematically addressing each of the issues addressed in the Validity Checklist, the evaluator explores and considers alternative interpretations of the CBCA outcomes. Each affirmative response that the evaluator gives to an issue raises a question about the validity of the CBCA outcome.
有效性清单中提到的一个问题是情感的不适当性。这是指孩子在接受采访时表现出的影响(通常是通过非语言行为)不适合儿童所谓的经历。例如,性犯罪在情感上令人不安,可能会使受害者感到不安。因此,人们通常会期望在接受采访时清楚地表现出真实受害者的情绪。这些情绪的缺乏可能表明故事已经被捏造了。
A second issue mentioned in the Validity Checklist is appropriateness of language and knowledge. This issue refers to whether the child’s use of language and display of knowledge was beyond the normal capacity of a person of his or her age and beyond the scope of what the child may have learned from the incident. When this occurs, it may indicate the influence of other people in preparing the statement. For example, to obtain custody, a woman may encourage her child to falsely accuse her ex-husband of having had an abusive relationship with the child. In an attempt to make a convincing case, the woman may have prepared the statement together with the child and may have coached the child in what to say.
有关有效性清单的第三个问题是检查孩子在面试中是否表现出对建议的任何敏感性。暗示儿童的陈述可能是有问题的解释,因为建议的儿童可能倾向于提供证实面试官期望的信息,但实际上是不准确的。
SVA研究和评估
尽管在几个国家 /地区将SVA评估用作法院的证据,但尚不清楚这些评估的准确性如何,因为目前可以使用有关SVA评估准确性的可靠数据。为了检查在这种情况下SVA评估的准确性,有必要知道有争议的事件中真正发生了什么。获得这种所谓的地面真理是困难的,因为它只能通过案例事实(例如医学证据或其他证据)确定,这些事实无可争议地将所谓的肇事者与犯罪者联系起来。在性虐待案件中,这种情况通常不存在。
研究以实验室研究的形式进行,但主要集中在SVA的第三阶段:CBCA评估的准确性。在这些研究中,要么孩子,但本科生更经常说实话,要么是为了实验而撒谎。这样的研究表明,成人和儿童的结果相似。与CBCA假设保持一致,与制作报告相比,真实陈述中许多CBCA标准更常见。总体而言,通过使用CBCA评估,正确分类了73%的真相和72%的谎言。这是否反映了CBCA评估在现实生活中的刑事调查中的准确性。在实验中讲谎言和真理的学生或孩子与讲述真相和谎言的孩子不同,因此准确性得分不一定反映刑事调查中的准确性得分。
There are reasons to believe that applying the Validity Checklist is sometimes problematic. It is possible to question the justification of some of the issues listed on the Validity Checklist, for example, whether the child displayed an absence of affect or inappropriate affect during the interview. This issue implies that the notion of appropriate affect displayed by victims of sexual abuse exists, whereas it does not. That is, in interviews, some sexually abused victims express distress that is clearly visible to outsiders, whereas others appear numbed and cues of distress are not clearly visible. The communication styles represent a personality factor and are not related to deceit.
其他一些问题,例如对建议的敏感性,难以衡量。为了检查孩子对建议的敏感性,建议采访者在面试结束时向证人提出一些主要问题。访调员只能提出有关无关的外围信息的问题,因为询问有关中央信息的问题可能会损害声明的质量。仅允许仅问有关外围信息的问题是有问题的,因为它可能对证人对他或她的陈述的核心问题的暗示性很少。与事件的外围部分相比,儿童对中央部分的暗示性具有更大的抵抗力。
如果不是不可能,很难确定许多问题对CBCA分数的确切影响。例如,在一项研究中,指示SVA评估者在计算CBCA分数时考虑孩子的年龄。然而,几个标准与年龄正相关。换句话说,即使被指示纠正年龄的CBCA得分,结果仍然显示出与年龄相关的影响,而年龄较大的儿童获得的CBCA得分高于年龄较高的孩子。
Given these difficulties in measuring the issues and in examining the exact impact of these issues on CBCA scores, it is clear that the Validity Checklist procedure is more subjective and less formalized than the CBCA procedure. It is, therefore, not surprising that if two experts disagree about the truthfulness of a statement in a German criminal case, they are likely to disagree about the likely impact of Validity Checklist issues on that statement. One study revealed that Swedish experts sometimes use the Validity Checklist incorrectly, and this could be due to difficulties with applying it. First, although SVA experts sometimes highlight the influence of Validity Checklist issues on children’s statements in general, they do not always discuss how these issues might influence the statement of the particular child they are asked to assess. Second, although experts sometimes indicate possible external influence on statements, they are inclined to rely on the CBCA outcome and tend to judge high-quality statements as truthful and low-quality statements as fabricated.
总而言之,尽管SVA评估被用作(刑事)法院中的证据,以评估儿童证人在性犯罪中的证词的真实性,但这些评估的准确性尚不清楚。但是,研究表明,经CBCA培训的评估者在对真相出租人和骗子进行分类时犯了错误,并且由于各种原因,使用有效性清单的使用是有问题的。
参考:
- Goodman, G. S., & Melinder, A. (2007). Child witness research and forensic interviews of young children: A review. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 12, 1-19.
- Gumpert, C. H., & Lindblad, F. (1999). Expert testimony on child sexual abuse: A qualitative study of the Swedish approach to statement analysis. Expert Evidence, 7, 279-314.
- Kohnken,G。(2004)。声明有效性分析和“对真理的检测”。在P. A. Granhag&L。A. Stromwall(编辑)中,法医环境中的欺骗检测(第41-63页)。英国剑桥:剑桥大学出版社。
- Steller,M。和Boychuk,T。(1992)。儿童作为性虐待案件的证人:调查性访谈和评估技术。在H. Dent&R。Flin(编辑)中,儿童作为证人(第47-73页)。纽约:威利。
- Vrij,A。(2005)。基于标准的内容分析:对前37项研究的定性综述。心理学,公共政策和法律,11,3-41。
还给警察心理学概述。