Efficient coding of eyewitness narratives: A comparison of syntactic unit and word count procedures

Dickinson, Jason J.; Poole, Debra Ann

doi:10.3758/bf03200826

Cited by 22 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…The children's responses were coded with a modified word count procedure. This procedure correlates highly (r > .90) with the more commonly used units of information procedure (Dickinson & Poole, 2000).…”

Section: Data Codingmentioning

confidence: 79%

Forensic interviews with children in CSA cases: A large‐sample study of Norwegian police interviews

Thoresen

Lønnum

Melinder

et al. 2009

Applied Cognitive Psychology

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The study was designed to investigate changes in how children are interviewed in cases of child sexual abuse over a fairly long period of time. The interviewers' utterances were analysed in a large sample of forensic interviews conducted in Norway during the period of 1990-2002. The results indicate that interviewer strategies have improved during this period; there is a decrease in the proportion of suggestive, yes/no and option-posing utterances, accompanied by a comparable increase in directive utterances. However, the frequency of open-ended utterances is low, and has not changed much over time. An index of the overall quality of the interviews likewise showed a positive trend, with an increase in the proportion of interviews that were labelled 'good'. However, even in recent years, interviews rated as 'inadequate' or 'poor' constituted half of the interviews conducted.

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Section: Data Codingmentioning

confidence: 79%

Forensic interviews with children in CSA cases: A large‐sample study of Norwegian police interviews

Thoresen

Lønnum

Melinder

et al. 2009

Applied Cognitive Psychology

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“…Each memory description was then subjected to a word count, using Microsoft Word for Windows. Research in our laboratory has shown that word count is highly correlated with the number of clauses that a memory description contains, and Dickinson and Poole (2000) demonstrated that word count is highly correlated with the number of syntactic units that a memory description contains.…”

Section: Codingmentioning

confidence: 96%

Childhood amnesia: Empirical evidence for a two-stage phenomenon

Jack

Hayne

2010

Memory

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The term childhood amnesia refers to the inability of adults to remember events from their infancy and early childhood. If we plot the number of memories that adults can recall as a function of age during childhood, the number of memories reported increases gradually as a function of age. Typically, this finding has been used to argue that gradual changes in memory development contribute to a gradual decline in childhood amnesia during the preschool period. Alternatively, it is possible that pooling data across participants has obscured more abrupt, stage-like changes in the remission of childhood amnesia. In the present study we examined the number and distribution of childhood memories for individual participants. Six adults were repeatedly interviewed about their childhood memories. We found that the distribution of adults' early childhood memories may be less continuous than pooled data suggest. This finding has important implications for current explanations of childhood amnesia.

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“…Word count is an accepted tool in evaluating eyewitness narratives (Dickinson & Poole, 2000). As 25 of the interviews contained interpreters, some words came from the interpreters rather than the actual children.…”

Section: Words Spokenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigative Interviewing of Aboriginal Children in Cases of Suspected Sexual Abuse

Hamilton

Brubacher

Powell

2016

Journal of Child Sexual Abuse

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This study examined the investigative interviewing of Australian Aboriginal children in cases of alleged sexual abuse, with a focus on three commonly included components of interview protocols: ground rules, practice narrative, and substantive phase. Analysis of 70 field transcripts revealed that the overall delivery and practice of ground rules at the beginning of the interview was positively associated with the spontaneous usage of rules in children's narratives of abuse. When specifically examining the "don't know" rule, however, only practice had an effect of children's usage of the rule (as opposed to simple delivery or no delivery at all). Children spoke more words overall, and interviewers used more open-ended prompts during the substantive phase when the interviews contained a practice narrative. Children most often disclosed sexual abuse in response to an open-ended prompt; however, they produced the most words in response to suggestive prompts. This article concludes with a discussion of the effectiveness of ground rules, practice narratives, and questioning with Aboriginal children.

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Efficient coding of eyewitness narratives: A comparison of syntactic unit and word count procedures

Cited by 22 publications

References 23 publications

Forensic interviews with children in CSA cases: A large‐sample study of Norwegian police interviews

Forensic interviews with children in CSA cases: A large‐sample study of Norwegian police interviews

Childhood amnesia: Empirical evidence for a two-stage phenomenon

Investigative Interviewing of Aboriginal Children in Cases of Suspected Sexual Abuse

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