Margaret-Ellen Pipe

Cues and secrets: influences on children's event reports

Eighty-eight 6-year-olds and 88 10-year-olds took part, in pairs, in a contrived interaction with a «magician:» The children were interviewed 10 days and 10 weeks later in 1 of 4 conditions: no cues, context cues, relevant cues, and irrelevant cues. Older children recalled more accurate information than younger children, and both groups recalled more accurate information after the short than the long delay. Although relevant cues facilitated free recall, accuracy did not differ across cue conditions. Younger children were less likely to report an accident they had been asked to keep secret than were older children. Childrens understanding of truth and lies did not predict errors in free recall or their reporting of the secret

Recalling an event one year later : The impact of props, drawing and a prior interview

One hundred and one 5-year-old children were interviewed about a routine health assessment carried out at school following delays of both 3 days and 1 year or 1 year only. Children were interviewed with prototypical medical items and a doll (props), with verbal prompts only (verbal), or with drawing (drawing). There was a decrease in both the amount and the accuracy of the information children reported over the 1-year delay, but no effect of the prior (3-day) interview. Children interviewed with props recalled more information than those asked to draw or interviewed with verbal prompts only, particularly at the long delay. Correct information was more likely to be repeated across interviews than were errors, and, whereas information repeated across interviews was highly reliable, information introduced for the first time after 1 year was not, particularly when children drew. These findings have important implications in applied contexts such as when children are called upon to provide testimony following very long delays. Copyright

Children's recall 1 or 2 years after an event.

In Study 1, children were reinterviewed about an event they had taken part in 2 years earlier when they were 6 years old (M.-E. Pipe & J. C. Wilson, 1994). In Study 2, children were reinterviewed about an event in which they had participated 1 year earlier when they were 6 or 9 years of age (S. Gee & M.-E. Pipe, 1995). Interviews were conducted with or without cue items and distractors, as in the original studies. The amount of information reported in free recall decreased over the 1- or 2-year delays, and for 6-year-olds, there was also a small decrease in accuracy of free recall. Reinstating specific cue items in Study 2 maintained recall when attention was drawn to them, but prompting children led to a decrease in accuracy. Whereas information repeated across interviews was highly accurate, information reported for the first time at the long delays was not.

Interviewing children about past events: the influence of peer support and misleading questions

The present experiment investigated the influence of peer support and leading and misleading questions on childrens reports of a neutral event. Twenty-four children aged between 5 and 7 years and 24 children aged between 8 and 10 years took part in an event which focused on the parts and functions of the human body. Three days later they were interviewed about the event either alone or with a same-sex peer. The younger children recalled less information than the older children during prompted recall, and both age groups made very few errors. For questions, younger children made significantly more errors in response to directly misleading questions that to indirectly misleading questions. Both age groups were very accurate in response to directly and indirectly leading questions. Peer support did not influence childrens prompted recall reports about the event or their responses to questions. These results are discussed in the context of their implications for interviewing children about past events.

‘What colour is your pet dinosaur?’ The impact of pre-interview training and question type on children's answers

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 childrens 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.

The NICHD investigative interview protocol: an analogue study

One hundred twenty-eight 5- to 7-year-old children were interviewed using the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Investigative Interview Protocol about an event staged 4 to 6 weeks earlier. Children were prepared for talking about the investigated event using either an invitational or directive style of prompting, with or without additional practice describing experienced events. The open invitation prompts (including those using childrens words to encourage further reporting) elicited more detailed responses than the more focused directive prompts without reducing accuracy. Children were most responsive when they had received preparation that included practice describing experienced events in response to invitation prompts. Overall, children were highly accurate regardless of prompt type. Errors mostly related to peripheral rather than central information and were more likely to be elicited by directive or yes/no questions than by invitations. Children who provided accounts when asked about a false event were less accurate when describing the true event. Children who received preparation that included practice recalling a recent event in response to directive and yes/no questions were least accurate when questioned about the false event first. The data provide the first direct evaluation of the accuracy of information elicited using different prompt types in the course of NICHD Protocol interviews, and underscore the importance of how children are prepared for subsequent reporting.

Detecting deception in children: event familiarity affects criterion-based content analysis ratings.

Statement Validity Assessment (SVA) is a comprehensive credibility assessment system, with the Criterion-Based Content Analysis (CBCA) as a core component. Worldwide, the CBCA is reported to be the most widely used veracity assessment instrument. We tested and confirmed the hypothesis that CBCA scores are affected by event familiarity; descriptions of familiar events are more likely to be judged true than are descriptions of unfamiliar events. CBCA scores were applied to transcripts of 114 children who recalled a routine medical procedure (control) or a traumatic medical procedure that they had experienced one time (relatively unfamiliar) or multiple times (relatively familiar). CBCA scores were higher for children in the relatively familiar than the relatively unfamiliar condition, and CBCA scores were significantly correlated with age. Results raise serious questions regarding the forensic suitability of the CBCA for assessing the veracity of childrens accounts.

Individual differences in children's event memory reports and the narrative elaboration technique.

Children between 7 and 8 years old took part in a staged event at school and 1 week later were assessed using a short form of the Wechsler Intelligence scale for children (third edition) and measures of metamemory, narrative ability, and socioeconomic status. Two weeks following the event, children either received narrative elaboration training (NET; K.J. Saywitz & L. Snyder, 1996) and were prompted with the four NET cue cards at interview; received verbal prompts corresponding to the cue card categories, but without prior training; or were presented with the cards at interview without prior training. Children given verbal labels as prompts recalled as much information as children who received NET training and cue cards. Measures of intelligence were predictive of amount recalled for cards-only children but not for the other 2 groups, indicating that differences in recall between low- and high-IQ groups were attenuated when recall was supported by NET training or verbal prompting.

Supportive or suggestive: Do human figure drawings help 5- to 7-year-old children to report touch?

The authors examined the accuracy of information elicited from seventy-nine 5- to 7-year-old children about a staged event that included physical contact-touching. Four to six weeks later, childrens recall for the event was assessed using an interview protocol analogous to those used in forensic investigations with children. Following the verbal interview, children were asked about touch when provided with human figure drawings (drawings only), following practice using the human figure drawings (drawings with instruction), or without drawings (verbal questions only). In this touch-inquiry phase of the interview, most children provided new information. Children in the drawings conditions reported more incorrect information than those in the verbal questions condition. Forensically relevant errors were infrequent and were rarely elaborated on. Although asking children to talk about innocuous touch may lead them to report unreliable information, especially when human figure drawings are used as aids, errors are reduced when open-ended prompts are used to elicit further information about reported touches.

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.