Abstract
Recently, Henry et al. (J Autism Dev Disord 8:2348–2362, 2017) found no evidence for the use of Verbal Labels, Sketch Reinstatement of Context and Registered Intermediaries by forensic practitioners when interviewing children with a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder. We consider their claims, noting the limited ecological validity of the experimental paradigm, the impacts of repeated interviewing where retrieval support is not provided at first retrieval, question the interviewer/intermediary training and their population relevant experience, and comment on the suppression of population variances. We submit that rejecting these techniques on the basis of this study is completely unwarranted and potentially damaging, particularly if used in legal proceedings to undermine the value of testimony from children with ASD, who continually struggle to gain access to justice.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Notes
Please see Additional Materials for further details and an extensive reference list.
References
Baron-Cohen, S., Campbell, R., Karmiloff-Smith, A., Grant, J., & Walker, J. (1995). Are children with autism blind to the mentalistic significance of the eyes? British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 13, 379–398.
Boucher, J., & Bowler, D. M. (Eds.). (2008). Memory in autism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bowler, D. M., Gaigg, S., & Lind, S. (2011). Memory in autism: Binding, self, and brain. In I. Roth & P. Rezaie (Eds.), Researching the autism spectrum disorder: Contemporary perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bowler, D. M., Gardiner, J. M., & Berthollier, N. (2004). Source memory in adolescents and adults with Asperger syndrome. Journal of Autism & Developmental Disorders, 34, 533–542.
Bruck, M., Ceci, S. J., & Hembrooke, H. (2002). The nature of children’s true and false narratives. Developmental Review, 22, 520–554.
Cooper, P., & Allely, C. S. (2017). You can’t judge a book by its cover: Evolving professional responsibilities, liabilities and ‘judgecraft’when a party has Asperger’s Syndrome. Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly, 68, 35–58.
Cooper, P., & Wurtzel, D. (2014). Better the second time around? Department of Justice Registered Intermediaries Schemes and lessons from England and Wales. Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly, 65, 39–61.
Cooper, P., & Wurtzel, D. (2015). Registered intermediary procedural guidance manual. London: Ministry of Justice.
Dando, C. J. (2013). Drawing to remember: External support of older adults’ eyewitness performance. PLoS ONE, 8, e69937. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0069937.
Dando, C. J., Wilcock, R., & Milne, R. (2009). The cognitive interview: The efficacy of a modified mental reinstatement of context procedure for frontline police investigators. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 23, 138–147.
Gaigg, S. B., Gardiner, J. M., & Bowler, D. M. (2008). Free recall in autism spectrum disorder: The role of relational and item-specific encoding. Neuropsychologia, 46, 983–992.
Golan, O., LaCava, P. G., & Baron-Cohen, S. (2007). Assistive technology as an aid in reducing social impairments in autism. In R. L. Gabriels & D. E. Hill (Eds.), Growing up with autism: Working with school-age children and adolescents (pp. 124–142). New York: The Guilford Press
Hala, S., Rasmussen, C., & Henderson, A. M. (2005). Three types of source monitoring by children with and without autism: The role of executive function. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 35, 75–89.
Henry, L. A., Crane, L., Nash, G., Hobson, Z., Kirke-Smith, M., & Wilcock, R. (2017). Verbal, visual, and intermediary support for child witnesses with autism during investigative interviews. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 8, 2348–2362.
Lamb, M. E., Rooy, D. J. La, Malloy, L. C., & Katz, C. (Eds.). (2011). Children’s testimony: A handbook of psychological research and forensic practice (Vol. 53). Hoboken: Wiley.
Leclercq, V., Le Dantec, C. C., & Seitz, A. R. (2014). Encoding of episodic information through fast task-irrelevant perceptual learning. Vision Research, 99, 5–11.
Lee, Y., & Nelder, J. A. (1996). Hierarchical generalized linear models. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series B (Methodological), 58, 619–678.
Lo, S., & Andrews, S. (2015). To transform or not to transform: Using generalized linear mixed models to analyse reaction time data. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 1171.
Loftus, E. F. (2003). Make-believe memories. American Psychologist, 58(11), 867–871.
Lyon, T. D., Malloy, L. C., Quas, J. A., & Talwar, V. A. (2008). Coaching, truth induction, & young maltreated children’s false allegations and false denials. Child Development, 79, 914–929.
Marchant, R., & Page, M. (1997). The memorandum and disabled children. In H. Westcott & D. Jones (Eds.), Perspectives on the memorandum (pp. 67–79). London: Arena.
Mattison, M., Dando, C. J., & Ormerod, T. C. (2015). Drawing to remember: Supporting child witnesses & victims with autistic spectrum disorder to give ‘Best Evidence’. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 15, 2.
Mattison, M., Dando, C. J., & Ormerod, T. C. (2016). Drawing the answers: How sketch reinstatement supports free and probed recall by child witnesses with ASD. Autism. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361316669088.
Memon, A., Wark, L., Bull, R., & Koehnken, G. (1997). Isolating the effects of the cognitive interview techniques. British Journal of Psychology, 88, 179–197.
Milne, R., & Bull, R. (2006). Interviewing victims of crime, including children and people with intellectual disabilities. In M. R. Kebbell & G. M. Davies (Eds.), Practical psychology for forensic investigations and prosecutions (pp. 7–24). Hoboken: Wiley.
Ministry of Justice. (2011). Achieving best evidence in criminal proceedings: Guidance on interviewing victims and witnesses, and guidance on using special measures. London: Ministry of Justice.
Naveh-Benjamin, M., Guez, J., Hara, Y., Brubaker, M. S., & Lowenschuss-Erlich, I. (2014). The effects of divided attention on encoding processes under incidental and intentional learning instructions. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 67, 1682–1696.
Pansky, A., Koriat, A., & Goldsmith, M. (2005). Eyewitness recall and testimony. In N. Brewer & K. D. Williams (Eds.), Psychology and law: An empirical perspective (pp. 93–150). New York: The Guilford Press.
Pipe, M. E., Lamb, M. E., Orbach, Y., & Esplin, P. W. (2004). Recent research on children’s testimony about experienced and witnessed events. Developmental Review, 24, 440–468.
Powell, M. B., Jones, C. H., & Campbell, C. (2003). A comparison of preschoolers’ recall of experienced versus non-experienced events across multiple interviews. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 17, 935–952.
Speelman, C. P., & McGann, M. (2013). How mean is the mean? Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 451. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00451.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Dando, C.J., Ormerod, T.C., Cooper, P. et al. No Evidence Against Sketch Reinstatement of Context, Verbal Labels or the Use of Registered Intermediaries for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Response to Henry et al. (2017). J Autism Dev Disord 48, 2593–2596 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-018-3479-z
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-018-3479-z