Karen L. Thierry

Developmental Differences in the Function and Use of Anatomical Dolls During Interviews with Alleged Sexual Abuse Victims.

The impact of anatomical dolls on reports provided by 3- to 12-year-old alleged sexual abuse victims (N = 178) was examined. Children produced as many details in response to open-ended invitations with and without the dolls. In response to directive questions, the 3- to 6-year-olds were more likely to re-enact behaviorally than to report verbally, whereas the 7- to 12-year-olds produced more verbal details than enactments when using the dolls. With the dolls, the younger children were more likely than the older children to play suggestively and to contradict details provided without the dolls, whereas the older children were more likely to provide details that were consistent. Children in both age groups produced proportionally more fantastic details with the dolls than without the dolls.

Source recall enhances children's discrimination of seen and heard events.

The effects of rehearsing actions by source (slideshow vs. story) and of test modality (picture vs. verbal) on source monitoring were examined. Seven- to 8-year-old children (N = 30) saw a slideshow event and heard a story about a similar event. One to 2 days later, they recalled the events by source (source recall), recalled the events without reference to source (no-source-cue recall), or engaged in no recall. Seven to 8 days later, all children received verbal and picture source-monitoring tests. Children in the source recall group were less likely than children in the other groups to claim they saw actions merely heard in the story. No-source-cue recall impaired source identification of story actions. The picture test enhanced recognition, but not source monitoring, of slide actions. Increasing the distinctiveness of the target events (Experiment 2) allowed the picture test to facilitate slideshow action discrimination by children in the no-recall group.

The susceptibility of young preschoolers to source similarity effects: Confusing story or video events with reality

This study examined childrens tendency to confuse events that varied in source similarity, which was manipulated using different media of event presentation. In Experiment 1, children in two age groups (3- and 4-year-olds and 5- and 6-year-olds) experienced a live presentation of an event, and another event was either heard from a story (low similarity group) or seen on a video (high similarity group). Immediately afterward, the children were asked to monitor the source of the events. The children in the low similarity group produced higher source discrimination scores than did the children in the high similarity group. Overall, the older children were better at source monitoring than were the younger children. In Experiment 2, the procedure was replicated except that the childrens source monitoring was tested after a 4-day delay. When attributing the source of the story or video events, both 3- and 4-year-olds and 5- and 6-year-olds in the low similarity group produced more accurate story or video attributions than did their age mates in the high similarity group. However, when attributing the source of the live events, only the 3- and 4-year-olds evidenced this effect of source similarity. The 5- and 6-year-olds in both the low and high similarity groups performed at ceiling levels for live discriminations.