The Scottish police caution: do individuals with intellectual disabilities understand a verbally presented police caution, and can comprehension be improved?

Abstract

This study considers comprehension of the Scottish police caution amongst people with an intellectual disability (n = 30). It applies techniques to the caution that are suggested to increase its ‘listenability’, to examine whether this could be a successful method of improving understanding. These techniques include providing instructions, further explanations and listing information. Half of the participants were assessed using the original version and half the modified version. Participants were assessed using an abbreviated IQ assessment, a measure of working memory and measure of state anxiety to consider potential predictors of performance. The modified version did not improve performance, with no participants judged to have adequate understanding in either version.

Keywords:

• common law caution
• comprehension
• intellectual disability
• learning disability
• police caution

Ethical standards

Declaration of conflicts of interest

Michael Rendall has declared no conflicts of interest

Ken MacMahon has declared no conflicts of interest

Bruce Kidd has declared no conflicts of interest

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee, University of Edinburgh Health in Social Science Research Ethics Committee, and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, Michael Rendall, upon reasonable request.