Eyewitness recall and suggestibility in individuals with Down syndrome

Background: Many criminal justice professionals perceive the eyewitness skills of individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID) to be weaker than those of typically developing (TD) individuals. Down syndrome (DS) is one of the most common genetic causes of ID, yet there is no research addressing eyewitness skills in this population. This study examinedthe eyewitness recall and suggestibility of young peoplewith DS. Method: Young people with DS and mental age-matched TD children viewed a video of a non-violent petty crime and were subsequently asked to freely recall the event before being asked general and specific questions incorporating both misleading and non-leading prompts. Results: Compared to mental age-matched TDindividuals, young people with DS:produced as much information; were just as accurate;and were no moresuggestible. Conclusions: The eyewitness memory skills of young people with DS are comparable to those of mental age-matched TDchildren. The implications of these findings for the forensic context and eyewitness memory are discussed

Experts in rape: evaluating the evidence for a novice-to-expert continuum in the offense behavior and cognition of sexual offenders

Despite being over 15 years old researchers have been slow to adopt the competency or expertise perspective advocated by Ward (1999) as a complimentary viewpoint to the dominant deficit model of sexual offending. A growing body of research on the behavioral and cognitive impact of expertise suggests that it is timely to revisit the question of whether individuals can become expert at rape. This review summarizes the key points in Ward’s theory and evaluates the scant research that could lend it support. The expertise perspective is a fertile area for future research and may provide a mechanism for explaining the relationship between explicit and implicit measures of distorted cognition. The review makes suggestions for future research and appraises the clinical implications of considering sexual aggressors as novices or experts