To enhance the accuracy and completeness of children's testimony, recommendations have included implementing a practice narrative, during which children are prepared for their role as informative witnesses before discussing the allegations. In the present study, we aimed to systematically examine interviewer behaviour and the informativeness of children's testimony in a field setting. As predicted, interviewers posed fewer prompts, proportionally more open-ended prompts, and children provided proportionally more details in response to open-ended prompts in the substantive phase when preceded by a practice narrative than when no practice narrative was conducted. The relationship was enhanced when the practice narratives were conducted as recommended vs those that were conducted in a less open-ended manner. Together with experimental studies showing clear benefits of practice narratives on children's reports, these results underscore the value of a simple practice narrative as a means of enhancing the reliability of children's testimony.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.