Factors affecting children's disclosure of secrets in an investigatory interview

Abstract

The present study aimed to identify how children's understanding of the investigatory interview process influenced their disclosure of secrets. Forty-four 6-year-and 7-year-old children participated in the study. Four short stories were read to each child. The stories were about young children who witnessed an event (e.g. witnessing a person stealing a pizza) and were asked to keep the witnessed event secret, then they were interviewed by an authority figure (e.g. security guard) and asked repeatedly about what they had witnessed. After each story, 'Interviewed by an authority figure and asked repeatedly about what they had witnessed' a series of questions were asked that related to factors that might aid the disclosure of the secret. Three main factors were investigated: children's perception of the interviewer's knowledge of the incident; children's perception of the purpose of the interview; and children's understanding of the purpose of asking repeat questions. Results indicated that a child's perception of how much an interviewer appeared to know about a secret, and whether the child was repeatedly asked about the secret do influence a child's disclosure of a secret. However, there was no effect for the purpose of the interview.

The effect of question repetition within interviews on young children’s eyewitness recall

“…Although answerable questions resulted in lower levels of change, children still altered their responses to approximately one-tenth of such questions. This reinforces the assumption that if children are asked questions more than once, they feel pressured to alter their answers (Hartwig & Wilson, 2002;Home OYce, 2001).…”

“…The opinion-seeking questions did not have speciWc answers; therefore, if children were to answer an opinion-seeking question consistently, they needed to remember and maintain the response they gave the Wrst time the question was asked. Children's failure to maintain original opinions might reXect their compliance; Hartwig and Wilson (2002) found that children assume that if an interviewer repeats a question, the interviewer is implying that the Wrst answer was wrong or needs to be changed.…”

“…For example, Hartwig and Wilson (2002) considered the factors that may aVect children's disclosure of secrets in an investigatory interview. They asked children to say how a child character in a story scenario might respond to repeated questioning.…”

The role of repeated interviewing in children's responses to cross‐examination‐style questioning

“…Unlike Quas and colleagues’ participants, children in our study watched a video of their first interview before being questioned a second time. As a result, it is possible that children were confused as to why the interviewer was asking the same questions again, and therefore interpreted the repeated questions as a signal to change their previous responses (Donaldson, 1982; Hartwig & Wilson, 2002; Lyons, 2002; Rose & Blank, 1974; Siegal et al ., 1988).…”

The effect of interviewing techniques on young children's responses to questions

“…Subsequent research has explored the conditions under which repeated questions could influence memory performance of children in recalling an event (Memon & Vartoukian 1996; Hartwig & Wilson 2002; Krähenbühl & Blades 2006). Hartwig and Wilson examined factors that may affect children's disclosure of secrets in an investigatory interview.…”