Research has shown that a brief intervention involving practice and feedback can help children maintain accuracy when challenged with cross-examination-style questions. To date, however, researchers have prepared children using the same crossexamination challenges that they would encounter during the subsequent cross-examination interview. It is unknown whether the intervention will still be effective when children later face novel cross-examination-style questions. Six-to 11-year-old children (n = 132) took part in a staged memory event, and were then interviewed with analogues of direct-examination (1-2 days later) and cross-examination (6-8 weeks later). One week prior to the cross-examination interview, some children participated in a preparation session, where they were given practice answering cross-examination-style questions about an unrelated topic, and feedback on their responses. For half of these children, the crossexamination-style challenges they encountered during the preparation session were the same as the challenges they subsequently faced during cross-examination; for the others, there was no overlap. Relative to a control group that did not receive the intervention, the preparation session resulted in better performance during cross-examination, regardless of the degree of overlap. These findings are encouraging given that we can never predict the questions that cross-examining lawyers will ask children. ARTICLE HISTORY

In response to a widespread belief within the legal system that cross-examination is instrumental in uncovering the truth, we examined the effect of cross-examination questioning on the reports of children who had-and had not-been coached to lie. A group of children, aged 6-11 years (N = 65), played three computer games with one of their parents. For half of the pairs, the parents-who acted as confederates-coached their children to make lies of commission concerning the occurrence of two target activities. For the remaining pairs, these two target activities actually occurred, and there was no coaching. Immediately afterwards, children were interviewed about the two activities. Those who-correctly or incorrectly-reported that both activities occurred were retained for the final sample (n = 56); these children were then interviewed again with both neutral questions and cross-examination-style challenges. Neither style of questioning elicited responses that discriminated between liars and truth-tellers: although the accuracy of children who were lying increased in response to cross-examination questions, the accuracy of truth-telling children saw a corresponding decrease. When asked neutral questions, children's responses tended to be consistent with their earlier responses, whether or not those responses were lies. These findings raise important questions about the function that cross-examination might serve in trials involving child witnesses. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This article explores some of the reasons why students need to learn about death and dying, and examines why students may be ill-prepared to deal with dying patients. It also outlines some innovative ways of teaching death and dying, including methods the author has used to teach students in her own practice.

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