Awareness of the origin of knowledge predicts child witnesses' recall of alleged sexual and physical abuse

Abstract

Children who understand that knowledge may have different origins produce more information in their free-recall accounts than children who are less aware of source. We examined whether the tendency to make knowledge attributions was related to the number and proportion of details elicited from child witnesses using open-ended invitations and whether this relationship varied depending on the number of incidents of abuse reported. The tendency to make knowledge attributions was measured in the presubstantive portion of protocol-guided interviews with 3-to 11-year-old alleged victims of abuse. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that the production of knowledge attribution details was positively related to the proportion of substantive episodic details produced by 3-to 6-year-olds recalling a single incident and by 3-to 11-year-olds recalling multiple incidents of abuse. Presubstantive source details were also positively correlated with the amount of source information recalled about incidents of abuse. These findings remained significant after controlling for the children's verbosity, the relative prominence of open-ended invitations, and the children's ages. # 2003 US Government work.

Determining statistical signifi cance (alpha) and reporting statistical trends: controversies, issues, and facts1

“…Schumm (2010, p. 955) has cited numerous examples of scholarly research in which results for p < .10 had been reported (Buunk, Doosje, Jans, & Hopstaken, 1993; Cochran & Mays, 2007; Frisco & Williams, 2003; Golombok, Perry, Burston, Mooney-Somers, Stevens, & Golding, 2003; Mays & Cochran, 2001; Sprecher, 1998), even when p < .05 may have been used as the criterion for statistical significance. Many others (not cited in Schumm, 2010) have reported results where p < .10 (e.g., Barrett & Tasker, 2001; Broberg, Lamb, & Hwang, 1990; Cardell, Finn, & Marecek, 1981; Carrere & Gottman, 1999; Feeney, Alexander, Noller, & Hohaus, 2003; Fincham & Bradbury, 1992; Fouts, Hewlett, & Lamb, 2012; Fouts, Roopnarine, & Lamb, 2007; Fouts, Roopnarine, Lamb, & Evans, 2012; Golombok, Spencer, & Rutter, 1983; Gottman, Coan, Carrere, & Swanson, 1998; Gottman & Levenson, 1999; Gottman & Levenson, 2000; Hawkins, Carrere, & Gottman, 2002; Hershkowitz, Fisher, Lamb, & Horowitz, 2007; Lamb, 1977; Lamb, 1978a, b; Lamb, Elster, & Tavare, 1986; Lamb & Garretson, 2003; Lamb, Hwang, & Broberg, 1989; Lamb, Sternberg, Esplin, Hershkowitz, Orbach, & Hovav, 1997; Roberts & Lamb, 2010; Shapiro & Gottman, 2005; Shapiro, Gottman, & Carrere, 2000; Sternberg & Lamb, 1992; Sternberg, Lamb, Greenbaum, Cicchetti, Dawud, Cortes, et al , 1993; Sternberg, Lamb, Hershkowitz, Yudilevich, Orbach, Esplin, et al , 1997; Thierry, Lamb, & Orbach, 2003), including reports with entire tables in which p<.10 outcomes are noted (Amato & Cheadle, 2005; Bos & Hakvoort, 2007; Lamb, Orbach, Sternberg, Aldridge, Pearson, Stewart, et al , 2009; Lindsey, MacKinnon-Lewis, Campbell, Frabutt, & Lamb, 2002; Sternberg, Lamb, Guterman, & Abbott, 2006; Lavner, Waterman, & Peplau, 2012;…”

The flexibility of source‐monitoring training: Reducing young children's source confusions

“…Researchers have investigated relationships between children's source-monitoring performance and memory accuracy. Although there are positive correlations between young children's source-monitoring performance and the accuracy of the information they provide about witnessed events in both laboratory (Giles, Gopnik, & Heyman, 2002;Welch-Ross, 1999) and field (Thierry, Lamb, & Orbach, 2003) contexts, it is unclear whether source-monitoring training can enhance memory accuracy, specifically the ability to discriminate between two event sources. In all source-monitoring training studies undertaken so far, training involved focusing children's attention on sources at the time of retrieval in order to facilitate their subsequent discrimination among event memories.…”

Making the most of information‐gathering interviews with children

“…This tendency to make script-related and source-monitoring confusions generally declines with age (e.g. Poole & Lindsay, 2001, 2002Thierry, Goh, Pipe, & Murray, 2005;Thierry, Lamb, & Orbach, 2003). Children are also less likely to make such errors when asked for open-ended, free-recall accounts instead of being asked specific questions (Roberts & Powell, 2001).…”