Preschoolers' Suggestibility: Effects of Developmentally Appropriate Language and Interviewer Supportiveness

doi:10.1016/S0193-3973(99)00022-2

Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology

Volume 20, Issue 3, July–September 1999, Pages 407-429

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0193-3973(99)00022-2 Get rights and content

Abstract

Three- and four-year-old children were interviewed about a personally experienced event after a 2-week delay. Children were interviewed with one of four alternative interview protocols that differed with regard to degree of interviewer support and language appropriateness. Accuracy of responses to direct questions concerning event features was scored, and answers to misleading questions were coded as an indicator of suggestibility. Individual difference measures of language ability, temperament, task engagement, and parenting attitudes were also collected. The results indicate that interviewers can increase young preschoolers' resistance to suggestibility by using language that is easily comprehensible to young children. Language appropriateness was not as important for the older children and the degree of support did not influence suggestibility for either the younger or the older children. Furthermore, individual difference measures were not related to accuracy for direct questions or suggestibility.

Section snippets

Interviewer Supportiveness

Interviewers' attempts to create child-friendly situations have been shown to influence young children's resistance to suggestion, as will be examined below. Unfortunately, as Goodman, Rudy, Bottoms, and Aman (1990) pointed out, in actual cases of abuse, interviewers who build rapport with children may be criticized. The critics of rapport-building suggest that this supportiveness may encourage inaccuracies by reinforcing false statements. In contrast, the limited extant data suggest that

Appropriate Language

Another possible way to insure that children are responding at an optimal level is by incorporating an appropriate level of language into the interview. When questioning a child, it is often difficult to know if the child understands the question, and so it is hard to determine what the child is able to report from the relevant incident. This difficulty is compounded by young children's failure to request clarification if they do not understand what they have been asked (Flavell, Speer, Green,

Additional Factors Related to Accuracy of Responses

Researchers have suggested that a child's temperament will affect her reporting of an event in a variety of ways. For example, Merritt, Ornstein, and Spicker (1994) interviewed 3- to 7-year olds after an invasive medical procedure. They found that two dimensions of temperament as described by the Temperament Assessment Battery for Children (TABC) (Martin, 1988), adaptability and approach or withdrawal, were positively and very strongly correlated with recall at both the initial interview and at

Rationale for the Present Investigation

This investigation was designed to contribute to the understanding of suggestibility in preschool-age children by examining the effects of interviewer style and complexity of language. Children participated in an experimenter-provided activity so that details of their experience could be verified. Because of the limited extent to which children as young as 3 provide information in response to open-ended questions and the concerns that arise from the resulting need to rely on yes or no probes

Participants

Participants were 64 children attending one of seven classes for preschoolers in daycare classes in suburban communities near Raleigh, North Carolina. The daycare centers served primarily middle- to upper-middle–income families. The participants' mean age was 48.41 months (SD = 4.19), and the sample included 35 females and 29 males. Children were recruited from classes for 3-year olds in late spring; consequently, many participants would soon join a 4-year-old class. Reflecting the racial

Results

Correct responses to direct questions were defined in terms of correct responses to the questions addressing features that actually transpired during the volcano event. Suggestibility was operationalized as the child's failure to reject misleading questions. (See Appendix B for a listing of these questions.) Each correct rejection reflected the child's disagreement with the interviewer's implication about an absent event. Because interviewers on occasion omitted questions, both responses to

Discussion

This investigation examines young children's accuracy of responses to direct questions and suggestibility when differing interview protocols are used. Specifically, language appropriateness and supportive interviewer behaviors were hypothesized to increase accuracy of responses to direct questions and resistance to suggestibility. From the present results, it appears that to optimize young children's accuracy in reporting their personal experiences, it is important to tailor the interview

Acknowledgements

Partial support for this research was received through HD 32214 from the United States Public Health Service. Thanks to Adrienne Murrell, Alicia Parr, Alan Behrman, Kelly Ratliff, Alex Ward, the cooperating child care centers and personnel, and the participating parents and children. The advice of an anonymous reviewer is also appreciated. Portions of this work were presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Washington, DC, April 1997.

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Language abilities have been heralded as an important cognitive factor driving children’s memory and suggestibility in forensic contexts. To this end, we reviewed over 30 years of child eyewitness memory literature to identify patterns in how language skills affect children’s event memory and suggestibility. Across 37 studies examining 3071 children aged 2- to 17-years-old, language abilities emerged as an important predictor of children’s eyewitness memory and suggestibility. The results revealed that specific domains of language are differentially related to children’s memory and suggestibility. Specifically, expressive language abilities were most consistently related to children’s accuracy during free recall and decreased shifting. Receptive language abilities were most consistently related to children’s accurate responses to direct, non-leading questions. Furthermore, narrative skills were associated with both increases and decreases in children’s suggestibility depending on the type of narrative obtained. Our findings imply a nuanced relationship between language abilities and children’s testimonial performance.
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Several temperament traits have been studied in child suggestibility research. These include shyness (Chae & Ceci, 2005; Endres, Poggenpohl, & Erben, 1999; Pozzulo, Coplan, & Wilson, 2005; Roebers & Schneider, 2001; Shapiro & Purdy, 2005; Shapiro, Blackford, & Chen, 2005; Young, Powell, & Dudgeon, 2003), emotionality (Burgwyn-Bailes, Baker-Ward, Gordon, & Ornstein, 2001; Chae & Ceci, 2005; Geddie, Fradin, & Beer, 2000; Gordon et al., 1993; Imhoff & Baker-Ward, 1999; Raju et al., 1999), activity (Shapiro & Purdy, 2005; Shapiro et al., 2005), approach-withdrawal (Burgwyn-Bailes et al., 2001; Gordon et al., 1993; Imhoff & Baker-Ward, 1999; Shapiro et al., 2005), and distractibility (Alexander et al., 2002; Burgwyn-Bailes et al., 2001; Geddie et al., 2000; Gordon et al., 1993; Greenhoot, Ornstein, Gordon, & Baker-Ward, 1999; Imhoff & Baker-Ward, 1999; Shapiro et al., 2005; Shapiro & Purdy, 2005). The findings of these studies have been mixed, but most have failed to find significant associations between suggestibility and dimensions of temperament (for a review, see Klemfuss & Olaguez, 2018).
Preschool children are particularly prone to suggestion. Here, we examined the extent to which temperament variables and internalising and externalising problems influenced preschoolers’ suggestibility. Children aged between 3 and 5 years (N = 140) completed the Video Suggestibility Scale for Children (Scullin & Ceci, 2001), and their kindergarten teachers completed two questionnaires: the EAS Temperament Survey for Children, and the Child Behaviour Checklist. As expected, age and free recall performance were both negatively related to susceptibility to misleading questions. Attentional difficulty was the only individual difference variable that added predictive value to this model. None of our individual difference variables were related to the extent to which children changed their responses in the face of negative feedback. We propose that attentional difficulties might be a particularly strong correlate of suggestibility when children are very young, and we outline the implications of this finding for forensic interviewers who solicit preschoolers’ accounts.
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Preschoolers' Suggestibility: Effects of Developmentally Appropriate Language and Interviewer Supportiveness

Abstract

Section snippets

Interviewer Supportiveness

Appropriate Language

Additional Factors Related to Accuracy of Responses

Rationale for the Present Investigation

Participants

Results

Discussion

Acknowledgements

Personality and Individual Differences

Personality and Individual Differences

Child Abuse and Neglect

Young children's long-term retention of a pediatric examination

Child Development

How shall a thing be coded? Implications of the use of alternative procedures for scoring children's verbal reports

An introduction to the Cognitive Interview technique

Strange languageChild victims under cross-examination

A first languageThe early stages

Linguistic and socioemotional influences on the accuracy of children's reports

Law and Human Behavior

Cognitive and social factors in children's testimony