A Moral Developmental Perspective on Children's Eyewitness Identification: Does Intent Matter? (ICPSR 35477)

Version Date: Oct 1, 2014

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Principal Investigator(s):
Toni Spring, City University of New York. Queens College; Herbert Saltzstein, City University of New York. Graduate Center; Bianca Vidal, City University of New York. Graduate Center

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR35477.v1

Version V1

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Summary

In study 1 eyewitness identification of the perpetrator of a 'crime' (fire), framed as either intended or unintended, was studied in 138 children, ages 7 to 18. Analysis using Signal Detection reveals an interaction of age and condition on decisional bias. Like in past studies, the framing of the act had no effect on the 7-9 year olds, but did have an effect on decisional bias for the other age groups. Decisional bias was more lax (indicting more false alarms) in the intended condition for 10-12 and 14-15 year olds but was more stringent (fewer false alarms) for the 16-18 year olds. This pattern of age and condition differs from the pattern of explicit judgments (how bad the act was, how much punishment it deserved, and how bad it is to commit a false alarm or a miss). Study 2 was conducted to confirm the unexpected findings for the 10-12 year olds. Forty-two children, ages 10-12 viewed the same film, which was framed as unintended, but, resulting either in (a) major or (b) minor damage (fire), approximately half randomly assigned to condition (a) and half to (b). Parallel results were obtained with an earlier study, with lower bias scores (more false alarms) in the major than minor damage conditions. Thus, from both studies, we may conclude that decisional bias is more lenient (resulting in more false alarms) for 10-12 year olds when either intent or damage is bad.

Citation

Spring, Toni, Saltzstein, Herbert, and Vidal, Bianca. A Moral Developmental Perspective on Children’s Eyewitness Identification: Does Intent Matter? Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2014-10-01. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR35477.v1

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Subject Terms

Geographic Coverage

Smallest Geographic Unit

County

Restrictions

This dataset is part of ICPSR's Archives of Scientific Psychology journal database. Users should contact the Editorial Office at the American Psychological Association for information on requesting data access.

Distributor(s)

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
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Time Period(s)

2012 -- 2013

Date of Collection

2012-09-12 -- 2013-09-11

Data Collection Notes

  1. Data and documentation for this collection (in SPSS format) are contained in a zipped package.

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Sample

Random

Time Method

Cross-sectional

Unit(s) of Observation

Individual

Data Type(s)

Mode of Data Collection

Presence of Common Scales

Signal Detection

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Original Release Date

2014-10-01

Version History

2018-02-15 The citation of this study may have changed due to the new version control system that has been implemented. The previous citation was:
  • Spring, Toni, Herbert Saltzstein, and Bianca Vidal. A Moral Developmental Perspective on Children's Eyewitness Identification: Does Intent Matter?. ICPSR35477-v1. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2014-10-01. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR35477.v1
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Notes

  • This dataset is part of ICPSR's Archives of Scientific Psychology journal database. Users should contact the Editorial Office at the American Psychological Association for information on requesting data access.

  • The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public. Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.

  • One or more files in this data collection have special restrictions. Restricted data files are not available for direct download from the website; click on the Restricted Data button to learn more.

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Archives of Scientific Psychology

This dataset is made available in connection to an article in Archives of Scientific Psychology, the first open-access, open-methods journal of the American Psychological Association (APA). Archiving and dissemination of this research is part of APA's commitment to collaborative data sharing.