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This study examined the effects of coaching (encouragement and rehearsal of false reports) and truth induction (a child-friendly version of the oath or general reassurance about the consequences of disclosure) on 4-to 7-year-old maltreated children's reports (N = 198). Children were questioned using free recall, repeated yes -no questions, and highly suggestive suppositional questions. Coaching impaired children's accuracy. For free-recall and repeated yes -no questions, the oath exhibited some positive effects, but this effect diminished in the face of highly suggestive questions. Reassurance had few positive effects and no ill effects. Neither age nor understanding of the meaning and negative consequences of lying consistently predicted accuracy. The results support the utility of truth induction in enhancing the accuracy of child witnesses' reports.The extent to which children's dishonesty may be affected by adult influences is of considerable theoretical and practical interest. Theoretically, knowledge concerning how adults influence children of various ages provides insight into cognitive and social development. Practically, children are routinely questioned about alleged experiences, both in day-to-day situations in which parents, teachers, and others inquire into mostly mundane events, and in more serious settings, such as legal contexts, where children's statements can have far-reaching implications.The purpose of the present study was to examine factors influencing dishonesty in a large sample of maltreated children, with a specific focus on how adult influences affect dishonesty. Maltreated children are particularly likely to be subjected to pressures to disclose or conceal information (Malloy, Lyon, & Quas, 2007;Sas & Cunningham, 1995), and their honesty and dishonesty are often at issue in legal contexts (Brennan, 1994), thus highlighting the need to understand dishonesty in this population. Moreover, two forms of NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript dishonest behavior should be considered: false denials of true events and false allegations of untrue events.Several factors are potentially important in influencing children's dishonesty. First, many of children's lies concern actions involving others (Wilson, Smith,& Ross, 2003), and others often seek to influence children's honesty. The latter person may be called an " instigator," to reflect his or her potential influence on children's statements. Efforts by instigators to encourage and rehearse dishonesty in children will be referred to here as "coaching." Second, the person to whom children lie, referred to as the "recipient," may also exert some influence. In an applied context, the recipient is often an interviewer, although a recipient could be any person with whom children interact. Third, several characteristics in children likely affect their dishonesty, including their age and attitudes about the morality and utility of dishonesty. Research relevant to each of these factors will be considered in...

In the present study, we examined (a) the prevalence and characteristics of youths' true and false admissions (confessions and guilty pleas), (b) youths' interrogation experiences with police and lawyers, and (c) whether youths' interrogation experiences serve as situational risk factors for true and false admissions. We interviewed 193 14- to 17-year-old males (M = 16.4) incarcerated for serious crimes. Over 1/3 of the sample (35.2%) claimed to have made a false admission to legal authorities (17.1% false confession; 18.1% false guilty plea), and 2/3 claimed to have made a true admission (28.5% true confession; 37.3% true guilty plea). The majority of youth said that they had experienced high-pressure interrogations (e.g., threats), especially with police officers. Youth who mentioned experiencing "police refusals" (e.g., of a break to rest) were more likely to report having made both true and false confessions to police, whereas only false confessions were associated with claims of long interrogations (>2 hr) and being questioned in the presence of a friend. The number of self-reported high-pressure lawyer tactics was associated with false, but not true, guilty pleas. Results suggest the importance of conducting specialized trainings for those who interrogate youth, recording interrogations, placing limits on lengthy and manipulative techniques, and exploring alternative procedures for questioning juvenile suspects.

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The present study investigated developmental differences in the effects of repeated interviews and interviewer bias on children's memory and suggestibility. Three-and 5-year-olds were singly or repeatedly interviewed about a play event by a highly biased or control interviewer. Children interviewed once by the biased interviewer after a long delay made the most errors. Children interviewed repeatedly, regardless of interviewer bias, were more accurate and less likely to falsely claim that they played with a man. In free recall, among children questioned once after a long delay by the biased interviewer, 5-year-olds were more likely than were 3-year-olds to claim falsely that they played with a man. However, in response to direct questions, 3-year-olds were more easily manipulated into implying that they played with him. Findings suggest that interviewer bias is particularly problematic when children's memory has weakened. In contrast, repeated interviews that occur a short time after a to-be-remembered event do not necessarily increase children's errors, even when interviews include misleading questions and interviewer bias. Implications for developmental differences in memory and suggestibility are discussed. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author ManuscriptAlthough it is well accepted that memories are not exact replicas of prior experiences but instead are reconstructions (Loftus, 1979), the nature of these reconstructions and the effects of developmental and contextual influences on them remain debated. One noteworthy debate has focused on the effects of repeated interviews on children's memory and suggestibility. In particular, concerns have been raised that the more often a child is interviewed, the more often misinformation might be presented-intentionally or inadvertently-leading to increased inaccuracy over time. Moreover, repeated demands for a child to retrieve information from memory may increase confabulations due to social pressure. Despite these concerns, studies of children's memory for experienced events generally suggest that repeated interviews can improve performance by facilitating recall and reducing forgetting (e.g., Howe, Courage, & Bryant-Brown, 1993;Peterson, 1999). Yet, in a second line of research, specifically when children are suggestively questioned about false events, adverse effects of repeated interviews appear to emerge (e.g., Bruck, Ceci, & Hembrooke, 2002;Leichtman & Ceci, 1995).A simple explanation for the different patterns of results is that repeated interviews benefit memory when the to-be-remembered event is true and distort memory when the to-beremembered event is false. However, a number of other factors likely contribute to the evident reduction in accuracy when children are repeatedly interviewed about fictitious events, making the simple explanation premature. For instance, studies concerning children's false event reports following repeated interviews often began with an interviewer explicitly stating that the false events occurred...

The current study explored the expected consequences of disclosure discussed by 204 5to 13-year-old suspected victims of child sexual abuse during the course of investigative interviews conducted using the NICHD Investigative Interview Protocol. Expected consequences were mentioned in nearly half of all interviews, with older children and those alleging multiple incidents more likely to do so. Most consequences were mentioned spontaneously by children and most consequences were expected to befall the children themselves. The most common consequences were physical harm and feeling negative emotions for the child and jail/legal consequences for the suspect. Expecting consequences for the child or another family member were associated with delaying disclosure, but expecting consequences for the suspect was not related to delay. Results provide insight into developmental and socio-motivational influences on children's disclosure of negative events and are of considerable practical interest to legal and clinical professionals who must interview, treat, and evaluate children alleging sexual abuse. Expected consequences of disclosure 3 Expected Consequences of Disclosure Revealed in Investigative Interviews With Suspected Victims of Child Sexual Abuse Children's disclosure of adult wrongdoing, especially child maltreatment, is the focus of considerable debate and controversy, especially because children often delay

Within the legal system, children are frequently interviewed about their experiences more than once, with different information elicited in different interviews. The presumed positive and negative effects of multiple interviewing have generated debate and controversy within the legal system and among researchers. Some commentators emphasize that repeated interviews foster inaccurate recall and are inherently suggestive, whereas others emphasize the benefits of allowing witnesses more than 1 opportunity to recall information. In this article, we briefly review the literature on repeated interviewing before presenting a series of cases highlighting what happens when children are interviewed more than once for various reasons. We conclude that, when interviewers follow internationally recognized best-practice guidelines emphasizing open-questions and free memory recall, alleged victims of abuse should be interviewed more than once to ensure that more complete accounts are obtained. Implications for current legal guidelines concerning repeated interviewing are discussed.

In this chapter, we review the developmental science of “Children and the Law” and our understanding of the diverse and broad array of cognitive, social, and emotional factors that developmental scientists have studied. To allow children to participate as fully as their abilities allow in legal decisions affecting their lives, it is important to understand their capabilities and strengths, as well as their cognitive and social limitations. We review the developmental science that provides an appropriate evidence base to thus improve decision‐making and outcomes for children and families within many aspects of the legal system. Since the previous edition was published in 2006, research has become increasingly “convincing” to nonpsychologists because basic laboratory research has been complemented by methods that have clear ecological validity, yielding findings that are better understood, accepted, and applied in legal contexts. This knowledge thus permits scholars to offer useful suggestions to practitioners and foster a more complete understanding of developmental processes. We first review the developmental trajectories in the principal domains of development known or likely to affect children in legal contexts—neurophysiological development, memory and suggestibility, cognitive development, language development, social and emotional development, and the development of social relationships with parents and peers. Secondly, we turn attention to the implications of normative developmental processes for children in a variety of legal contexts—investigative interviews with alleged victims, witnesses, and suspects, as well as for those children who are the focus of actions in family and dependency court. The chapter ends with an examination of the key questions to which researchers should turn their attention to further our understanding and practices concerning children and the law.