Jessica Klemfuss
University of California-Irvine, CA·Psychology
When a child may have been abused, what the child says in an interview or in court can decide the outcome of the case. Investigators often need to know when things happened and in what order.
- Fields
Psychology
Social Science
- Topics
child maltreatment
child abuse disclosure
forensic interviewing
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Mar 2027
What they work on
- Code 581 legal transcripts from child maltreatment cases to describe how children of different ages are questioned about event sequence and where ambiguous wording produces confusion in their answers.
- Test in laboratory studies with 644 children aged 4 to 12 how age, working memory, attention, and episodic memory affect accuracy and response biases when they recall the order of events.
- Examine how children interpret sequencing questions with more than one possible meaning, testing whether their interpretations vary predictably with age and working memory.
- Measure how 300 U.S. mock jurors judge the credibility of adult questioners and child respondents, and how accurately they understand sequencing questions and children's answers.
More about the research
Yet experts disagree about how to ask young children about time and sequence, and little research guides the choice. A poorly worded question can confuse a child or make a true report seem less believable.
Why it matters
The findings could guide forensic interviewers, attorneys, and courts toward ways of asking about event timing that children, even very young ones, can answer accurately. This may make maltreated children's reports clearer and more credible, and could support more just outcomes that protect children's health and well-being.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Julie Golomb
Ohio State University, OH·Psychology
Test whether spatial distractions also disrupt nonspatial filters that control what enters visual working memory, using behavioral experiments, neuromodulation and computational analyses.
Angela Gutchess
Brandeis University, MA·Psychology
Test whether the self-reference effect, the memory boost from relating information to oneself, differs among non-Hispanic White, second-generation Chinese American and second-generation Mexican American adults.
Alexandra Rosati
University of Michigan, MI·Psychology·Early-career
Identify unique features of human cognitive control by comparing humans with chimpanzees on a new battery of tasks measuring working memory, inhibition, updating, performance monitoring and planning.
The school
University of California-Irvine: 46 labs on PI Pages, $645M a year on research, 524 research doctorates a year.
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