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An Examination of “Don't Know” Responses in Forensic Interviews with Children
Abstract
Most experimental studies examining the use of pre-interview instructions (ground rules) show that children say “I don't know” more often when they have been encouraged to do so when appropriate. However, children's “don't know” responses have not been studied in more applied contexts, such as in investigative interviews. In the present study, 76 transcripts of investigative interviews with allegedly abused children revealed patterns of “don't know” responding, as well as interviewers’ reactions to these responses. Instructions to say “I don't know” when appropriate did not affect the frequency with which children gave these responses. Interviewers rejected “don't know” responses nearly 30% of the time, and typically continued to ask about the same topic using more risky questions. Children often answered these follow-up questions even though they had previously indicated that they lacked the requested information. There was no evidence that “don't know” responses indicated reluctance to talk about abuse. Implications for forensic interviewers are discussed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
... Field studies provide important insight into how ground rules are used in real-world contexts. Yet only a handful of studies have examined the use of ground rules in real legal settings (Ahern et al., 2015;Earhart et al., 2017;Earhart et al., 2014;Teoh & Lamb, 2010). In one study, Teoh and Lamb (2010) assessed 75 interviews using the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) protocol with children alleging maltreatment in Malaysia. ...
... However, children are seldom given the opportunity to practice applying the ground rules. In Earhart et al. (2014), despite half of the interviewers presenting the I don't know ground rule, no interviewers allowed children to practice applying it after presenting the instruction. Other legal contexts see similar exclusion of practice. ...
... Thus, omitting the ground rules practice can lead to a missed opportunity to provide feedback to children who do not understand the rules. Yet only one of the aforementioned studies (Earhart et al., 2014) examined practice (or lack thereof) of the ground rules in forensic interviews. Whether this pattern of omission generalizes to interviewers using different protocols needs to be examined. ...
Most child forensic interviewing protocols recommend that interviewers administer a series of ground rules to emphasize concepts that are important to accurately answering interview questions. Limited research has examined whether interviewers follow ground rules recommendations in real-world forensic interviews. In this study, we examined how often highly trained interviewers presented and practiced each of the recommended ground rules. We also examined whether children accurately responded to practice questions. We coded transcripts from 241 forensic interviews of 4- to 12-year-old children conducted by interviewers in the United States who were largely trained using the Ten Step Investigative Interview (Lyon, 2014). Results demonstrated that interviewers routinely presented and practiced the ground rules, but this significantly varied by children’s age. Additionally, children often accurately responded to practice questions, but younger children were less accurate than older children. Taken together, results highlight that interviewers may deviate from ground rules recommendations based on the characteristics of the child which has implications for both future research and practice.
... As Brubacher et al. (2015) observed, it is unlikely that children of different developmental levels are equally able to understand and apply these rules. Indeed, there is emerging evidence that children's understanding , use of (Danby et al., 2015), and benefit from (Earhart, Rooy, Brubacher, & Lamb, 2014;Teoh & Lamb, 2013) such instruction varies with development. ...
... We saw developmental differences in rule-related responses during the interview. Accuracy can be considered a proxy for telling the truth, nonsubstantive responses are consistent with the instruction to say "I don't know", and corrective responses are consistent with the "correct me" rule (Danby et al., 2015;Earhart et al., 2014). As in Danby et al.'s (2015) study, children used corrective responses sparingly during the interview. ...
... Within this study, frequent requests to elaborate upon their previous comments reduced the number of questions requiring "don't know" responses. However, even when field interviewers follow a best practice protocol, they may still ask some problematic (complex or suggestive) questions Cyr & Lamb, 2009;Danby et al., 2015;Dickinson et al., 2015;Earhart et al., 2014;Lamb et al., 2009;Orbach et al., 2000). We do not know enough about the extent to which such questions affect reliability as much as when a set of highly leading or misleading questions are administered in a block . ...
Children often answer questions when they do not have the requisite knowledge or when they do not understand them. We examined whether ground rules instruction-to say "I don't know," to tell the truth, and to correct the interviewer when necessary-assisted children in applying those rules during an interview about a past event and whether doing so was associated with more accurate accounts. We compared children with intellectual disabilities (mild or moderate severity, n = 44, 7-12 years) with 3 groups of typically developing children (2 matched for mental age, and 1 for chronological age, n = 55, 4-12 years) on their understanding of 3 ground rules, their use of these rules in an interview, and their accuracy in recalling a personally experienced event. Many children were able to demonstrate proficiency with the rules following simple instruction but others required additional teaching. Children applied the rules sparingly in the interview. Their scores on the practice trials of each rule were unrelated to each other, and to the use of the rules in context. Their developmental level was significantly related to both of these skills. Regression models showed that developmental level was the best predictor of children's accuracy when they recounted their experience during the interview but that use of responses consistent with the rules, in conjunction with developmental level, predicted accurate resistance to suggestive questions. Future research should identify how best to prepare children of different ages and cognitive abilities to answer adults' questions appropriately. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
... However, interviewers are taught to encourage children and adolescents to indicate when they don't know the answer (Lamb et al., 2018;Lyon, 2014), and IDK answers could reflect honest ignorance. Indeed, other research has failed to find a correlation between reluctance and IDK responses (Andrews et al., 2017;Earhart et al., 2014). With respect to denials of assertions by the interviewer, these were classified as reluctant by Henderson et al. (2021), and denials comprised a substantial percentage of reluctant responses (15%). ...
... A lack of association between reluctance and IDK responding is consistent with prior field studies that have failed to find a relation (Andrews et al., 2017;Earhart et al., 2014). The higher rate of IDK responding among the youngest children may be due to developmental differences in memory and indicative of a genuine failure to recall the requested information. ...
Adolescents tend to be neglected in research examining child sexual abuse (CSA) interviews yet are often said to be particularly reluctant. This study examined reluctance among 119 10- to 17-year-old females questioned about suspected CSA (n = 25,942 responses), utilizing a scheme identifying previously overlooked types of reluctance in commercially sexually exploited (CSE) youth. In contrast to the CSE youth in a prior study, in which 26% of responses were reluctant, only 8% of CSA victims’ responses expressed reluctance. Reluctance was unrelated to age, abuse characteristics, and don’t know (IDK) responding. Greater reluctance (but not IDK responding) was related to disclosure of fewer characteristics of abuse. Virtually all youth (93%) had disclosed prior to the interview, in contrast to previous studies examining reluctance among adolescent victims of internet-initiated sexual abuse and CSE. The way in which abuse is discovered may better explain reluctance than the age of the alleged victims.
... El cuerpo de la psicología del testimonio inició con trabajos sobre testigos presenciales adultos (Gutiérrez y Carpintero, 2004). Sin embargo, últimamente han sido varias las investigaciones realizadas sobre los distintos aspectos del testimonio infantil, como validez de las declaraciones (Erives, 2013;Köhnken, Manzanero y Scott, 2015), falsas memorias y falsas creencias (Rodríguez et al., 2007; Wade, Green y Nash, 2011), diferencias individuales relativas al desarrollo cognitivo (Roca, Baqués y Sáiz, 2005, citado en Alarcón y Sánchez, 2015; Goodman, Goldfarb, Chong y Goodman-Shaver, 2014; Segovia y Crossman, 2012; Solis, 2000), detección de mentiras (Ribeiro, Romão, Fernandes, Pacheco y Monteiro, 2014), tipo de preguntas utilizadas en caso de abusos sexuales repetidos (Brubacher, Malloy, Lamb y Roberts, 2013;Earhart, La Rooy, Brubacher y Lamb, 2014), protocolos de entrevistas (Block, Foster, Pierce, Berkoff y Runyan, 2013;Novo, Velasco y Arce, 2014;Presentación, Medina, Soriano y Negre, 2014;Roos y Landström, 2013), análisis comparativo de testimonios (García, 2013) y contextualización de estos en otros idiomas (Estado de Míchigan, 2003;nichd, 2008;Peixoto, Ribeiro y Alberto, 2013). ...
... Se contempló en este punto una fase preliminar de revisión y planeación de la entrevista, el ambiente en el que se desarrolla, los materiales y el momento de realización. Igualmente, se establecieron los pasos previos al cuestionamiento sobre los hechos, como la presentación del entrevistador, la comunicación de las reglas de base (aclaraciones sobre el objetivo de la entrevista y su dinámica) (Earhart et al., 2014), consejos para estimular la empatía y para familiarizarse con la realidad del entrevistado (exploración de su contexto familiar, social, personal, académico) (Cantón y Cortés, 2008;García, 2013;Hernández, 2011y Newlin et al. 2015 y la introducción al tema mediante la estimulación de la narración libre (Arce y Fariña, 2014;Maffioletti, 2009). A continuación se plantearon recomendaciones para la entrevista propiamente dicha: comenzar planteando preguntas abiertas (sin presionar ni dirigir las respuestas), continuar con preguntas más específicas que precisen información, sin límite de tiempo para contestar ni in terrupción del relato del niño o la niña (Manzanero, 2010a). ...
... Children were more inclined to answer IDK to the nonsensical wh-questions than the nonsensical yes-no questions. Waterman et al. (2000) theorized that children's greater tendency to guess in response to yes-no questions is due to the ease with which children can generate a response to yes-no questions compared to wh-questions (see also Earhart et al., 2014;and Marquis et al., 1972, p. 184 [in adults "willingness to guess . . . may be stronger when questions are forced-choice rather than openended"]). ...
... We tested young maltreated children, who are an obviously relevant population to study, but one missing from prior experimental work on interview instructions. Observational work has examined maltreated children's IDK responding to instructions (Earhart et al., 2014), but that research is unable to assess accuracy, and examined instructions without practice or feedback. Prior work with the maltreated population from which our children were drawn has identified deficits in executive functioning (Williams et al., 2020) and receptive vocabulary (Lyon & Saywitz, 1999), which likely limit their metacognitive ability to recognize when they know the answers to questions, their working memory capacity to keep the instruction in mind, and their executive capacity to apply the instruction in formulating their response . ...
Objective:
Two studies examined 4-7-year-old maltreated children's "I don't know" (IDK) responses to wh- questions after receiving various interview instructions.
Hypotheses:
We predicted (H1) children would be less inclined to give IDK responses and more inclined to guess to color/number questions compared to other wh- questions; (H2) IDK instructions would increase children's IDK responding compared to no instructions, with an increase in accuracy; but (H3) instructions would be less effective in reducing guessing for color/number questions than other wh- questions. In Study 1, we predicted that (H4) verbalizing a commitment to answer IDK would be particularly effective. In Study 2, we predicted that (H5) IDK instructions would reduce children's accurate corrective responses, but that (H6) the negative effect of IDK instructions on corrective responses would be alleviated by a "correct the interviewer" instruction.
Method:
Across 2 studies, 301 four- to seven-year-old (M = 5.60, SD = 1.09) maltreated children viewed videos and answered wh- questions about true and false details. Both studies included a within-subjects manipulation of wh- types (color/number & wh- detail) and a between-subjects manipulation of instructions (Study 1: IDK practice, IDK practice/verbalize, control; Study 2: IDK, correct me, IDK + correct me, control).
Results:
In both studies, (a) color/number questions elicited more guessing than wh- detail questions, (b) IDK instructions decreased inaccurate responses, but they also decreased accurate responses, including accurate corrective responses, and (c) IDK instructions had a larger effect on wh- detail questions, reducing accurate corrective responses. In Study 1, verbalization failed to enhance the effect of instructions. In Study 2, the negative effect of IDK instructions on accurate corrective responses was not alleviated by instructions to correct the interviewer.
Conclusions:
Among young maltreated children, color/number questions elicit higher rates of guessing than other wh- questions. IDK instructions reduced inaccurate responses, but also reduced accurate responses. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
... It is important that all those that are to be questioned are well informed about practical matters relating to the interview, such as the need for video and/or audio-recording, that the interviewer may take notes during the interview and, in court, the importance of not talking to other witnesses before they have testified, to avoid collusion. Furthermore, forensic questioning can be unusual and difficult for children, in particular, who are accustomed to being tested by knowledgeable adults (Lyon, 2010), and often feel pressured to answer adults' questions (Earhart, La Rooy, Brubacher, & Lamb, 2014). Lawyers may also question children using complicated prompts about events that occurred long ago (Andrews, Lamb, & Lyon, 2015;Hanna, Davies, Crothers, & Henderson, 2012;Spencer & Lamb, 2012), making it critical to prepare children for their unique roles as witnesses by providing them with ground rules, which includes instructing them not to guess and to express uncertainty when they do not understand or know the answers to questions (i.e., the "I don't know" ground rule). ...
... In one courtroom study analysing rates of children's uncertainty (Andrews, Ahern, & Lamb, 2017), it was found that lawyers rarely stated the "I don't know" ground rule, and never practised it with children. Therefore, as in Earhart et al.'s (2014) study, the presentation of the don't know/remember ground rule was not associated with a significant increase in the frequency with which children expressed uncertainty. It has therefore been emphasised that lawyers should practise the use of ground rules to check children's understanding of its use, and ground rules should be reiterated throughout proceedings . ...
... It is important that all those that are to be questioned are well informed about practical matters relating to the interview, such as the need for video and/or audio-recording, that the interviewer may take notes during the interview and, in court, the importance of not talking to other witnesses before they have testified, to avoid collusion. Furthermore, forensic questioning can be unusual and difficult for children, in particular, who are accustomed to being tested by knowledgeable adults (Lyon, 2010), and often feel pressured to answer adults' questions (Earhart, La Rooy, Brubacher, & Lamb, 2014). Lawyers may also question children using complicated prompts about events that occurred long ago (Andrews, Lamb, & Lyon, 2015;Hanna, Davies, Crothers, & Henderson, 2012;Spencer & Lamb, 2012), making it critical to prepare children for their unique roles as witnesses by providing them with ground rules, which includes instructing them not to guess and to express uncertainty when they do not understand or know the answers to questions (i.e., the "I don't know" ground rule). ...
... In one courtroom study analysing rates of children's uncertainty (Andrews, Ahern, & Lamb, 2017), it was found that lawyers rarely stated the "I don't know" ground rule, and never practised it with children. Therefore, as in Earhart et al.'s (2014) study, the presentation of the don't know/remember ground rule was not associated with a significant increase in the frequency with which children expressed uncertainty. It has therefore been emphasised that lawyers should practise the use of ground rules to check children's understanding of its use, and ground rules should be reiterated throughout proceedings . ...
Making an Impact on Policing and Crime: Psychological Research, Policy and Practice applies a range of case studies and examples of psychological research by international, leading researchers to tackle real-world issues within the field of crime and policing.
Making an Impact on Policing and Crime documents the application of cutting-edge research to real-world policing and explains how psychologists’ insights have been adapted and developed to offer effective solutions across the criminal justice system. The experts featured in this collection cover a range of psychological topics surrounding the field, including the prevention and reduction of sexual offending and reoffending, the use of CCTV and ‘super-recognisers’, forensic questioning of vulnerable witnesses, the accuracy of nonverbal and verbal lie detection interview techniques, psychological ‘drivers’ of political violence, theoretical models of police–community relations, and the social and political significance of urban ‘riots’.
This collection is a vital resource for practitioners in policing fields and the court system and professionals working with offenders, as well as students and researchers in related disciplines.
... El cuerpo de la psicología del testimonio inició con trabajos en testigos presenciales adultos (Gutiérrez y Carpintero, 2004), últimamente han sido varias las investigaciones realizadas frente a los distintos aspectos del testimonio infantil, como la validez de las declaraciones (Juárez, 2004;Erives, 2013;Köhnken, Manzanero y Scott, 2015), falsas memorias y falsas creencias (Wade, Green y Nash, 2011;Rodríguez et al., 2007), diferencias individuales como el desarrollo cognitivo (Solis, 2000;Segovia y Crossman, 2012;Roca, Baqués y Sáiz, 2005 citados por Alarcón y Sánchez, 2015; Goodman, Goldfarb, Chong y Goodman-Shaver, 2014), detección de mentiras (Ribeiro, Romão, Fernandes, Pacheco y Monteiro, 2014), el tipo de preguntas a realizar en caso de abusos sexuales repetidos a niños (Brubacher, Malloy, Lamb y Roberts, 2013;Earhart, La Rooy, Brubacher y Lamb, 2014), protocolos de entrevistas aplicados Exactitud del Testimonio Infantil 6 a niños (Block, Foster, Pierce, Berkoff y Runyan, 2013;Roos y Landström, 2013;Novo, Velasco y Arce, 2014;Presentación, Medina, Soriano y Negre, 2014), el análisis comparativo de éstos (García, 2013) y, la contextualización de éstos en otros idiomas (Cabañas, 2003;Omaña y González, 2008;Peixoto, Ribeiro y Alberto, 2013); contrario a esto, las investigaciones en torno a la exactitud del testimonio infantil han sido menores (Sporer, McQuiston e Ibabe, 2006citados en Alarcón y Sánchez, 2015. Esta investigación parte de la influencia que tiene el procedimiento de entrevista en el grado de exactitud del testimonio infantil, partiendo de algunas investigaciones que sustentan la habilidad que presentan los niños para brindar testimonio de manera acertada cuando las técnicas o preguntas realizadas alientan que cuenten los hechos con sus propias palabras, dándose relatos precisos inclusive en los niños más pequeños (Álvarez, 2010(Álvarez, citado en Celedón, 2016. ...
... Los protocolos se estructuraron de acuerdo con lo encontrado en la literatura acerca de las prácticas adecuadas y las prácticas erróneas en el proceso de entrevista con población infantil; para el primer tipo de entrevista se recopilaron los pasos de una técnica adecuada de entrevista forense, contemplando una fase preliminar de revisión y planeación de la entrevista y del ambiente en el que se desarrolla, materiales y momento de realización, y dentro del proceso como tal, el establecimiento de pasos iniciales previos al cuestionamiento por los hechos como lo son la presentación del entrevistador, el establecimiento de las reglas de base (aclaraciones sobre el objetivo de la entrevista y la dinámica de la misma) (Earhart, 2014), propiciar la empatía, familiarizarse con la realidad del entrevistado (exploración de su contexto familiar, social, personal, académico) (Hernández, 2011;Cantón y Cortés, 2008;García, 2013y Newlin, Steele, Chamberlin, Anderson, Kenniston, Russell y Vaughan-Eden, 2015, introducción al tema dando inicio a las preguntas sobre los hechos con la estimulación de la narración libre (Maffioletti, 2009; Arce y Fariña, 2014), seguido de preguntas abiertas (sin presionar ni dirigir las respuestas), continuando con preguntas más específicas que precisen información, sin límite de tiempo para contestar a cada pregunta ni interrupción del relato del niño o niña (Manzanero, 2010a), además contemplando una fase de cierre como espacio para inquietudes o información adicional por parte del entrevistado y el agradecimiento por la colaboración en la entrevista (Hernández, 2011;Cantón y Cortés, 2008;García, 2013;Maffioletti, 2009y Juárez y Sala, 2011. Para el caso del protocolo de entrevista con prácticas incorrectas se incluyó la presentación del entrevistador pero obviando las fases previas al interrogatorio (reglas de base, rapport y demás) y pasando inmediatamente al cuestionamiento frente a los hechos como tal. ...
... Younger children produce shorter and less detailed accounts in response to open-ended questions than older children and adults (e.g., Eisen, Goodman, Qin, Davis, & Crayton, 2007;Hershkowitz, Lamb, Orbach, Katz, & Horowitz, 2012;Lamb et al., 2003), but their reports are no less accurate (e.g., Jack, Leov, & Zajac, 2014;Sutherland & Hayne, 2001). On the other hand, younger children are more likely than older children and adults to provide erroneous details in response to closed-ended questions (e.g., Waterman, Blades, & Spencer, 2004;see Melnyk, Crossman, & Scullin, 2007, for a review), perhaps in part because they are less willing to say "I don't know" in response to closed as opposed to open questions (Earhart, La Rooy, Brubacher, & Lamb, 2014). ...
... As in forensic interviews (Andrews & Lamb, 2016), child witnesses in court were more often responsive than unresponsive (Andrews et al., 2015a;Klemfluss et al., 2014), although Lamb, 2016 andAndrews et al. (2015a, in press) reported that children were more responsive to prosecutors than defense lawyers. Furthermore, in Scottish courts, as in the forensic interviews studied by Earhart et al. (2014), children responded with more uncertainty in response to directive questions, particularly those posed by defense lawyers (Andrews, Ahern, & Lamb, under review). In relation to report consistency, studies measuring children's self-contradictions have found that defense lawyers elicited more inconsistencies than prosecutors (Andrews & Lamb, 2016;Andrews et al., 2015a;Zajac et al., 2003;Zajac & Cannan, 2009), and that suggestive questions elicited more self-contradictions than any other prompt type, regardless of age (Andrews et al., 2015a;Zajac et al., 2003). ...
In the first study to systematically assess the structural linguistic complexity of lawyers' questions of children in Scotland, we examined 56 trial transcripts of 5- to 17-year-old children testifying as alleged victims of sexual abuse. Complexity was assessed using 8 quantitative measures of each utterance's components (number of questions, phrases, clauses, sentences, false starts, average word count, word length, and sentence length) and a composite measure was used in the analyses. Lawyers did not alter the complexity of questions when prompting children of different ages. Defense lawyers asked more structurally complex questions than prosecutors. Directive questions were the least structurally complex questions, followed by option-posing questions. Suggestive questions, followed by invitations, were the most structurally complex questions. Option-posing and suggestive questions were more complex when asked by defense lawyers than prosecutors. Of suggestive questions, confrontation and tagged questions were more complex than any other question type. Increased structural complexity led to more unresponsiveness, more expressions of uncertainty, and more self-contradictions regardless of which lawyer asked, the question type, or the children's ages. These findings highlight the additional risks associated with asking some types of questions in structurally complex ways and highlight the need for further innovations (e.g., the use of intermediaries) to facilitate the questioning of vulnerable witnesses in Scottish criminal courts.
... En consecuencia, aproximadamente un tercio de los niños entrevistados elaboran una nueva respuesta a partir de la anterior y, cuando estas preguntas incluyen sugerencias, aumenta la probabilidad de generar auto-contradicciones entre las respuestas. Ese mismo año, otro estudio afirmaba al respecto que casi un 30% de las respuestas de desconocimiento ("no sé") eran cuestionadas de nuevo aumentando el rigor de las preguntas (Earhart et al., 2014). ...
En los delitos sexuales, las características especiales de algunas personas las convierten en víctimas potencialmente vulnerables. Ante la responsabilidad y obligatoriedad legislativa de actuar de manera inmediata en defensa de sus derechos y garantizar su protección, los profesionales del contexto policial y judicial que intervienen en la obtención del testimonio tienen el reto de adaptar los procedimientos para la obtención
y evaluación de sus testimonios. Las investigaciones previas confirman desinformación y consiguiente mala praxis policial y judicial en los casos de abuso sexual a víctimas especialmente vulnerables: alta demora en las denuncias, repetición de interrogatorios y uso de preguntas inadecuadas. En el presente artículo se analizan todos estos factores de influencia y se dan algunas recomendaciones para mejorar los procedimientos de
obtención de sus testimonios. Finalmente, se alerta sobre la posible sugestión que podría derivarse del mal uso de procedimientos que pretenden mejorarla cantidad de información recuperada, pero que pueden contribuir a generar falsas memorias.
... First, irrespective of whether a questioner suggests (in tone or manner) the desired answer (e.g., "Surely you fought back, didn't you?"), there is a tendency for people to exhibit a response bias toward "yes" when response options are narrowed to yes or no, or to choose an option provided by an interviewer instead of saying "I don't know" (Goodman et al., 2014). Response bias, which is largely a socially driven phenomenon, is more prevalent among complainants of relatively low social status (e.g., children, aboriginal complainants, people with communication impairment), and is not easily dampened with warnings about the importance of saying "I don't know" and not to guess responses (Beuscher & Roebers, 2005;Cohen & Harnick, 1980;Eades, 2008;Earhart et al., 2014;Henry & Gudjonsson, 2003). Indeed, children typically perceive adults as competent and sincere communication partners and thus they often comply with requests for information without even fully understanding the question (Ceci et al., 1987;Ceci & Bruck, 1993). ...
The way that complainants of child sexual assault are questioned about their experiences can profoundly influence the accuracy, credibility, and consistency of their evidence. This is the case for all people, but especially children whose language, social, and cognitive capacity is still developing. In this study, we examined the questions used by a representative sample of Australian prosecutors, defense lawyers, and judges/magistrates to determine if this is an area that warrants improvement. Our focus was the type of questions used by the different professionals and how (if at all) these varied across complainant age groups (children, adolescents, and adults, total N = 63). Our findings revealed that each complainant group was questioned in a manner known to heighten misunderstanding and error (e.g., complex and leading questions were used frequently by all professional groups). There was also little indication of question adaption according to age (e.g., prosecutors asked children more complex questions than they asked adults). When the results are considered in the context of the broader literature on the impact of different question styles, they suggest that professional development in questioning would improve the quality of trial advocacy and judicial rulings.
... Conversely, one often also sees negative pairing, in which an interviewer follows up on a response to a more preferred question-type (such as "what happened") with a less preferred question-type (such as "did he hurt you?"). For example, interviewers have been criticized for following up "don't know" answers with more direct questioning (Earhart et al., 2014). Analogously, interviewers have been observed to recast more open-ended questions as closed-ended questions (e.g., "What happened--Did he hurt you?), labelled as "negative recasting" (Henderson et al., 2020). ...
In child sexual abuse cases, a central part of the child’s testimony is their description of the abuse episode. However, children often struggle to describe the body mechanics of abuse, and miscommunications are likely. The present study examined questions about the mechanics of abuse in trial transcripts (N = 63) to identify sources of miscommunication (N = 130) between attorneys and children (5 – 12 years old, M age at trial = 9 years old, SD = 2 years). Both attorneys and children used imprecise language, leading to miscommunication. Specifically, imprecise sexual terminology, the word “touch,” polarity items, broad open-ended questions, anaphora and ellipses, and “how” questions led to imprecision in attorneys’ questions. Imprecise questions often elicited under-informative answers. In response to under-informative answers, attorneys at times asked highly focused and leading questions. Implications and recommendations for future research on how best to elicit these details from children are discussed.
... Children may also not recognise that 'I don't know' is a valued and appropriate response in a forensic setting (Scoboria & Fisico, 2013), because they are often encouraged to answer challenging questions in other settings by guessing (e.g., in conversations with parents, or in tests of knowledge by teachers). Perhaps not surprisingly, a recent evaluation of forensic interviews about alleged abuse showed that children said 'I don't know' rarely -they responded in this way to less than 6 per cent of all prompts (Earhart, La Rooy, Brubacher, & Lamb, 2014). In an attempt to highlight the unique goals of the information exchange in forensic interviews, many interview protocols thus encourage interviewers to describe and practice 'ground rules' that emphasise the particular expectations of the interview (i.e., to talk only about things that really happened, to say 'I don't know/remember/understand' when appropriate, and to correct interviewers if they say something incorrect). ...
... Second, it is possible that the instructions of finding a smaller word might have biased children answers. Studies of child response bias have determined that children are often reluctant to say that they do not know the answer (Earhart et al., 2014), and that this bias is exasperated in closed-ending type questions (Waterman et al., 2001). One study found that, despite high accuracy in identifying nonsensical or unanswerable questions, children still attempted to answer more than 70% of nonsense question (Waterman et al., 2010). ...
The Frenchorthographic system is particularly difficult to learn because nearly 30% of words in the lexicon end with a silent letter. One metalinguistic skill that has been identified to facilitate spelling acquisition in French is morphological knowledge. This cross-sectional study investigated the construct of morphological knowledge, its development and its role in building accurate orthographic representations in a sample of francophone elementary students. We proposed that morphological knowledge, a superordinate process, encompasses children’s implicit use of morphemes in everyday language and their conscious, targeted manipulation of morphemes. In the present study, we assessed children’s recognition of morphogrammes, the silent-letter endings (SLEs) of root words that become pronounced in suffixed forms (e.g., the silent t in chant/ʃã/ [song] → chanteur /ʃãtœʀ/ [singer]). When spelling root words, children may mark morphogrammes by recalling morphologically related words in which the morphogramme is not silent – thus, morphological knowledge was hypothesized to positively predict morphogramme spelling. One hundred and twenty-three children in grades 1–3 were assessed on four measures of morphological knowledge, two measures of spelling recognition and a dictation of pseudowords to explore their inclusion of silent-letter endings in novel words. As expected, morphological tasks that required explicit morphological manipulations were harder than implicit ones. Moreover, first graders struggled to complete explicit morphological tasks, while third graders were near ceiling performance on implicit tasks. Nevertheless, the four tasks converged on a single morphological knowledge construct as confirmed by a factor analysis. Importantly, morphological knowledge explained unique variance in children’s accurate representation of silent-letter endings after controlling for grade, reading for pleasure and general orthographic recognition of words. Finally, children rarely used silent-letter endings when spelling pseudowords; however, when they did, they displayed sensitivity to the appropriate phonological context for the letter used. The findings are in accord with theoretical models suggesting that the representations of letters without phonological value are difficult to construct and may remain fuzzy.
... open-ended questions; Lamb, Orbach, Hershkowitz, Horowitz, & Abbott, 2007), and (c) encouraging or enticing witnesses to guess (vs. providing an option not to respond; Earhart, La Rooy, Brubacher, & Lamb, 2014). When these avoidable errorinducing interview techniques are avoided, however, as in the cognitive interview (Fisher & Geiselman, 1992) or the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) protocol (Orbach et al., 2000), witness descriptions can be quite accurate. ...
Although certain pockets within the broad field of academic psychology have come to appreciate that eyewitness memory is more reliable than was once believed, the prevailing view, by far, is that eyewitness memory is unreliable—a blanket assessment that increasingly pervades the legal system. On the surface, this verdict seems unavoidable: Research convincingly shows that memory is malleable, and eyewitness misidentifications are known to have played a role in most of the DNA exonerations of the innocent. However, we argue here that, like DNA evidence and other kinds of scientifically validated forensic evidence, eyewitness memory is reliable if it is not contaminated and if proper testing procedures are used. This conclusion applies to eyewitness memory broadly conceived, whether the test involves recognition (from a police lineup) or recall (during a police interview). From this perspective, eyewitness memory has been wrongfully convicted of mistakes that are better construed as having been committed by other actors in the legal system, not by the eyewitnesses themselves. Eyewitnesses typically provide reliable evidence on an initial, uncontaminated memory test, and this is true even for most of the wrongful convictions that were later reversed by DNA evidence.
... open-ended questions; Lamb, Orbach, Hershkowitz, Horowitz, & Abbott, 2007), and (c) encouraging or enticing witnesses to guess (vs. providing an option not to respond; Earhart, La Rooy, Brubacher, & Lamb, 2014). When these avoidable errorinducing interview techniques are avoided, however, as in the cognitive interview (Fisher & Geiselman, 1992) or the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) protocol (Orbach et al., 2000), witness descriptions can be quite accurate. ...
What law enforcement—and the public—needs to know
... Research on children's communication skills has stimulated the creation of instructions to help children cope with the challenges of a forensic interview. Young children are unlikely to monitor their knowledge (Earhart, La Rooy, Brubacher, & Lamb, 2014) and comprehension of questions and rarely admit lack of knowledge and understanding or recognize that it is acceptable (Scoboria & Fisico, 2013). Children may fail to ask for clarification (Malloy, Katz, Lamb, & Mugno, 2015) or to correct interviewers who introduce inaccurate information (Evans, Roberts, Price, & Stefek, 2010). ...
The contribution of psychology to knowledge on child protection is substantial. This article reviews this contribution and suggests opportunities for psychology to contribute more, choosing 3 selected areas: (a) interviewing children to assess child maltreatment, (b) the well-being of children involved with the child protection system, and © evidence-based practices to ameliorate the effects of child maltreatment among children involved with the child protection system. Across these areas, psychology has contributed both to the knowledge base and to available assessment and intervention methods. However, in each area, the effect on usual child protection practice has been limited. Psychology has an opportunity to broaden its contribution through research and systems intervention aimed at extending gains in these areas throughout the child protection field. (PsycINFO Database Record
... At this point, the empirical question is whether the child will speculate (e.g., "He is a police officer") or use this follow-up prompt to correctly state they have no knowledge (i.e., "I don't know what my dad does."). However, a large literature indicates children have difficulty resisting selecting a response and indicating they do not know (e.g., Earhart et al., 2014). Therefore, we did not expect that the something else option would bolster performance on unanswerable questions. ...
Forensic guidelines recommend minimizing forced-choice questions when interviewing children. We investigated whether adding a “something else” alternative to forced-choice questions affected 3- to 5-year-olds’ (N = 94) reports of an event involving innocuous touch. Following a 1-week delay, children were randomly assigned to receive either standard 2-alternative forced-choice questions or the same questions with an additional something else alternative. All children received 3 counterbalanced question types: correct alternative present, no correct alternative present, and unanswerable. Children’s overall accuracy was not affected by the something else alternative except on questions with no correct alternative present, where performance went from 15% to 31% accurate. Children selected or generated inaccurate and speculative responses to the majority of unanswerable questions regardless of a something else alternative. These findings suggest that the inclusion of a something else alternative does not bypass concerns about the use of forced-choice questions during interviews with children.
... With age, children were more likely to answer temporal questions, but also to include phrases indicative of uncertainty in their responses. Similarly, studies of children's responses to nonsense questions and studies of the effects of forensic interviewing instructions on children's performance have revealed that, with age, children naturally and without prompting increasingly provide don't know responses, including in situations for which don't know is the "correct answer" because there is no accurate answer (Earhart, La Rooy, Brubacher, & Lamb, 2014;Waterman & Blades, 2011;Waterman, Blades, & Spencer, 2000). As we discuss next, these responses, which are indicative of uncertainty and may well be developmentally appropriate and accurate depictions of children's honest lack of knowledge, have implications for how others evaluate children's credibility. ...
In legal settings, children are frequently asked to provide temporal information about alleged abuse, such as when it occurred and how often. Although there is a sizeable body of work in the literature regarding children's ability to provide such information, virtually nothing is known about how adults evaluate the veracity of that information. This omission is especially noteworthy given that adults' evaluations are critical to the progression and outcome of legal cases. We examined adults' perceptions of children's reports of temporal details regarding alleged sexual abuse. We varied both children's age (6 vs. 11 years) and how certain children were when providing such details to assess whether adults were sensitive to changes in how children of different ages typically talk about temporal information. With regard to credibility, adults were insensitive to children's age, perceiving younger and older children who reported temporal details with confidence as more credible than those who reported information tentatively. Normative developmental trends, however, would suggest that, with age, children are often tentative when reporting true temporal details. With regard to perceptions of children's accuracy in reporting temporal information, adults found younger children who were confident to be the most accurate. Regarding guilt judgments, adults rated defendants as having a higher degree of guilt when children were confident in reporting temporal details. The findings have implications for juror decision-making in cases of alleged sexual abuse in which children report when or how often abuse occurred. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
... Children's responses may also be shaped by the nonverbal cues that accompany questions. For example, an interviewer's tone, gestures, and facial expressions may convey information about expected responses or selectively reinforce responding (or nonresponding), as might repetition of questions (16). Furthermore, if a child has been subjected to suggestive interviewing prior to the formal interview (e.g., during informal questioning from caregivers or teachers, or exploratory interviews from professionals like doctors or social workers), the effects of such questions may persist in subsequent interviews even if they are conducted optimally (15). ...
For several decades, researchers have examined how children develop autobiographical memory, demonstrating that even young children report useful information about their experiences. However, the way adults question children influences profoundly the amount and nature of what children report. This research is relevant for the many contexts in which children are questioned (e.g., criminal investigations, courtroom proceedings, clinical settings). In this article, we briefly review developmental changes in how children respond to various kinds of questions. And we reflect on the implications for research and practice when children are interviewed to determine what they have experienced.
... It is not known whether the findings would generalize to situations in which children are questioned about negative events generally or abuse-related events specifically (repeated or otherwise). However, field research provides no indication that children describing abusive incidents would benefit more from ground rules than children describing a pleasant event (e.g., Earhart, La Rooy, Brubacher, & Lamb, 2014;Malloy et al., 2015). Further, it is known that chronically maltreated children's metacognition and other executive functions lag behind those of their non-maltreated peers (Danese & McEwen, 2012). ...
Despite the widespread use of ground rules in forensic interview guidelines, it is unknown whether children retain and apply these rules throughout narrative interviews. We evaluated the capacity of 260 five- to nine-year-olds to utilize three ground rules. At the beginning of the interview all children heard the rules; half also practiced them. Children then responded to open-ended prompts about a repeated laboratory event and were assessed for their application of the rules. Logistic regressions revealed that practice only benefitted the use of the "don't know" rule. Although the children accurately answered "don't understand" and "correct me" practice questions, practice appeared to give no greater benefit than just hearing the rules. Results suggest that the current format of ground rule practice in interview guidelines is appropriate for the "don't know" rule, but the other rules may require more extensive practice with this age group. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
... Yet, the number of instructive prompts with the youngest age group was strongly positively correlated with the proportion of informative responses in the substantive phase, suggesting that this younger group stood to benefit most (similar to the findings of Dickinson et al., in press). In the only other field study we are aware of, Earhart, La Rooy, Brubacher, and Lamb (2014) assessed the use of the "don't know" ground rule in interviews with alleged sexual abuse victims (4-14) conducted according to the Memorandum of Good Practice. Half of the interviews contained the "don't know" ground rule instruction and half did not, but interviewers treated children similarly regardless of whether or not they had delivered the rule. ...
Guidelines for conducting investigative interviews with children often include instructions that explain the conversational rules of the in- terview. Despite the widespread and international use of such instructions (also referred to as “ground rules”), the body of re- search characterizing children’s understanding of these rules and documenting the impact of instruction on memory reports is rel- atively small. We review the use of ground rules in investigative interviews, the developmental differences that likely underlie chil- dren’s ability to make sense of these rules, and research pertaining to the effects of the ground rules commonly included in interview guidelines on the reports of 3- to 13-year-old children. We then present a study space analysis concerning the five ground rules re- viewed: (a) a statement about interviewer naïveté regarding the target events, (b) instructions to tell the interviewer when a mistake has been made, (c) cautions that some questions may be repeated, and instructions to say (d) “I don’t understand” and (e) “I don’t know.” The results demonstrate obvious gaps in this body of literature, with only the “I don’t know” ground rule having received significant at- tention. In addition to exploring how individual rules impact interview performance, we encourage more process-oriented studies that relate developmental differences in ground rules benefits to the cognitive processes that underlie rule understanding and imple- mentation. Optimally, this research should identify the most suitable ormat and placement of instruction in interviews and broaden to more often include field studies of child witnesses.
The aim of this study was to investigate the different types of resistant behavioural responses to unanswerable questions, their respective individual contribution to the overall variance in resistance efficacy, and their differential protective effect on repeated questioning, interrogative pressure, and delayed suggestibility. The participants were 360 children aged between 7 and 17 years, 180 of whom were suspected victims of sexual abuse and 180 matched peers for age, sex and IQ. All children completed the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale 2. Delayed suggestibility was measured after a 1-week delay. The findings show that ‘don't know’, ‘direct explanation’, and ‘no’ answers are unrelated response styles that have individual effects on resistance to misleading questions. ‘Direct explanation’ answers are most stable and robust and increase incrementally with age in children, whilst ‘no’ answers decline. The findings suggest that ‘Don't know’, ‘direct explanation’, and ‘no’ answers are driven by different cognitive and social processes.
This chapter aims to summarize the development of investigative interviewing of children especially in the UK and Turkey to give short information about the methods which have been implemented by police officers during interviews. The role of the interviewers during the interview will be outlined and some information will be given about children as witnesses. This book chapter will also express the risks and difficulties of conducting interviews with children. Moreover, it will be briefly underlined the harmfull effects of re-interviewing of children. All these subjects were examined comprehensively Interviewing is at the heart of any police investigation and thus is the root of achieving justice in society.
This chapter aims to summarize the development of investigative interviewing of children especially in the UK and Turkey to give short information about the methods which have been implemented by police officers during interviews. The role of the interviewers during the interview will be outlined and some information will be given about children as witnesses. This book chapter will also express the risks and difficulties of conducting interviews with children. Moreover, it will be briefly underlined the harmfull effects of re-interviewing of children. All these subjects were examined comprehensively Interviewing is at the heart of any police investigation and thus is the root of achieving justice in society.
Doctors and especially paediatricians in clinics and private practices are often the first professionals to be confronted with the suspicion of a child endangerment (sexual abuse, physical abuse, neglect, Munchausen-by-proxy syndrome). They thus play a key role in the early assessment and clarification of suspicion and setting the course for the further interdisciplinary procedure. The clinical investigation of a suspicion is a diagnostic and communicative challenge. The procedure includes biomedical diagnostics, structured medical history based on standardized questionnaires and a forensic (investigative) interview of caregivers and especially of the affected child. The child’s statements are subject to various risks of bias. The mental processing of events can modulate and distort the scope and quality of the report in many ways. Expectations on how the professionals will use this information and the consequences that may arise for the family as well as the resulting conflicts of loyalty are superimposed on the child’s willingness to talk and to provide valid statements. On the part of the interviewer too, motivational, affective and cognitive processes pose risks for a suggestive influence on the child as well as for the objectivity in carrying out the interview and the interpretation of the findings. Complex pitfalls endanger the validity and forensic usability of the interview results. In order to assure the quality of their findings, interviewers are therefore required to carefully register and reflect on their own motivational tendencies and implicit hypotheses, to know and avoid suggestive question formulations and to make use of standardized interview protocols whenever possible.
This study examined the uncertain responses of 56 5- to 17-year-old alleged sexual abuse victims testifying in Scottish criminal court trials. Don’t know/remember ground rules were explained to 38% of the children and each child reported uncertainty in response to 15% of the questions on average. Uncertain responding was associated with expressions of resistance and confusion, questioning context (proportionally more regarding substantive than non-substantive issues), question content (least to disclosure-focused questions), utterance type (more to directives, particularly those posed by defense lawyers; more to recall-based than recognition prompts), and age (children in mid-adolescence were less likely to respond uncertainly than those who were either older or younger). There were no associations between expressions of uncertainty and ground rule administration, or with whether or not the question focused on central rather than peripheral details about the alleged crimes. Findings highlight concerns surrounding preparatory procedures to help witnesses, especially adolescents, indicate uncertainty when testifying.
Examined aspects of the eyewitness experience with 70 adults, 45 8-yr-olds, and 45 6-yr-olds who viewed a video of 2 children arguing over a bicycle and were asked free and cued-recall, and positive- and negative-leading questions. Correct free recall varied with item type. Age differences were found for correct free recall, but not for unbiased cues. Incorrect free recall was at near floor levels. Forgetting for all ages was comparable when based on levels of initial free recall but was greater for children when based on what was remembered to unbiased cued-recall questions. Six-yr-olds were more suggestible to negative-leading questions than other Ss. Adults demonstrated a rejection bias, and correctly recalled more peripheral items. Changed answers were most common for 6-yr-olds. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved)
Eyewitness researchers have long argued that children's testimony is unreliable because of their excessive suggestibility. The present study is an examination of two factors thought to explain some of the apparent suggestibility of children: (1) the emphasis placed on giving a classifiable answer to every question asked; (2) the effects of repeated questioning within an interview.
A total of 72 children, from three age groups (6, 8 and 10 years) was questioned about a staged event they had witnessed earlier. It was found that telling children that they could say 'Don't know' to questions increased the number of such responses, but with no effect on the overall proportion of correct or incorrect responses. Even subjects who had not been instructed in the use of this response were prepared to say 'Don't know' to the experimenter's questions. Repeated questioning resulted in a decrease in the number of correct responses given, but had no effect on the number of incorrect re sponses.
This study investigated children's and adults' event recall accuracy and suggestibility effects when participants' accuracy motivation was manipulated. A total of 240 participants (6-, 7-, and 8-year-olds, and adults) were shown a video and later asked 4 types of questions: answerable questions, both open-ended and strongly misleading, and unanswerable questions, both open-ended and strongly misleading. Participants were either (a) rewarded with a token for every correct answer (high accuracy motivation, Free Report Plus Incentive condition), (b) explicitly given the option of answering with "don't know" when unsure (medium accuracy motivation, Free Report condition), or (c) asked to provide an answer to every question, even when they were not sure or had to guess or both (low accuracy motivation, Forced Report condition). The condition with the high accuracy motivation yielded the highest recall accuracy scores for answerable open-ended and misleading questions. For unanswerable questions, even the youngest age group was able to increase the number of appropriate "don't know" answers when highly motivated to be accurate, but a misleading question format undermined these abilities. The results highlight important interactions between social (accuracy motivation) and cognitive factors (metacognitive monitoring processes) in children's formal interviewing.
This study examined whether providing preschool children with simple groundrules (the importance of being complete, saying “I don't know”, correcting the interviewer, and not guessing) would reduce false details in their recall of a staged event. Forty-nine preschool children participated in an event that consisted of two activities. One or two days later they were given a biasing interview that included false suggestions about one of the experienced activities as well as a nonexperienced activity. For the other activity, no suggestions were made. Eight, 15 and 22 days after the event, the children were required to recall all three activities in their own words. Immediately prior to their recall, half of the children were provided with the groundrules while the remaining children were not. The children in the control group also participated in a fifth interview in which they received the groundrule instructions. The results revealed that the provision of the groundrules had negligible impact on the accuracy of information provided irrespective of the context or order of the interview or the activity being recalled. The implications of these results are discussed and suggestions for future research are offered.
The quality of a representative sample of 43 forensic interviews with alleged victims (aged 3 – 8 years) of child sexual abuse (CSA) in Finland was investigated. Interviews were coded for type of interviewer utterance, type of child response, details in the child response and number of words in each utterance. Option-posing, specific suggestive and unspecific suggestive question types comprised almost 50% of all interviewer utterances. The interviewers continued to rely on leading and suggestive questions even after the child had provided significant information, i.e., interviewers failed to follow-up information provided by the child in an adequate way. Longer questions (in number of words) often rendered no reply from the child, whereas shorter questions rendered descriptive answers. Interviewers seemed to fail in discussing the topic of sexual abuse in an appropriate way, frequently employing long and vague unspecific suggestive utterances.
In spite of exhortations to the contrary, forensic interviewers typically ask forced-choice questions, especially yes/ no and multiple-choice. In this study, older (4.8–5.1 yrs) and younger (3.2–4.4 yrs) preschoolers' responses to yes/ no and multiple choice questions were compared. For yes/no questions, half were correctly answered by "yes" and half by 'no." For 2-option multiple-choice questions, the first option was correct for a third of them, the second option was correct for another third, and neither option was correct for the remainder. Both older and younger preschoolers demonstrated a response bias toward saying "yes" to yes/no questions; they did not exhibit response biases for multiple-choice questions, choosing the two given options equivalently often. When neither option was correct, they more frequently said "I don't know", especially younger preschoolers. "I don't know" was almost never given in response to yes/ no questions. Furthermore, instructions allowing "I don't know" had no effect. These results have implications for forensic interviews; they suggest that responses to yes/ no questions are more unreliable and information from them more suspect than responses to multiple-choice questions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Over the past 25 years, many researchers have studied children's testimony with a particular focus on children's capacities to provide reliable and valid information about their past experiences (see reviews by Ceci & Bruck, 1995; Ceci, Leichtman, & Putnick, 1992; Dent & Flin, 1992; McGough, 1994; Memon & Bull, 1999; Perry & Wrightsman, 1991; Poole & Lamb, 1998; Spencer & Flin, 1990). Initially, most researchers conducted controlled studies in the laboratory, but their ecological validity was often questioned (Doris, 1991; Lamb & Thierry, 2005). Since then, studies conducted in both field and laboratory circumstances have focused more narrowly on issues of particular relevance to forensic application--and have helped generate a remarkable consensus about children's competencies
and limitations. In brief, the research shows that although children clearly
can remember incidents they have experienced, the relationship between age and memory is complex; a variety of factors influence the quality of information provided. For our present purposes, perhaps the most important of these factors pertain to the interviewers' ability to
elicit information and the child's willingness and ability to
express it, rather than the child's ability to
remember it. Our goal in this chapter is to summarize current understanding of the factors that influence children's ability to provide accurate information about events they have experienced and to demonstrate how application of this knowledge in forensic settings in fact enhances their informativeness. In the next section, we thus examine the ways that rapport, language and communicative capacity, memory development, and suggestibility shape children's informativeness. In the course of our selective literature review, we also discuss aspects of our own research program, mostly conducted with the use of transcripts of actual forensic interviews with alleged child abuse victims, to illustrate how informative children can be when interviewers build on their capacities and strengths. Most of the interviews had been conducted in Israel by youth investigators who are statutorily mandated to conduct all investigative interviews of children (Sternberg, Lamb, & Hershkowitz, 1996), and in the United States, Britain, and Sweden by social workers, sheriffs, or police officers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Children are interviewed in a variety of contexts, for example, in the legal setting and in experimental research. In these situations, it is often very important that children indicate when they do not know the answer to a question, rather than guess. In the present experiment, one hundred and forty-nine 5- to 9-year-olds witnessed a staged event in one of two conditions. The interviewer was either present at the event (knowledgeable interviewer) or absent from the event (uninformed interviewer). Children were then interviewed using yes/no questions and wh-questions. Within each type of question, half were answerable based on the information provided; the other half were not answerable (i. e. the correct answer was ‘don't know’). The children performed consistently well with the answerable questions. With the unanswerable questions, there was an effect of format and interviewer knowledge. Children were more likely correctly to indicate that they did not know the answer to an unanswerable wh-question than an unanswerable yes/no question. Also, children were more likely correctly to say ‘don't know’ to unanswerable questions when the interviewer had been absent from the event.
Objective:
The goal of this study was to evaluate the quality of investigative interviews in England and Wales since implementation of the Memorandum of Good Practice (MOGP), which specified how forensic interviews of alleged child abuse victims should be conducted.
Method:
Transcripts of 119 videotaped interviews of alleged victims between the ages of 4 and 13 years were obtained from 13 collaborating police forces. Trained raters then classified the types of prompts used by the investigators to elicit substantive information from the children, and tabulated the number of forensically relevant details provided by the children in each response.
Results:
Like their counterparts in the United States, Israel, and Sweden, forensic interviewers in England and Wales relied heavily on option-posing prompts, seldom using open-ended utterances to elicit information from the children. Nearly 40% of the information obtained was elicited using option-posing and suggestive prompts, which are known to elicit less reliable information than open-ended prompts do.
Conclusion:
Despite the clarity and specificity of the MOGP, its implementation appears to have had less effect on the practices of forensic interviewers in the field than was hoped. Further work should focus on ways of training interviewers to implement the superior practices endorsed by the MOGP and similar professional guidelines.
Researchers have previously shown that, at least in Israeli investigative interviews, open-ended invitations yield significantly longer and more detailed responses from young witnesses than directive, leading, or suggestive utterances. Detailed psycholinguistic analyses of 45 interviews of 4- to 12-year-old children by police investigators in the United States confirmed that, as in Israel, invitations yielded longer and richer responses than more focused interviewer utterances. The superiority of invitations was greater when the children reported experiencing three or more, rather than only one, incidents of abuse. Invitations were rarely used, however, and the investigators failed to elicit more information from children who reported multiple incidents of abuse than from children who reported only one incident.
Adults ask children questions in a variety of contexts, for example, in the classroom, in the forensic context, or in experimental research. In such situations children will inevitably be asked some questions to which they do not know the answer, because they do not have the required information ("unanswerable" questions). When asked unanswerable questions, it is important that children indicate that they do not have the required information to provide an answer. These 2 studies investigated whether preinterview instructions (Experiment 1) or establishing a memory narrative (Experiment 2) helped children correctly indicate a lack of knowledge to unanswerable questions. In both studies, 6- and 8-year-olds participated in a classroom-based event about which they were subsequently interviewed. Some of the questions were answerable, and some were unanswerable. Results showed that preinterview instructions increased the number of younger children's appropriate "don't know" responses to unanswerable questions, without decreasing correct responses to answerable questions. This suggests that demand characteristics affect children's tendency correctly to say "I don't know." The opportunity to provide a narrative account increased children's appropriate "don't know" responses to unanswerable yes/no questions, and increased the number of younger children's correct responses to answerable questions. This suggests that cognitive factors also contribute to children's tendency correctly to say "I don't know." These results have implications for any context where adults need to obtain information from children through questioning, for example, a health practitioner asking about a medical condition, in classroom discourse, in the investigative interview, and in developmental psychology research.
A signal detection analysis assessed the extent to which forced confabulation results from a change in memory sensitivity (d
a
), as well as response criterion (β). After viewing a crime video, participants answered 14 answerable and 6 unanswerable questions. Those in the voluntary guess condition had a “don’t know” response option; those in the forced guess condition did not. One week later, the same questions were answered using a recognition memory test that included each participant’s initial responses. As was predicted, on both answerable and unanswerable questions, participants in the forced guess condition had significantly lower response criteria than did those who voluntarily guessed. Furthermore, on both answerable and unanswerable questions, d
a
scores were also significantly lower in the forced than in the voluntary guess condition. Thus, the forced confabulation effect is a real memory effect above and beyond the effects of response bias; forcing eyewitnesses to guess or speculate can actually change their memory.
In this review, we describe a shift that has taken place in the area of developmental suggestibility. Formerly, studies in this area indicated that there were pronounced age-related differences in suggestibility, with preschool children being particularly susceptible to misleading suggestions. The studies on which this conclusion was based were criticized on several grounds (e.g. unrealistic scenarios, truncated age range). Newer studies that have addressed these criticisms, however, have largely confirmed the earlier conclusions. These studies indicate that preschool children are disproportionately vulnerable to a variety of suggestive influences. There do not appear to any strict boundary conditions to this conclusion, and preschool children will sometimes succumb to suggestions about bodily touching, emotional events, and participatory events. The evidence for this assertion is presented in this review.
To evaluate the effectiveness of a structured interview protocol (NICHD Investigative Interview Protocol) operationalizing universally recommended guidelines for forensic interviews.
The NICHD Investigative Protocol was designed to maximize the amount of information obtained using recall memory probes, which are likely to elicit more accurate information than recognition memory probes. Forensic investigators were trained to use the NICHD protocol while conducting feedback-monitored simulation interviews. The utility of the protocol was then evaluated by comparing 55 protocol interviews with 50 prior interviews by the same investigators, matched with respect to characteristics likely to affect the richness of the children's accounts. The comparison was based on an analysis of the investigators' utterance types, distribution, and timing, as well as quantitative and qualitative characteristics of the information produced.
As predicted, protocol interviews contained more open-ended prompts overall as well as before the first option-posing utterance than non-protocol interviews did. More details were obtained using open-ended invitations and fewer were obtained using focused questions in protocol interviews than in non-protocol interviews, although the total number of details elicited did not differ significantly. In both conditions, older children provided more details than younger children did.
The findings confirmed that implementation of professionally recommended practices affected the behavior of interviewers in both the pre-substantive and substantive phases of their interviews and enhanced the quality (i.e., likely accuracy) of information elicited from alleged victims.
To identify characteristics of suspected child abuse victims that are associated with disclosure and nondisclosure during formal investigations.
The database included all suspected cases of physical and sexual abuse investigated in the state of Israel between 1998 and 2002. All investigative interviews were conducted using a single standardized protocol, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Investigative Interview Protocol.
Overall, 65% of the 26,446 children made allegations when interviewed, but rates of disclosure were greater in the case of sexual (71%) than physical (61%) abuse. Children of all ages were less likely to disclose/allege abuse when a parent was the suspected perpetrator. Rates of disclosure/allegation increased as children grew older, with 50% of the 3- to 6-year-olds, 67% of the 7- to 10-year-olds, and 74% of the 11- to 14-year-olds disclosing abuse when questioned.
Although most interviews of suspected victims yielded allegations, such rates of disclosure varied systematically depending on the nature of the alleged offences, the relationship between alleged victims and suspected perpetrators, and the age of the suspected victims. The findings obtained in this large and unselected data set confirm patterns previously reported in smaller and quite selective samples, most of them obtained in the United States.
Developmental differences in references to temporal attributes of allegedly experienced events were examined in 250 forensic interviews of 4- to 10-year-old alleged victims of sexual abuse. Children's ages, the specific temporal attributes referenced, and the types of memory tapped by the interviewers' questions significantly affected the quantity and quality of temporal references produced. The findings documented age-related increases in 4- to 10-year-olds' references to temporal attributes, using the appropriate relational terminology, both spontaneously and in response to temporal requests. More references to temporal attributes were elicited from recall than from recognition memory, highlighting spontaneous reporting capabilities. Implications for theories concerning the developing understanding of temporal concepts and for the design of effective, age-appropriate, forensic interview techniques are discussed.
To show how the results of research on children's memory, communicative skills, social knowledge, and social tendencies can be translated into guidelines that improve the quality of forensic interviews of children.
We review studies designed to evaluate children's capacities as witnesses, explain the development of the structured NICHD Investigative Interview Protocol, and discuss studies designed to assess whether use of the Protocol enhances the quality of investigative interviews.
Controlled studies have repeatedly shown that the quality of interviewing reliably and dramatically improves when interviewers employ the NICHD Protocol. No other technique has been proven to be similarly effective.
Use of the structured NICHD Protocol improves the quality of information obtained from alleged victims by investigators, thereby increasing the likelihood that interventions will be appropriate.
In the present research, two studies test the efficacy of an innovative procedure designed to reduce distortion and enhance communication of accurate childhood memories. One hundred two 7-year-olds participated in a staged activity and were randomly assigned to one of two treatment conditions (Intervention or Control). Two weeks later, half of the children participated in the innovative procedure designed to increase resistance to misleading questions by addressing sociolinguistic and socioemotional factors thought to promote acquiescence to misinformation. The other half of the children participated in control sessions and were given motivating instructions to do their best. Then, memory for the staged activity was tested in an interview with an unfamiliar authority figure. The results of both studies suggest that the children who participated in the innovative procedure made significantly fewer errors in response to misleading questions than children in the control groups, hence diminishing acquiescence. This was accomplished without generating additional errors on the other question types. These findings are interpreted as a promising first step toward reducing the potential for distortion in the recall of childhood memories. Implications for adult recall of childhood trauma are discussed.
Children are increasingly seen as competent informants on their activities, views and needs. Different abilities of children
can lead to inadequate (formally or regarding the content) answers or to the misunderstanding of proceedings during an interview
process. One inadequate or at least unintended (on the part of the researcher) response is a “don’t know” answer (DK). To
study when and why DK answers occur, a possible cause for them in the cognitive process and their relation to age, we analysed
the DK answers given in qualitative semi-structured interviews with children aged 5–11, conducted face-to-face and on the
telephone. Each of 56 children was interviewed twice, once face-to-face and once via telephone. The results show that age
had an effect on DK responses due to the cognitive state of the respondent and their communicative intent, but there was no
difference in the number of DKs due to problems with the research instrument or due to an adequacy judgement in respect of
respondent age.
Children aged 5 to 7 years and adults were presented with a set of nine questions, six of which were bizarre in so far as they involved making semantically anomalous comparisons. In one condition the subjects were simply asked the questions whereas in the other condition they were asked to judge whether the questions made sense. The results of the study confirm and extend previous research which had shown that children will answer bizarre questions. This study showed that adults will also answer such questions and, like children, are prepared to justify their answers. Both adults and children, however, when asked to judge whether questions make sense are able to do this with reason able accuracy.
When five-and seven-year old children were presented with questions intended to be bizarre (in the sense that their meaning required clarification, or that further information beyond that provided was required for an answer), the children almost invariably gave replies. The older children were more likely to do so by making sense of the questions through characteristics of the elements referred to, or through rules that might be expected to apply in the situations referred to; the younger children were more likely to make sense of the questions by importing additional context. Older children were also more likely to indicate their uncertainty about the questions by qualifying their responses in some way.
• Interviewing children for investigative purposes is a specialized skill. Professional interviewers need to be able to conduct interviews that bear scrutiny from outside agencies and also serve the best interests of children. This book corrects the common misunderstandings about adult–child conversational exchanges and provides guidelines for interviewers. It also presents a flexible interview protocol that can be tailored to meet individual needs. Topics discussed include the current child protection crisis; the difficulties of investigating alleged abuse cases; characteristics of the most respected interview protocols; children's language development and understanding of "interview rules"; ancillary techniques such as the use of drawings and anatomically detailed dolls; and how to stay abreast of the latest research and techniques.
The book is intended not only for child protection workers, lawyers, law enforcement officers, and psychologists, but also for other mental health professionals, educators, and parents. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved)
This study examined the effectiveness of teaching young children a set of social conversational rules as a method of reducing errors in children's memory reports. Forty children (aged 3 to 6 years) interacted with a confederate ‘teaching assistant.’ Three conversational rules were examined as possible means of decreasing inaccuracies. For comparison purposes, three placebo rules were also developed. To test the limitations of teaching young children a set of conversational rules, three interview styles (neutral, repetitive, accusatory) were used. Results indicated that children who received all three target rules provided a smaller proportion of incorrect responses than did children who received fewer target rules or than children in a placebo control group, regardless of interview style. Theoretical and applied issues are discussed. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Previous researchers found that young children will try to answer nonsensical questions. In Expt 1, 5- to 8-year-olds were asked sensible and nonsensical questions. Half of each type were ‘closed’ questions (which required a yes/no response), and half were ‘open’ questions (which could be answered in several ways). Three weeks later the same children were asked to judge if the questions were sensible or silly. Children answered all the sensible questions appropriately, and only attempted to answer a small proportion of the nonsensical open questions. However, they did try to answer three-quarters of the nonsensical closed questions. Nonetheless, children were nearly always correct in judging which questions were sensible and which were nonsensical. In Expt 1 all the closed nonsensical questions were also ones that required a comparison between two items. In Expt 2 we compared children's responses to nonsensical open and closed questions when half of each type were comparative and half were non-comparative. Children attempted to answer nonsensical closed questions irrespective of whether or not they included a comparison. However, few children attempted to answer nonsensical open questions. We discuss the implications of these results for questioning children and in the context of children's eyewitness testimony.
Third and fourth grade children were exposed to a staged event then asked misleading and non-misleading questions about it a week later. Children were categorized as high or low in self-esteem using teacher ratings of behaviour in the school setting. Prior to questioning they were given one of two sets of instructions: one conveying a low obligation to respond with specific answers, and the other conveying a high obligation. Children with higher self-esteem showed greater resistance, less yielding and fewer 'don't know’ responses to misleading questions than children with lower self-esteem. Children in the low obligation conditions produced more ‘don't know’ responses to misleading questions than children in the high obligation conditions, but there were no differences between instruction conditions in resistance or yielding. There was no evidence that the instructions used in the present study were able to overcome the disadvantage of low self-esteem children.
Purpose. Two studies evaluated the effects of question type and of brief pre-interview training, involving instructions and practice, on the number of correct answers and errors given by children in a structured interview.Methods. A total of 157 children aged from nine to 13 were interviewed about a visit to a science centre with both misleading and non-misleading open and closed questions. The children also rated their confidence in each of their answers. Half the children received pre-interview training designed to discourage compliance and guessing.Results. In Study 1 pre-interview training decreased commission errors to misleading questions, but also decreased the number of correct responses to non-misleading questions. In Study 2 a revised training package decreased errors for misleading questions without impacting on correct responses.Conclusions. Brief pre-interview interventions can reduce children's compliance with misleading questions in experimental situations. Both studies provided some support for the cognitive processing hypothesis that the confidence-accuracy relationship will be stronger for open than for closed questions.
Children as young as 4 years of age sometimes have been required to act as witnesses. These young children have been thought to be too compliant in answering questions, failing to admit that they do not know answers. It has also been suggested that, under certain circumstances, they are poor at distinguishing between memories based on different sources. In the present study, 4-year-old children were trained to say “I don't know” when uncertain of answers to questions. Trained children were found to be more accurate than untrained, making a reduced number of false-alarm responses. Alerting these children to possible different sources for their memories was also effective in increasing accuracy by reducing number of false alarms. It was concluded that both procedures may be adopted in an attempt to increase the accuracy of testimony given by young children.
In previous work with adults (A. Koriat & M. Goldsmith, 1994, 1996c), it was shown that people can enhance the accuracy of their testimony substantially when they (a) are effective in monitoring the correctness of their answers, (b) are free to control their reporting accordingly (i.e., to decide which pieces of information to volunteer and which to withhold), and (c) are given incentives for accurate reporting. A theoretical model was developed, which specifies the critical role of metacognitive monitoring and control processes in mediating free-report memory accuracy. The present study applies that model to examine the strategic regulation of memory accuracy by children. Three experiments indicate that both younger (ages 7 to 9) and older (ages 10 to 12) children can enhance the accuracy of their testimony by screening out wrong answers under free-report conditions but suggest a developmental trend in the level of memory accuracy that is thereby achieved. The implications of the results for the dependability of children's testimony in legal settings are discussed.
Research on child interviewing has burgeoned over the past 25 years as expectations about children's agency, competence, and participation in society have changed. This article identifies recent trends in research, policy, and theory with implications for the practice of interviewing children in cases of contested divorce and for the weight to be given the information children provide. A number of fields of relevant research are identified, including studies of families who have participated in the family law system, studies of child witnesses in the field, experimental studies of the effects of interview techniques on children's memory and suggestibility, and ethnographic methods that elicit children's views of their own experiences. Finally, a set of 10 principles for practice are delineated based on the best available science.
The aim of the present study was to explore the conditions under which repeated questions would influence memory performance. Children of five and seven years of age witnessed a staged-event and were then individually interviewed with a free recall test and closed and open-form questions, some of which were repeated in the interview. Some children were warned that questions may be repeated. The older children were more accurate on both open and closed question forms than the younger children. In both groups recall improved upon second questioning with open questions whereas accuracy of responses deteriorated somewhat upon repetition of closed questions. On the basis of this data it is concluded that if closed questions are repeated in a witness interview it may lead the witness to incorrectly assume that their first response was incorrect; however the findings support the use of repeated questioning as a probe for more information to open-ended questions.
Children who are alleged to have been sexually abused often go through gruelling interrogations to relate their experiences to adults and, even then, most are not viewed as reliable sources of information. The Victim Sensitive Interviewing Program (VSIP) was initiated to decrease the number of interviews endured by a child who allegedly had been sexually abused. The program brought together the disciplines involved in the evaluation of these cases: hospital-based social worker and pediatrician, state child protective agency worker, police, and assistant state's attorney. This team established a protocol for an investigative interview to be conducted by a team member. Pre-VSIP sexual abuse evaluations from 1985 and 1986 (38) were compared with VSIP evaluations (226) from 1987 and 1988. There was no significant difference between the two groups in relation to gender or age of victim, physical symptoms, physical findings, sexually transmitted diseases present, age of perpetrator, or length of stay in hospital. However, there were significant differences between the two groups in (1) number of interviews, 11% pre-VSIP vs 79% VSIP receiving only one interview (P less than .001); (2) number of interviewers, 24% pre-VSIP vs 88% VSIP were interviewed by only one interviewer (P less than .001); (3) indicated cases of sexual abuse, 68% pre-VSIP vs 88% VSIP (P less than .006); (4) identification of the perpetrator, 71% pre-VSIP vs 85% VSIP (P less than .035); and (5) charges pressed if perpetrator identified, 33% pre-VSIP vs 60% VSIP (P less than .010). It is concluded that interdisciplinary evaluations of alleged sexual abuse in children not only decreased the number of interviews a child must undergo but also increased the likelihood of indicated cases, identification of the perpetrator, and charges being pressed. Therefore, it is strongly recommended that interdisciplinary teams be formed to assess alleged sexual abuse in children.
When people are allowed freedom to volunteer or withhold information, they can enhance the accuracy of their memory reports substantially relative to forced-report performance. A theoretical framework addressing the strategic regulation of memory reporting is put forward that delineates the mediating role of metamemorial monitoring and control processes. Although the enhancement of memory accuracy is generally accompanied by a reduction in memory quantity, experimental and simulation results indicate that both of these effects depend critically on (a) accuracy incentive and (b) monitoring effectiveness. The results are discussed with regard to the contribution of meta-memory processes to memory performance, and a general methodology is proposed that incorporates these processes into the assessment of memory-accuracy and memory-quantity performance.
In the past few years there has been increased concern over the role of social influences on children's reports during interviews. It is argued that the number of wrong answers can be reduced by explaining a set of social rules of conversation to children at the beginning of an interview. In the present experiment, the effects of two conversation rules were tested. Children were informed that (a) "I-don't-know" is an acceptable answer, and (b) the interviewer would not be able to help them in answering the questions. A total of 114 children, aged 4 to 10, watched a staged event and were interviewed afterwards. The two factors were systematically varied in the experiment by utilizing a 2 x 2 factorial design. The results supported the hypotheses that introduction of these rules would reduce suggestibility. Our findings have implications for interviewing child witnesses.
We report two empirical studies that investigated previously reported benefits of a high accuracy motivation, and thus a high threshold, for children's and adults' event recall and for their ability to resist false suggestions. In the studies, 6-, 7-, and 8-year-olds, as well as adults, were shown a brief video about an event and were later asked unbiased and misleading questions about it. In Study 1, participants were either (a) given the typical accuracy instructions (including the option to answer with "I don't know"), (b) reminded of the accuracy instructions during the interview, or (c) immediately given feedback and a token for every correct answer. The results showed that the reminders were ineffective in stimulating strategic control behavior in children, independent of age. In Study 2, the confounding effects of feedback and incentives were disentangled by contrasting (a) free report, (b) feedback only, (c) incentives only, and (d) feedback plus incentives. Analyses on recall performance and suggestibility revealed that both feedback and incentives are necessary to increase children's accurate memory reports.
After viewing a crime video, participants answered 16 answerable and 6 unanswerable questions. Those in the "voluntary guess" condition had a "don't know" response option; those in the "forced guess" condition did not. One week later the same questions were answered with a "don't know" option. In both experiments, information generated from forced confabulation was less likely remembered than information voluntarily self-generated. Further, when the same answer was given to an unanswerable question both times, the confidence expressed in the answer increased over time in both the forced and the voluntary guess conditions. Pressing eyewitnesses to answer questions, especially questions repeated thrice (Experiment 2), may not be an effective practice because it reliably increases intrusion errors but not correct recall.
DOI: 10.1002 The suggestibility of children's memory
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