Theoretical and methodological issues in studying children's capacities in legal contexts

Understanding children's capacities in legal contexts is an urgent priority for psychology and the law. The distinction between capacity and performance is discussed in light of two research goals: (a) identifying children's capacities relevant to law; and (b) identifying the circumstances under which their performance varies. This discussion leads to three fundamental research issues that are explored. First, in addition to general capacity, the effect of specific legal contexts on performance requires investigation. Second, capacities research must take a developmental approach using appropriate, ecologically valid target and comparison samples. Third, legal standards and their inherent developmental assumptions about children's capacities must be operationalized and investigated from both legal and psychological perspectives.     

GENDER ISSUES IN FAMILY LAW

Family mediation has been the target of criticism from feminists, the legal profession, and mental health professionals. Although this article will primarily address the concerns of feminists, it will, to a limited extent, address some of the concerns put forth by the other groups because of the similarities in their perspectives. Many of the concerns and issues expressed by feminists are valid on one hand, yet contradictory on the other. By exploring the gains made by women and how these gains were incorporated in the Ontario Family Law Act, the contradictions inherent in their arguments will be revisited and discussed in relation to a feminist-informed mediation process. This article will explore seven aspects of the feminist critique of family mediation: protection of women and children's rights, spousal and child support, equal distribution of marital property, negotiations, empowerment, custody, and spousal abuse. Many of these issues are intertwined and therefore will occasionally be discussed in relation to other issues.     

Developments in South African law on HIV/AIDS

South Africa has a powerful legal framework that offers high levels of protection to people living with HIV/AIDS, yet discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS continues to be widespread in South African society. Court cases decided in 2003 regarding children's issues and health care testify to this ongoing discrimination, and to the potential of the South African legal system to uphold the rights of people living with HIV/AIDS.     

Law,psychology, and children

Society's treatment of children and families is guided by the premises that children lack the ability and/or the capacity to be autonomous directors of their own lives and that the private autonomous family is best suited to provide for the best interests of children. These premises are based on two assumptions: (a) that parents will act in their children's best interests, and (b) that parents possess the maturity, experience, and judgment required to make life's difficult decisions, which children lack. We explore these premises and assumptions along with the concept of the best interests of children and the relationship between children's capacities and children's rights. We conclude that collaboration between legal scholars and social scientists will enhance the likelihood of more informed decision making about these issues.Appreciation is expressed to Sarah L. Cook, without whose assistance this special issue would never have been completed.     

Assessment and Intervention with Parents to Stabilize Children Who Have Witnessed Violence

When children are exposed to violence, interventions require the assessment of parents. Whether parents can create a safe environment, are able to hear their children's story of their exposure, and then can help them move forward in healthy life patterns, must be evaluated. When safety is established, treatment of parents must be focused on how the parent can enhance the child's sense of security and empathic connection. Assessment must identify the red flags that suggest a need for more intensive work with the parent to address these issues, before specific work with the child begins. Treatment can utilize the parent's best wishes for their child to help motivate parents do the work needed for their own and their children's recovery.     

Children's recall of emotionally arousing, repeated events: a review and call for further investigation

The influence, if any, of emotional arousal on memory is a controversial topic in the literature. Much of the research on memory for emotionally arousing events has focused on a few specific issues (e.g., differences in types of details recalled in emotionally arousing and neutral events; increasing ecological validity). Although gaining more recent attention, a neglected area in the literature has been memory for instances of repeated, emotionally arousing events. This issue has important implications for understanding children's ability to recall events in a forensic setting. We review existing findings on memory for emotionally arousing events in general and particularly in children, children's memory for events that occur repeatedly, and then discuss the scarce research on repeated emotionally arousing events and the need for further research in this area. We conclude that although it is clear that children are capable of accurately reporting arousing and repeated experiences, it is also apparent that circumstances both within and outside the control of investigative interviewers influence this ability.     

Herd behavior in designer genes

The ability of individuals to choose their children's genes has increased over time and may ultimately culminate in a world involving free market reprogenetic technologies. Reprogenetic technologies combine advances in reproductive biology and genetics to provide humans increased control over their children's genes. This Article offers economic perspectives that are helpful in understanding the possibly unexpected ethical, legal, and social issues at stake in using reprogenetic technologies for trait enhancement selection. The Appendix analyzes two competitive games that might arise in such a biotechnological society. Specifically, the Article focuses on herd behavior, caused by either a popularity contest or positional competition, in the choice of genetic traits. The analytical game-theoretic models in the Appendix can have several equilibrium outcomes in terms of individual reprogenetic technological choices and corresponding beliefs about such choices by others. This multiplicity of potential social outcomes suggests that a society can attain efficiency if the state or some private organization transforms individual parents' beliefs over the choices of other parents regarding their children's traits and, thus, coordinates parental reprogenetic decisions by selecting, as focal, certain beliefs over parents' reprogenetic decisions.     

儿童读经就是“蒙以养正”？——与郭齐家先生商榷

郭齐家先生是中国大陆力倡儿童读经的重镇之一,其关于儿童读经的言论在互联网上广泛流传、影响甚大.郭齐家先生倡导儿童读经的言论主要有:中国近百年成功引进和移植了西方教育;儿童读经能够回溯文化源头、传承文化命脉;儿童读经就是最佳的文化刺激和最佳的早期教育;儿童读经就是"蒙以养正";儿童读经能够开发脑力、增强国力;等等.郭齐家先生还对著名的"横渠四句"顶礼膜拜,以支持其儿童读经的主张.其实,黑格尔的"扬弃"理论,尼采的"上帝死了"和他的"重估一切价值"思想,胡塞尔的"回到事实本身"的思考,玛格丽特·米德对人类未来的发展如何处理后喻文明、互喻文明和前喻文明提出的告谕,都不失为我们审视郭齐家先生上述观点的重要理论视角.     

A SHORT COMMENTARY ON TIMOTHY M. TIPPINS AND JEFFREY P. WITTMANN'S "EMPIRICAL AND ETHICAL PROBLEMS WITH CUSTODY RECOMMENDATIONS

In this commentary, the call for clinical humility and judicial vigilance in custody recommendations is confirmed as valid and the Australian experience, where the child custody report writer has for some years been permitted to express an opinion on the ultimate issue, is considered. The inherent risks are briefly discussed, and the question of who of the judge and the social scientist might be better placed to decide the exquisitely difficult children's issues after family breakdown is touched upon. It suggests that a combination of the expert's opinion and judicial fact finding probably produces a result that is as good as it gets. But a greater danger is highlighted. It is the impact of the adversary system, and whether it is suitable in any event to these sensitive court decisions.     

The use of multiple informants to assess children's maltreatment experiences

Most researchers rely exclusively on the reports of protective service workers to determine children's abuse history. In this report, information about children's maltreatment experiences is obtained from protective service workers and three supplementary sources of data: parents, medical records, and clinical observations. Fifty-six children from 34 families receiving protective services for verified reports of physical abuse, neglect, sexual abuse, and/or emotional maltreatment participated in the study, with most children known to have experienced more than one type of abuse. The supplementary data provided important information about the range and severity of children's maltreatment experiences. Review of the parent and medical record data led to identification of 28 children who had additional types of maltreatment experiences that were not reported by their protective services workers—nine cases of physical abuse, two cases of neglect, five cases of sexual abuse, and 12 cases of emotional maltreatment. Supplementary data also revealed information about incidents of specific types of abuse that were more severe than those reported by the children's protective service workers in an additional 24 cases. A method was devised to synthesize information provided from the different sources of data examined in this report to derive 0–4 point ratings of four categories of maltreatment experiences: (1) physical abuse, (3) neglect, (3) sexual abuse, and (4) emotional maltreatment. The Kappa reliability coefficients for each of these scales were .88, .73, .83, and .90, respectively. Data demonstrating the relationship between these maltreatment ratings and various indices of the children's socioemotional and cognitive functioning were also presented to provide preliminary support for the validity of these scales. The findings from this study suggest that multiple sources of data should be examined in order to obtain accurate assessments of children's maltreatment experiences, and that independent raters can synthesize discrepant data to obtain reliable and valid estimates of children's abuse history. Clinical and methodological issues relevant to the improved assessment of children's maltreatment experiences are also discussed.     

Understanding Children's Use of Secrecy in the Context of Eyewitness Reports

To investigate socioemotional influences on children's eyewitness accuracy, we examined children's reports for activities they were motivated to conceal. Forty-eight 3–6-year-old children participated in a standardized play session with their mothers. Half of the children were told by an experimenter not to play with certain toys, but did so at the urging of their mothers, who told their children to keep the play activities secret. The remaining children were not restricted from playing with the toys, nor told by their mothers to keep the play activities secret. Later, all children were interviewed about the activities with free narrative and detailed questions. Half were given an interview that consisted of highly suggestive questions; half were given an interview consisting of specific, less suggestive questions. Results indicated that older children who were instructed to keep events secret withheld more information than did older children not told to keep events secret. Younger children's reports were not significantly affected by the secret manipulation. There were no significant effects associated with interview type. We discuss implications for understanding the development of children's knowledge and use of secrecy, and applications of the research to issues that arise when child witnesses give reports in legal contexts.     

叙事性思维和儿童道德教育

长期以来,儿童道德教育的内容和方法侧重于例证性思维和抽象道德观念的灌输,其弊端是道德教育疏离于儿童的心理世界,凌驾于儿童的生活世界之上.根据布鲁纳提出的两种思维模式--例证性思维和叙事性思维及其特点,儿童的思维更多地具有叙事性思维的特征,叙事在儿童社会性和道德认识发展上起着核心作用;同时,叙事是儿童道德教育的基本途径之一.     

布卢姆儿童智力发展曲线的由来及证伪

本研究通过严密细致的模拟实验来评价布卢姆的儿童智力发展曲线。结果表明：由于人的智力发展在很大程度上是非随机的过程,安德生的以随机实验为根据的重叠公式不适合用于计算机的智力发展,因此,以安德生的重叠公式为根据的布卢姆的智力发展曲线从本质上说是错误的。     

‘Robust and Raring to Go?’– Judges' Perceptions of Child Witnesses

This article explores judicial perceptions of child witnesses. It considers the impact of recent legislation in England and Wales as well as in Scotland which classified all child witnesses as vulnerable and introduced a series of special measures to facilitate children's evidence. The article reports the findings of an empirical research study conducted with the judiciary in Scotland which suggests that judicial perceptions of child witnesses extend across a complex spectrum where a child may be viewed as vulnerable but is also likely to be seen as suggestible, reliable or resilient. The article advances two propositions. First, that the statutory conceptualization of children as invariably vulnerable has not displaced established beliefs concerning children's suggestibility and therefore has made little difference to perceptions of their ability to produce reliable testimony. Second, that focusing on children's potential for resilience rather than their vulnerability may prove a more productive conceptualization of children, one which could better support their capability as witnesses.     

COMMON COUPLE AGGRESSION:

Based on the experience of finding low-level partner aggression in most couples disputing custody/access arrangements, I reviewed the literature on the incidence of common couple aggression and the impact of parental conflict on children. The pervasiveness of this pattern of interparental maltreatment and its potentially negative effects on children's behavior and emotional development underlay the importance of investigating these issues with such disputing families. The integration of several existing models for clinical-forensic evaluation and recommendations was proposed.     

Perceptions and Predictors of Children's Credibility of a Unique Event and an Instance of a Repeated Event

Perceptions of children's credibility were studied in two experiments wherein participants watched a videotape of a 4- to 5- or a 6- to 7-year old child report details of a play session that had been experienced once (single-event) or was the last in a series of four similar play sessions (repeat-event). The child's report was classified as high or low accurate. In Experiments 1 and 2, reports of repeat-event children were judged to be less believable on several measures. In Experiment 1, younger children were viewed as less credible than older children. In both experiments, neither undergraduates nor community members correctly discriminated between high- and low-accurate reports. Content analysis in Study 3 revealed the relationship between age and event frequency and children's credibility ratings was mediated by the internal consistency of children's reports. Recent research on children's reports of instances of repeated events has identified several challenges facing children who report repeated abuse. These data bring to light another potential difficulty for these children.     

改革开放三十年中国离婚法研究回顾与展望

无论何时,离婚条件、离婚程序、离婚效力、离婚救济等问题,都事关人们对自由、公平、正义的追求。自1978年实行改革开放政策以来,三十年间,中国内地年获准离婚人数,从1978年28·5万对、1988年65·5万对上升到1998年119·1万对,     

MEYER ELKIN ADDRESS

The millennium Association of Family and Conciliation Courts conference, held in New Orleans, Louisiana, brought about the third annual Meyer Elkin Address. Following Jonah, Peter, and Marian Wright Edelman in 1998 and George Thomson in 1999, the organization was honored to have Senator Paul Wellstone and Sheila Wellstone discuss important issues involving domestic violence and other family and children's issues. Both Senator Wellstone and Wellstone are nationally recognized leaders in the area of domestic violence advocacy. They are sincere and diligent in their efforts to protect and promote families and children. It was a privilege to listen to the following address.     

CHILDREN RESISTING POSTSEPARATION CONTACT WITH A PARENT: CONCEPTS, CONTROVERSIES, AND CONUNDRUMS

This article provides an overview of the key concepts, themes, issues, and possible mental health and legal interventions related to children's postseparation resistance to having contact with one parent. We maintain that the too often strongly gendered polemic on alienation and abuse is polarizing and needs to be replaced with a more nuanced and balanced discussion that recognizes the complexity of the issues so that the needs of children and families can be better met. This article reviews the historical development of the concept of alienation; discusses the causes, dynamics, and differentiation of various types of parent child contact problems; and summarizes the literature on the impact of alienation on children. These are complex cases. A significant portion of the cases in which alienation is alleged are not in fact alienation cases; for those where alienation is present, interventions will vary depending on the degree of the alienation. More severe alienation cases are unlikely to be responsive to therapeutic or psycho-educational interventions in the absence of either a temporary interruption of contact between the child and the alienating parent or a more permanent custody reversal. We conclude with a summary of recommendations for practice and policy, including the need for early identification and intervention to prevent the development of severe cases, interdisciplinary collaboration and further development and research of interventions.