Children’s false memory and true disclosure in the face of repeated questions

Preparing Children for Investigative Interviews: Rapport-Building, Instruction, and Evaluation

“…If the interviewers did have such preconceptions, they risked underestimating younger children who are not only capable of understanding simple instructions such as saying ''I don't know'' when relevant, but would probably benefit more from learning about the conversational rules and the purpose of the interview than older children. Previous research has shown that children as young as 5 years who used do-not-know responses more frequently provided proportionally more accurate (and less inaccurate) information (Schaaf et al, 2008). Beuscher and Roebers (2005) found that older children were more likely than younger children to give do-not-know responses when asked unanswerable questions, after being warned about such questions.…”

“…Teaching children to say ''I don't know'' or ''I don't understand,'' when they do not know or do not understand may reduce their tendency to assume that every question must be answered (Hughes & Grieve, 1980;Poole & White, 1995;Pratt, 1990), even when the questions were not understood. Researchers have found that children who used do-not-know responses more frequently provided proportionally more accurate (and less inaccurate) information when questioned about staged events (Nesbitt & Markham, 1999;Quas et al, 1999;Schaaf, Alexander, & Goodman, 2008). Before approaching substantive topics, therefore, interviewers may be able to help children be more competent informants by explicitly communicating their roles and expectations.…”

Are children’s memory illusions created differently from those of adults? Evidence from levels-of-processing and divided attention paradigms

“…In order to keep a direct comparison with adults and to control for secondary-task consistency, this task is also administered with adults. Apart from classical studies investigating increases in inhibitory abilities, the Day/Night-Sroop task has also been used in several studies in order to predict memory errors following from suggestibility (e.g., Alexander, Goodman, Schaaf, Edelstein, Quas, Shaver, 2002; Roberts & Powell, 2005;Schaaf, Alexander, & Goodman, 2008). The basic idea is that children who are better at inhibiting a prepotent response may be less susceptible to suggestibility.…”

“That never happened”: Adults' discernment of children's true and false memory reports.

“…Thus, the false reports and false denials used as stimuli did not necessarily reflect deliberate, premeditated deception, although that is one possibility. Children might falsely assent or falsely deny for a variety of reasons, including succumbing to demand characteristics during an interview (e.g., Bjorklund et al, 2000; Cassel, Roebers, & Bjorkland, 1996), using their imaginations (Reyna, Holliday, & Marche, 2002), being deficient in certain social cognitive realms (e.g., incomplete understanding of honesty, Bussey, 1992; limited theory of mind or inadequate inhibition, Talwar & Lee, 2008), having been coached or coerced into lying (e.g., Ackil & Zaragoza, 1998; Lyon, Malloy, Quas, & Talwar, 2008), trying to conform to social expectations of politeness (e.g., Talwar, Murphy, & Lee 2007), or acquiescing to persistent questioning (e.g., Schaaf, Alexander, & Goodman, 2008). Children who falsely deny an event might also do so to avoid talking about an unpleasant or embarrassing experience (Bruck, Ceci, & Hembrooke, 1998), evade punishment (e.g., Polak & Harris, 1999; Talwar, Gordon, & Lee, 2007), or reduce the chances of getting someone else in trouble (e.g., Goodman-Brown, Edelstein, Goodman, Jones, & Gordon, 2003).…”