In the courtroom, child witnesses must undergo cross-examination. Prior research has shown that children change their original testimony under cross-examination, but the effect of these changes on the accuracy of children's testimony is unknown. The authors examined the effect of cross-examination on the accuracy of 5- and 6-year-old children's (N=46) reports of a contrived event. Consistent with prior research, children made changes to their original responses during cross-examination. Furthermore, these changes occurred irrespective of original accuracy. Finally, prior exposure to misleading information did not affect children's responses to cross-examination. Even children with no prior exposure to misinformation altered their original responses, decreasing their ultimate levels of accuracy. These findings demonstrate that cross-examination style questioning is inappropriate for young children.

In the present experiment, we analysed court transcripts in which children aged 5 to 13 years provided the key evidence in sexual abuse trials. We developed two separate coding schemes for lawyers' questions and children's responses. Consistent with past research, defence lawyers conducting cross-examination asked a higher proportion of complex, grammatically confusing, credibility-challenging, leading, and closed questions than prosecution lawyers. In responding to defence lawyers' questions, child witnesses rarely asked for clarification and often attempted to answer questions that were ambiguous or did not make sense. Furthermore, over 75% of children changed at least one aspect of their testimony during the cross-examination process. These findings have important implications for the way in which children are examined in court.

In light of recent research calling into question the way in which child complainants of sexual assault are cross-examined, the purpose of the present study was to use court transcripts to investigate the questions asked during cross-examination, and the responses given, as a function of whether the complainant was a child or an adult. Although cross-examining lawyers appeared to make some concessions for children, they asked complainants in both age groups a high proportion of very challenging questions. Moreover, adult complainants were not immune to the negative effects of cross-examination on their testimony; all adult complainants made at least one change to their earlier testimony under cross-examination, and adults made just as many changes as children. Many changes occurred in response to credibility challenging and leading questions. It is now imperative that laboratory research continues into crossexamination might affect witnesses' ability to provide accurate details of their past experiences.

We attempted to increase children's willingness to reject target-absent lineups by making identification and rejection response procedures highly comparable. Eight-to eleven-year-old children (N ¼ 159) were briefly exposed to a confederate in the context of a staged event, and 24-48 hours later completed either a target-present or target-absent photographic lineup task. Within each lineup condition, children were either told to tell the experimenter if the target was not present (control condition), or provided with an additional photograph of a silhouetted figure with a large question mark superimposed (wildcard condition), and asked to point to this photograph if the target was not present. The wildcard increased children's accuracy on the target-absent lineup without affecting their target-present performance. In fact, performance was increased to a point at which target-absent and target-present accuracy did not differ significantly. These findings offer a promising, easilyimplemented intervention for reducing children's eyewitness identification errors.

We present data suggesting that the negative effect of cross-examination style questioning on children's accuracy is not limited to young children. Using an identical paradigm to that used with 5-and 6-year-olds by Zajac and Hayne in 2003, we examined the effect of cross-examination style questioning on 9-and 10-year-olds' accounts of a prior staged event. Like younger children, 9-and 10-year-old children made frequent changes to their original responses during cross-examination style questioning. Although 9-and 10-year-old children were more likely to change incorrect responses than correct ones, they nonetheless changed over 40% of their correct responses, and cross-examination still exerted a significant negative effect on their overall accuracy levels. The present findings suggest that although older children appear to be somewhat less vulnerable to crossexamination style questioning, they are still not immune to the negative effects of this process on the accuracy of their reports.

We explored the effects of age and retention interval on several measures of children's person identification ability: verbal descriptions, lineup performance, and the success of a 'wildcard'--a photo of a silhouetted figure with a large question mark superimposed--in reducing children's tendency to choose from target-absent lineups. Children aged 5-7 years (N= 101) and 8-11 years (N= 109) were briefly exposed to an experimental confederate during a staged event. Either 1-2 days or 2 weeks later, children described the confederate and were then presented with either a target-present or -absent lineup. Within each group, approximately half of the children were presented with a wildcard and half were not. Target-present lineup performance improved as age increased. Compared to control children, children in the wildcard condition were more likely to correctly reject the target-absent lineup, and less likely to identify the innocent suspect. The wildcard did not influence children's target-present lineup accuracy, nor did delay exert an influence on any of our measures of lineup performance. These findings extend our knowledge of children's person identifications, as well as providing further support for the use of wildcards in photographic lineups.

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