ARTICULOS DE ACTUALIZACION EN PEIATRIS SOCIAL

1. CHILD WITNESSES WITH MILD INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES ARE AS

RELIABLE AS OTHER CHILDREN WITH SAME MENTAL AGE
Deirdre Brown
Research demonstrates reliability of their evidence and paves the way for this
vulnerable group to participate properly in legal systems.
Child witnesses with mild intellectual disabilities are typically just as reliable as other
children of the same mental age, according to our research. We found, for example, that
the testimony of a 12-year-old child who has the thinking skills of a 9-year-old is as
detailed and reliable as that of a typical 9-year-old child. Mild means children whose
mental functioning is in the bottom 1 per cent of the population.
These findings from our research, conducted in the UK, demonstrate that once
investigators know such a childs developmental or mental age, they can pitch interviews
at the level they would adopt for a typically developing child of that age.
Investigators should know a childs developmental or mental age before
interviews so that they can tailor questions appropriately, assess testimony
realistically and act confidently on the evidence.
Higher risk of abuse
Children with intellectual disabilities are particularly vulnerable, but they are often
excluded from legal proceedings. Studies suggest that one in three children with
disabilities experiences some form of abuse or maltreatment, partly because such children
rely more on others for care. Their needs may be so great and resources may be so
stressed either within families or in institutional settings that they are at risk of abuse.
Yet maltreatment of such children is less likely to be investigated because, according to
research, legal systems, police and interviewers typically lack confidence in what they say.
Practitioners, lawyers, judges and jurors should therefore be informed that children with
mild intellectual disabilities have the same accuracy of recall as do children of the same
mental or developmental age. Disseminating this finding could improve child protection
considerably.
Early, open-ended interviews best for child witnesses
Our findings also show that children should be interviewed early on. All the children in our
study, regardless of their intellectual abilities, recalled more information more accurately
after six months if they had first been interviewed after only a short delay. Also, openended questioning produced higher-quality recall than did a more focussed style of
questioning that some professionals adopt when they interact with a child with intellectual
disability.
We examined the performance of children whose mental functioning was in the bottom 1
per cent of the population. Almost all attended special schools and had special curricula
and teaching aid. The children with intellectual disabilities were between 7 and 12 years
old and had one of two levels of disability: 46 were in the mild range and 34 in the more

severe moderate range. We studied an additional 116 children with typical intellectual
development, making a total of 196 children. All took part in an event at their school and
were later questioned about it.
The interviews followed a protocol that is internationally promoted as the best way to
assess allegations of child maltreatment. Half the children were interviewed a week after
the event and then again six months later. The other half were interviewed only once, six
months after the event.
Severity of intellectual disability is important
The children with mild intellectual disability typically had poorer recall than did
mainstream children of the same age. However, their performance almost invariably
matched that of children of the same mental or developmental age. This was true with
regard both to details about the event and to how they answered leading or misleading
questions that might be used in legal cross-examination. The narrative quality of their
storytelling was also comparable.
Our findings make a compelling case that investigators should be told the mental age of a
child with intellectual disabilities before interviewing the child. Investigators often lack this
information. Studies show that disabilities are often neither recognised nor documented
and that judges, for example, often dont modify their questioning to take disabilities into
account.
Providing information about childrens mental age and acting on it would be a
considerable breakthrough. Most people with intellectual disability dont look different
from anyone else, and they may not act differently from the mainstream population. Their
disability may not become clear for some time. So being briefed on mental age is
important. Even then, it can be challenging to sit in front of someone who looks like a 12year-old and keep in mind that the person is functioning like a 9-year-old.
Our findings were different for children with more severe moderate disability. They had
poorer recall than did mainstream children of the same intellectual age. So a 10-year-old
with moderate intellectual disability, perhaps giving him a mental age of 4, did not recall
things as well as a typically developing 4-year-old child.
This finding doesnt mean that the evidence such children give is unreliable. Rather, it
shows that knowledge of such disability is vital, in particular for determining whether to
use a more nuanced style of questioning. All the children we interviewed responded more
accurately to broad open-ended questions than to narrow, focussed questions and were
able to provide relevant information in response to them. This was just as true for children
with moderate intellectual disabilities, but they struggled to provide fuller information.
Having clear knowledge of their intellectual abilities would help interviewers to know the
level of structured prompts that this group requires at particular points to elicit the most
and the most accurateinformation.
Investigators should know mental age of child witness
Our research expands knowledge on the reliability of childhood testimony, studies of which
have tended to focus on children with mainstream abilities. It tells us that investigators

can have the same level of confidence in children with mild intellectual disabilities as they
do in children who dont have a disability, provided they know the mental age of the child
and act accordingly. Conveying this knowledge would be inexpensive and wouldnt require
a lot of training. Doing so would be a highly cost effective policy shift that could be
enacted relatively easily and offer enhanced legal protection to a vulnerable group of
children.
Policy Implications
Direct resources towards effective training and review of interviewing practice, and,
importantly, explore how to provide interviewers with relevant information about the child
and their developmental level prior to an interview.
Practical Implications
Seek information from those that know the child, and from any formal assessments that
may have been conducted, about the developmental and cognitive level of the child, to
help plan and pitch the questioning approach effectively.
Deirdre Brown
Senior Lecturer, School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
Posted on: Wednesday 2 March 2016
Original research and references
1. Brown DA, Lewis CN & Lamb ME An Early Interview Improves Delayed Event
Memory in Children With Intellectual DisabilitiesChild Development, 86, July/August
2015

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2.- FAMILY INSTABILITY HITS BOYS HARDER THAN GIRLS AND HAS
DOUBLE POVERTYS INFLUENCE ON CHILDHOOD AGGRESSION
Sara McLanahan
Schools should focus on sensitive treatment for the dominant legacies of family
instability disruptive behaviour and anxiety.
Increasing family instability, caused by divorce and remarriage (as well as the formation
and dissolution of cohabiting unions), is having a major influence on childrens socialemotional development, especially among boys, according to latest research.

Education policy should address the impacts of instability and expand beyond its focus on
improving test scores, which, for many children, is too narrow an approach for securing
long-term success. It must also tackle the mix of aggression, anxiety and other long-term
mental health problems, particularly among boys, that can be dominant legacies of family
instability.
Early support would be better than coming down hard on misbehaving
children, particularly boys, which can turn them against school so they fall
behind, leading to damaging spill over effects.
These difficulties undermine development of so-called non-cognitive skills, such as the
ability to pay attention and persist with a task, as well as self-confidence and the ability to
get along with peers, which may be just as important as test scores in the long run. A
policy shift is urgent because recent increases in family instability have put more and
more children at risk of missing out on developing important social-emotional skills.
These recommendations spring from our research in the United States examining the
causal effects of different types of family instability on children. We found that divorce and
separation play a limited role in shaping childrens cognitive abilities, such as language
and mathematical skills, which are tested in conventional school examinations. Maternal
education and poverty are much more important in this area. In contrast, family instability
plays a much bigger role than mothers education or poverty in the development of
social-emotional skills. For example, family instability has twice as much influence as
poverty does on whether children develop aggressive behavior. It is on par with poverty in
causing childhood anxiety and shyness.
Our findings show that losing a biological father when parents break up is generally worse
for childrens development than the arrival of a stepfather in their lives. The breakup of a
two-parent family also typically has a more negative emotional impact for white children,
whereas the entrance of a stepparent has a more negative impact for Hispanic children.
The significant role that mental health or social-emotional skills play in individual success
is becoming better understood. For example, the U.S. Perry Preschool program for threeand four-year-olds from disadvantaged families was designed in the 1960s to improve
cognitive scores in language and math tests. It was initially deemed a failure because
early gains in test scores faded over time. However, when researchers looked at these
children 40 years later, they found that those who participated in the program were more
likely to finish high school than their peers and more likely to have positive outcomes in
adulthood, notably more stable relationships and less criminality. Many people now believe
that the program, which was designed to enhance cognitive skills, actually affected
childrens social-emotional skills. This seems to have conferred lifelong benefits that
perhaps outweigh those that might have sprung from the sought-after but unachieved
higher test scores.
All this means that policy makers need to consider how to better prevent children from
being handicapped by emotional or behavioural problems such as aggression, shyness and
anxiety. Children should be supported properly as they go through the now common
experience of family instability. Teachers should know more about the part that family
disruption can play in childhood difficulties. Schools should have mental health counsellors

and identify children at risk. When children have a fever or a broken arm, they receive
expert help. Likewise, schools should be sensitive to how children typically react to family
breakdown and reorganization. Early support would be better than coming down hard on
misbehaving children, particularly boys, which can turn them against school so they fall
behind, leading to damaging spill-over effects.
It is important to understand the role of gender in these issues. Emotional wellbeing
appears to be much more compromised by family instability among boys than it is among
girls. The impact of instability on non-cognitive skills is two to three times greater for
boys, we found.
The reasons are not well understood. It may be that the loss of a biological father is more
important to boys than to girls. Possibly, the loss is a marker for a lot of other sources of
instability new men moving in and out, the arrival of half-siblings, a more complex
household to which boys may be more sensitive.
Whatever the reasons, it is worth asking whether this greater emotional sensitivity among
boys helps explain their increasing difficulties in school. The gender gap between girls and
boys achievement in school, which has opened up in the US and other Western countries
since about 1980, has coincided with a great deal of family instability.
Policy Implications
Education policy should address the impacts of instability and expand beyond its focus on
improving test scores, which, for many children, is too narrow an approach for securing
long-term success.
Practical Implications
Schools need to tackle the mix of aggression, anxiety and other long-term mental health
problems, particularly among boys, that can be dominant legacies of family instability.
Sara McLanahan
William S. Tod Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, Center for Research on Child
Wellbeing, Princeton University, USA.
Original research and references
1. Dohoon Lee and Sara McLanahan Family Structure Transitions and Child
Development: Instability, Selection, and Population Heterogeneity American
Sociological Review 126 (2015)
3.- CHILDREN RAISED WITHIN MARRIAGE DO BETTER ON AVERAGE. WHY?
David C. Ribar
Does marriage lead to good or successful parenting, or are people with the
traits of good parents more likely to marry?

Plenty of research shows that children who are raised by their married, biological parents
tend to be healthier (both mentally and physically) and do better in school, than children
who are not raised within marriage. But why?
Is the reason that married couples tend to have more resources, both financially and
otherwise? That they can run a household more efficiently by specializing in different tasks
and coordinating their efforts? That together they have a larger social network to rely on
for support when things get tough? In short, what are the mechanisms through which
marriage operates to enhance childrens wellbeing?
The advantages of marriage for childrens wellbeing will be hard to replicate
through policies other than those that bolster marriage itself.
And beyond these mechanisms, is there something intrinsic to marriage itself that directly
leads to better outcomes for children? At a time when so many American children are
growing up with single or cohabiting parents, thats an important question. Whats the
best way to help all children thrive? Is it through policies that will help unmarried parents
and families take advantage of the same mechanisms that married parents enjoy and
thereby help their children have better life outcomes? Or through policies that encourage
parents to get married and stay married?
When we look at the relationship between marriage and childrens wellbeing, the question
of causality looms large. If children of married parents receive better parenting, for
example, does that mean that marriage leads to good or successful parenting, or does it
mean that people with the traits of good parents are more likely to marry?
Researchers call this a selection problem; that is, its possible that married parents tend to
select marriage because they have certain qualitieshigher incomes, more education,
larger social networksthat also tend to produce better outcomes for children.
Sophisticated statistical techniques can help sort out this problem. Though I wont go into
the technical details, researchers have used such techniques to examine the mechanisms
through which marriage might improve childrens lives, looking for causal effects.
For a recent issue of the Future of Children, I reviewed research on a variety of
mechanisms that might explain why children of married parents fare better than other
children. Some of the mechanisms have been well studied, including parents income,
fathers involvement with their children, parents physical and mental health, parenting
quality, health insurance, home ownership, parents relationships, and family stability.
Others have received less attention, including net wealth, constraints on borrowing, and
informal insurance through social networks.
All of these mechanisms tend to vary by family structure (that is, whether the children
have married parents or live in another family arrangement). All of them may affect some
aspect of childrens wellbeing, such as health or educational attainment. Yet when
researchers study them, they typically find that a given mechanism explains some but not
all of the relationship between family structure and childrens outcomes.
For example, a recent study hypothesized that higher household income and greater
access to health insurance might explain why children of married parents generally have
better health than other children. The authors confirmed that family structure was

associated with income and insurance, and that income and insurance were in turn
associated with childrens health; however, even among children with similar household
income and similar access to health insurance, those whose parents were married were
also healthier. Thus, although the researchers found support for their hypothesis that
differences in income and insurance produced differences in childrens health, they also
found that family structure had other associations with health beyond income and
insurance. This pattern of partial explanation is repeated across many, many studies.
The principal exception to this pattern comes from studies of family stability. When
researchers measure instability by the simple number of transitions between different
family arrangements (for example, from living with married to parents to living with a
single parent after a divorce to living in a stepfamily), they find that instability often
accounts for most if not all of the associations between family structure and childrens
outcomes. So stability could be the mechanism through which marriage improves
childrens wellbeing. Still, it could also be that these studies havent really explained why
family structure matters; rather, they may have just found that counting the number of
transitions is the best way to measure family structure.
What can we conclude from the fact that almost wherever we look, mechanisms such as
higher income, more education, better access to health insurance and so on dont fully
explain the association between American childrens wellbeing and marriage? One
reasonable conclusion is that the advantages of marriage for childrens wellbeing will be
hard to replicate through policies other than those that bolster marriage itself. While
helping unmarried parents increase their incomes, spend more time with their kids, find
better child care, etc., would surely benefit children, these are likely to be, at best, only
partial substitutes for marriage itself. The advantages of marriage for children appear to
be the sum of many, many parts.
Photo: Chris Parfitt, Creative Commons.
Policy Implications
The US Government should shift resources, protections, and opportunities back toward
workers and families in the middle and lower parts of the income distributionits no
coincidence that marriage rates have declined as these groups have been marginalized.
David C. Ribar
Professorial Research Fellow, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research,
The University of Melbourne, Australia
Original research and references
1. Ribar DC Why Marriage Matters for Child Wellbeing Future of Children 25, no. 2
(2015): 11-27
http://childandfamilyblog.com/children-marriage-do-better-why/
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