Mock Juror Perceptions of Child Witnesses on the Autism Spectrum: The Impact of Providing Diagnostic Labels and Information About Autism.
Laura Crane, Rachel Wilcock, Katie L Maras and 3 others
PMID 30056502WHAT IT FOUND
For one autistic child witness, mock jurors rated him more credible when told he had autism and given autism information.
For the other, the diagnosis and information did not appear to affect credibility ratings.
Key findings
01Mock jurors rated Child B more credible when they were told he had autism and given information about autism than when they were told nothing (p = .02).
02For Child A, mock jurors' credibility ratings did not differ significantly across the three information conditions (p = .09).
03More prior knowledge or experience of autism was associated with higher credibility ratings for Child B (r = .34, p < .05), but not Child A.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study included only two child witness videos, and the two boys differed in language and behaviour, so it cannot separate the effect of autism information from each child's presentation. The videos came from a staged mild mock theft, not a real serious crime, so reactions may differ in real court cases. The study did not measure the children's autistic traits objectively, so it is unclear whether behaviour, diagnosis, information, or something else drove the ratings. The participants were mock jurors, not real jurors deciding guilt, and they rated short video interviews rather than a full trial. The authors could not explain why credibility changed for one child and not the other.
Declared interests
The funder named is ESRC. The supplied text does not report author conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that telling jurors an autism diagnosis and generic autism information reliably improves credibility for autistic child witnesses. The effect was significant only for Child B (p = .02); for Child A the condition effect was not significant (p = .09), and the study used only two child witness videos.