Pauline Howie

Context and cue cards in young children's testimony: a comparison of brief narrative elaboration and context reinstatement.

In a comparison of interview procedures that aimed to assist retrieval strategies in childrens event recall, 72 children aged 4-6 years were questioned about a witnessed event. Context reinstatement and brief narrative elaboration (an abbreviated version of K. J. Saywitz and L. Snyders [1996] procedure) produced similar levels of correct recall, and both elicited more correct recall than did a control condition, with no increase in errors. Combining these procedures did not further improve performance. The superiority of narrative elaboration over the control group was evident in free recall and did not depend on explicit prompting with cue cards. These findings suggest that incorporating brief narrative elaboration training in investigative interviews with children may, like context reinstatement, be a valuable mnemonic aid.

Inconsistencies in children's recall of witnessed events: The role of age, question format and perceived reason for question repetition

Purpose. Childrens inconsistencies when answering repeated questions about past events are a source of concern in forensic, educational, and other contexts. Theoretical accounts of these inconsistencies have predominantly assumed that children shift because they infer adult dissatisfaction with their initial answer. This study aimed to test this account via examination of the effects of question format on shifting, as well as via direct questioning of children. Method. Four-, five-, and seven-year-olds (N = 226) were asked 17 recall questions about a recent classroom activity, with eight target questions repeated in one of four formats: no-correct (mildly misleading questions to which the correct answer was ‘no’), yes-correct (mildly misleading questions to which the correct answer was ‘yes’), specific open wh- questions, and forced-choice questions. They were then asked about the adults reasons for repetition. Accuracy, shifting, and interpretations of question repetition were examined. Results. Shifting from accuracy decreased with age, and was affected by question format in 4-year-olds only, who shifted more to no-correct than to forced-choice questions. Shifting towards accuracy was more common in forced-choice questions than either no-correct or open questions, but there were no significant age differences. First-answer-unsatisfactory interpretations of question repetition were rare, especially in the two younger groups. The oldest group offered a wider range of interpretations and also showed some evidence of an association between first-answer-unsatisfactory interpretations and shifting. Conclusions. Overall, our findings present a challenge to first-answer-unsatisfactory explanations of young childrens shifting in recall settings, at least where overt pressure to shift is low. Forensic implications are considered.

Motivational factors in children's reporting of events : The influence of age and expected reinforcement contingency

Abstract In everyday as well as in forensic and clinical settings, childrens motivation to report accurately on events they have experienced may be less than optimal. This study investigated the influence of motivation on first-grade and fourth-grade childrens recall of a video they had seen. Motivation was manipulated by promising a small reward for reporting either the truth only or maximal information. Compared with a control group expecting noncontingent reinforcement, children expecting “amount-contingent” reinforcement provided more correct information in free recall, but at a cost of increased errors in both free recall and specific nonleading questions. Children expecting “truth-contingent” reinforcement were no more likely than the control group to give correct responses to specific questions, but their overall accuracy was markedly higher than that of the control group. Accuracy of free recall was consistently high regardless of reinforcement contingency. There was evidence that reinforcement contingencies differentially affect responses to misleading and nonleading questions. No significant interactions occurred between age and reinforcement contingency, but some trends merit further investigation. Implications for Social Cognitive Theory and theories of motivated memory are discussed, and applications to childrens testimony are explored.

Bullying by definition: an examination of definitional components of bullying

Lack of definitional consensus remains an important unresolved issue within bullying research. This study examined the ability of definitional variables to predict overall level of victimisation (distress, power inequity, and provocation as predictors) and bullying (intention to harm, power inequity, and provocation as predictors) in 246 Australian university students. All variables were measured using the Victimisation and Bullying Inventory (VBI), with behaviour assessed separately for tertiary institution, workplace and home contexts. Regression analysis revealed that, as expected, higher levels of distress predicted higher levels of victimisation (in all contexts) and higher levels of intention to harm predicted higher levels of engagement in bullying (in work and home contexts). Challenging definitional theory, bullying was reported as most commonly occurring between two equals, from both the victim and bully perspective, and individuals who bullied others blamed the victim for provoking the behaviour twice as often as victims felt that they had provoked it.

After-school care arrangements and maternal employment: A study of the effects on third and fourth grade children

A comparison was made of third and fourth grade children receiving three different types of after-school care in an Australian inner-city setting: Children in parental care whose mother was not in paid employment; children in parental care whose mother was in paid employment; and children attending an after-school care center for at least two hours two days weekly. No differences were found between the three groups on measures of self-esteem, anxiety, social status, life skills competence or academic achievement. These findings suggest that, at least for this age group and in this setting, there is no deleterious effect of after-school center care as compared with parental care.

Can private reports enhance children’s event recall, lower their suggestibility and foster their metacognitive monitoring compared to face-to-face interviews?

Abstract In this paper, two studies are presented in which the social demands of an event recall interview situation were manipulated using two different methodologies and by using different dependent measures as indices for children’s event memory, suggestibility and metacognitive monitoring processes. Participants aged 6–10 years were shown a brief video and then questioned about it 2–3 weeks later. Answers to the recall questions were either given privately by whispering into a teddy bear’s ear or publicly in a normal face-to-face interview. Confidence judgments as indicators for metacognitive monitoring were entered into a computer, either with the interviewer having direct knowledge about them, or with the children entering the confidence judgments in privacy. In line with previous research on this topic, although private reports did not produce poorer performance, neither did they improve performance. In both studies there were no effects of the social manipulations on either recall or metacognitive monitoring and also no age-dependent benefits. The results are discussed in terms of the chosen methodologies and in the light of previous studies.

Cognitive Abilities, Monitoring Confidence, and Control Thresholds Explain Individual Differences in Heuristics and Biases

In this paper, we investigate whether individual differences in performance on heuristic and biases tasks can be explained by cognitive abilities, monitoring confidence, and control thresholds. Current theories explain individual differences in these tasks by the ability to detect errors and override automatic but biased judgments, and deliberative cognitive abilities that help to construct the correct response. Here we retain cognitive abilities but disentangle error detection, proposing that lower monitoring confidence and higher control thresholds promote error checking. Participants (N = 250) completed tasks assessing their fluid reasoning abilities, stable monitoring confidence levels, and the control threshold they impose on their decisions. They also completed seven typical heuristic and biases tasks such as the cognitive reflection test and Resistance to Framing. Using structural equation modeling, we found that individuals with higher reasoning abilities, lower monitoring confidence, and higher control threshold performed significantly and, at times, substantially better on the heuristic and biases tasks. Individuals with higher control thresholds also showed lower preferences for risky alternatives in a gambling task. Furthermore, residual correlations among the heuristic and biases tasks were reduced to null, indicating that cognitive abilities, monitoring confidence, and control thresholds accounted for their shared variance. Implications include the proposal that the capacity to detect errors does not differ between individuals. Rather, individuals might adopt varied strategies that promote error checking to different degrees, regardless of whether they have made a mistake or not. The results support growing evidence that decision-making involves cognitive abilities that construct actions and monitoring and control processes that manage their initiation.

Mediating and moderating role of attributional style in the association between victimisation and wellbeing

This study examined whether attributional style for negative events plays a mediating or moderating role in the association between victimisation by bullying and psychological distress in young adults. A total of 127 undergraduate students completed the Attributional Style Questionnaire, a newly developed Victimisation and Bullying Inventory and the Psychological Distress subscale from the Mental Health Inventory. As expected, the tendency to attribute negative events to internal, stable and global causes predicted higher psychological distress. There was also a positive association between extent of victimisation and psychological distress. Although attributional style did not mediate in this relationship, there was evidence of moderation. Individuals with more negative attributional styles showed a clear association between victimisation and psychological distress, while those with less negative styles showed no association. These results suggest that a tendency towards a negative attributional style may increase the risk of psychological distress in victims of bullying.