Essentialism and the criminal legal system.

Objective: Existing literature has yet to conceptualize and consolidate research on psychological essentialism and its relation to the criminal legal system, particularly in terms of explaining how individuals with justice involvement have been and could be differentially impacted across contexts. This article explores essentialism in the criminal legal system, including its potential consequences for inequity.

Method: We review research on essentialism as a psychological construct, its common applications to different social categorizations, and its trickle-down effects within the criminal legal system.

Efficacy of memory protocols in 9- to 89-year-olds' memory for prior contacts.

Memory for prior contacts has several important applied implications, including contact tracing (for communicable diseases). Incomplete episodic memory reports, which occur across the developmental lifespan but are particularly relevant for children and older adults, may hamper such efforts. Prior research has shown that cognitively informed memory techniques may bolster recall of contacts in adults, but that work has not addressed the developmental efficacy of these techniques.

Examining resilience among child protection professionals during COVID-19: A global comparison across 57 countries.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic led to numerous challenges for child protection professionals (CPPs). However, limited research has investigated the interwoven concepts of coping, resilience, and mental distress among CPPs during COVID-19 on a global scale.

Objectives: This study aimed to explore CPPs' practice, resilience, and mental distress during COVID-19, the relationship between their resilience and mental distress, the global stability of the Multi-System Model of Resilience (MSMR), and how CPPs' resilience varied according to the Human Development Index (HDI).

Collective trauma: Childhood abuse, perceived discrimination, and COVID-19.

Objective: Few studies have examined the interplay between collective trauma (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic) and personal trauma (e.

Improving juror assessments of forensic testimony and its effects on decision-making and evidence evaluation.

Objective: We explored whether an educational forensic science informational (FSI) video either alone or with specialized jury instructions would assist mock jurors in evaluating forensic expert testimony.

Hypotheses: We predicted that the FSI video would help participants distinguish between low-quality and high-quality testimony, evidenced by lower ratings of the testimony and the expert when the testimonial quality was low compared with when it was high.

Method: Jury-eligible adults ( = 641; = 38.

Suppression and Memory for Childhood Traumatic Events: Trauma Symptoms and Non-Disclosure.

Self-reported lost memory of child sexual abuse (CSA) can be mistaken for "repressed memory." Based on our longitudinal studies of memory and disclosure in child maltreatment victims who are now adults, we discuss findings relevant to "repressed memory cases." We examined relations between self-report of temporarily lost memory of CSA (subjective forgetting) and memory accuracy for maltreatment-related experiences (objective memory).

A qualitative analysis of child protection professionals' challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Purpose: Child Protection Professionals (CPPs) play a key role in providing insights into the child protection system and how it can best support children's right to personal security, particularly during trying times like the COVID-19 pandemic. Qualitative research provides one potential tool to tap into this knowledge and awareness. This research thus expanded earlier qualitative work on CPPs' perceptions of the impact of COVID-19 on their work, including potential struggles and barriers, into the context of a developing country.

Childhood Sexual Abuse: A Longitudinal Study of Disclosures and Denials.

In legal cases regarding child sexual abuse (CSA), children have various options, such as to disclose or deny maltreatment. When interviewed in adulthood, their accounts may be consistent with their childhood responses. Alternatively, denial in childhood could be followed in adulthood by disclosure ("deferred disclosure"), confirming previous suspicions.

Resilience during times of enduring challenge: Brazilian Child Protection Professionals' resilience and psychological distress one year into the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Child Protection Professionals (CPPs) was widespread. Evidence regarding how those professionals dealt with the pandemic adversities and consequences for their wellbeing are scarce.

Objective: We sought to analyze whether predictors of resilience had changed one year into the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil.

Enhancing the effectiveness of contact tracing interviews: A randomized controlled experiment of an enhanced cognitive interview protocol.

Objectives: To compare the efficacy of a psychologically-based contact tracing interview protocol to a control protocol that emulated current practices under both interviewer-led and self-led modalities.

Methods: This randomized controlled experiment utilized a 2 × 2 factorial design (Enhanced Cognitive protocol vs Control protocol; Interviewer-led call vs Self-led online survey). Data were collected online (n = 200; M = 44; 56.

Memory Accuracy After 20 Years for Interviews About Child Maltreatment.

When adults allege childhood victimization, their long-term memory comes under scrutiny. This scrutiny can extend to the adults' memory of childhood interviews. The concerns raise important theoretical and applied issues regarding memory for long-past discussions of child maltreatment and trauma.

Dichotomous thinking about social groups: Learning about one group can activate opposite beliefs about another group.

Across three studies (N = 607), we examined people's use of a dichotomizing heuristic-the inference that characteristics belonging to one group do not apply to another group-when making judgments about novel social groups. Participants learned information about one group (e.g.

Brazilian Child Protection Professionals' Resilient Behavior during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic deeply affected child protection professionals. One potential area of concern is whether and how the pandemic has dampened these individuals' ability to engage in the resilient practices that are so vital to their wellbeing.

Objective: Within the unique and understudied context of a developing economy facing the strain of an international pandemic, this study sought to expand our theoretical understanding of the individual and socio-ecological predictors of whether child protective services professionals engage in resilient behaviors.

After Child Maltreatment: The Importance of Voice for Youth in Foster Care.

Once social services steps in to protect children from violence and neglect in their homes, many youth become wards of the specialized juvenile or family court that assists in child protection (e.g., the dependency court).

Psychological counseling and accuracy of memory for child sexual abuse.

Tens of thousands of child sexual abuse (CSA) cases are reported to authorities annually. Although some of the child victims obtain psychological counseling or therapy, controversy exists about the potential consequences for the accuracy of victims' memory of CSA, both in childhood and adulthood. Yet, delaying needed therapeutic intervention may have detrimental effects on the victims' well-being and recovery.

When Your Kind Cannot Live Here: How Generic Language and Criminal Sanctions Shape Social Categorization.

Using generic language to describe groups (applying characteristics to entire categories) is ubiquitous and affects how children and adults categorize other people. Five-year-olds, 8-year-olds, and adults ( N = 190) learned about a novel social group that separated into two factions (citizens and noncitizens). Noncitizens were described in either generic or specific language.

"These Pretzels Are Making Me Thirsty": Older Children and Adults Struggle With Induced-State Episodic Foresight.

We explored children's and adults' ability to disengage from current physiological states when forecasting future desires. In Study 1, 8- to 13-year-olds and adults (N = 104) ate pretzels (to induce thirst) and then predicted and explained what they would want tomorrow, pretzels or water. Demonstrating life-span continuity, approximately 70% of participants, regardless of age, chose water and referenced current thirst as their rationale.

Delay in disclosure of non-parental child sexual abuse in the context of emotional and physical maltreatment: A pilot study.

The present pilot study sought to identify predictors of delays in child sexual abuse (CSA) disclosure, specifically whether emotional and physical abuse by a parental figure contributes to predicting delays over and above other important victim factors. Alleged CSA victims (N=79), whose parental figures were not the purported sexual abuse perpetrators, were interviewed and their case files reviewed, across two waves of a longitudinal study. Regression analyses indicated that experiencing both emotional and physical abuse by a parental figure was uniquely predictive of longer delays in disclosure of CSA perpetrated by someone other than a parental figure.

Beyond Sally's missing marble: further development in children's understanding of mind and emotion in middle childhood.

Research on the development of theory of mind (ToM), the understanding of people in relation to mental states and emotions, has been a vibrant area of cognitive development research. Because the dominant focus has been addressing when children acquire a ToM, researchers have concentrated their efforts on studying the emergence of psychological understanding during infancy and early childhood. Here, the benchmark test has been the false-belief task, the awareness that the mind can misrepresent reality.

Expectations of emotions during testimony: the role of communicator and perceiver characteristics.

This study investigated the influence of communicator (child victim) and perceiver (adult participant) characteristics on expectations about witnesses' emotional displays during testimony. In total, 191 adults were asked whether or not they expected child victims who were testifying about sexual abuse to display sadness, fear, anger, disgust, happiness, or a neutral demeanor, and how intensely the adults expected each emotion to be displayed. In describing the victims, child age (5 vs.