Avatars with child sexual abuse (vs. no abuse) scenarios elicit different emotional reactions

ABSTRACT

Simulated avatar interview training has been proven to be effective in improving child sexual abuse interview quality. However, the topic of perceived realism of the avatars and whether they cause emotional reactions has not been previously investigated. Such reactions could affect both learning from the interview simulations as well as how actual interviews are conducted. We wanted to understand whether participants perceive allegedly sexually abused child avatars as realistic and how they emotionally respond to avatars revealing they were actually abused vs. not-abused. Psychology students and recent graduates (N = 30, M_age= 27.9 years) watched eight avatars (four boys, four girls, four with a CSA and four with a no-CSA scenario) providing a series of details about what had happened. Before and after observing each avatar, the participants’ emotional reactions and perceived realness of the avatars were measured. Also, during each observation, the participant’s facial expressions were recorded. The participants self-reported more negative (anger, sadness, disgust) and more positive (relief) emotions to confirmed CSA and disconfirmed CSA scenarios, respectively, while results for facially expressed emotions were less clear. Higher general emotionality related to CSA and higher perceived realness of the avatars made the differences generally stronger.

KEYWORDS:

• Child sexual abuse (CSA)
• emotional reactions
• simulation training
• investigative interviewing

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Open Scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badge for Preregistered. The materials are openly accessible at https://aspredicted.org/ii5sz.pdf.

Acknowledgement

The authors are thankful to Dr. Tue Hvass Petersen for assisting with the face recognition software data extraction.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (https://doi.org/10.1080/1068316X.2024.2332140)

Additional information

Funding

This project has received funding from European Regional Development Fund (project No 01.2.2-LMT-K-718-03-0067)under grant agreement with the Research Council of Lithuania (LMTLT).