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ABSTRACT
Children’s non-disclosures of another’s wrongdoing, particularly in cases involving alleged maltreatment, is a notable concern among forensic professionals. The current study was designed to provide these professionals with much needed information about the efficacy of a range of interviewing strategies, namely free-recall, cognitive instructions and closed-ended questions, when children are asked to conceal the transgression of an adult. After being asked to falsely deny a theft they witnessed, children (ages 8 to 13; N = 104) were interviewed using either the cognitive instructions (n = 52) or a Standard Interview (n = 52). Two raters coded the children’s: (1) report honesty; (2) number of words used; (3) number of Transgression Details disclosed; (4) number of events recalled; (5) temporal order accuracy; and (6) number of theft disclosures made. Children produced longer testimonies with more Transgression Details, disclosures and events on the interview with the cognitive instructions, without compromising temporal order accuracy. However, there were no interview differences in overall report honesty. Overall, the free-recall reports had the most words, along with more Transgression Details, theft disclosures and events recalled. The reverse-order recall was the most effective cognitive instruction for increasing the amount of events recalled. Overall, the cognitive instructions increased the amount of information and disclosures about the theft, but they did not discourage false reporting.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported in part by a grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council. Finally, there were no personal or institutional conflicts of interest pertaining to the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
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Notes on contributors
Joshua Wyman
Dr. Joshua Wyman is a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at Ontario Tech University. His research focuses on improving the best practice methods for interviewing children, youth and older adults in criminal investigations.
Donia Tong
Donia Tong is a doctoral candidate in the School/Applied Child Psychology program at McGill University. For her dissertation, she is examining the relation of moral disengagement to children’s lie-telling behaviour.
Ida Foster
Ida Foster is a PhD candidate in the School/Applied Child Psychology program at McGill University and is working on her dissertation research on children’s lie-telling.
Angela Crossman
Angela M. Crossman, PhD, is a Professor of Psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York and the CUNY Graduate Center. Her research interests include the accuracy and credibility of children’s memory and testimony, and the socialization and development of deception in children.
Victoria Talwar
Dr. Victoria Talwar is a Professor and a Canada Research Chair (II) in Forensic Developmental Psychology in the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology at McGill University.