Body maps do not facilitate children's reports of touch

Willcock, Emma; Morgan, Kirstie; Hayne, Harlene

doi:10.1002/acp.1212

Cited by 37 publications

(74 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Human figure drawings, provided by the interviewer, are frequently employed by and widely recommended to therapists and forensic interviewers, but they have not been studied systematically until recently (Poole & Lamb, 1998). Willcock, Morgan, and Hayne (2006) found that body maps did not facilitate 5-to 6-yearold children's reports of touch and they argued that they should not be used in clinical or forensic interviews with children of this age. Brown, Pipe, Lewis, Lamb, and Orbach (2007) examined the accuracy of information elicited from 5-to 7-year-old children about a staged event that included physical contact/ touching.…”

Section: Probing Memorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Making the most of information‐gathering interviews with children

Larsson

Lamb

2008

Infant and Child Development

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Because child abuse victims are often the only available sources of information about their experiences, extensive efforts have been made to understand how to maximize their informativeness. There is now broad international consensus regarding optimal interview practices, and broad awareness that children's informativeness increases when interviewers conduct developmentally appropriate interviews with children. In this paper, we (1) summarize current understanding of how children remember, retrieve, and communicate information and (2) discuss ways in which children's memory and reporting can be fostered using techniques designed to help children recount past experiences such as the Cognitive Interview, the Narrative Elaboration Technique, and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development-Protocol. Communicative success clearly depends on how well children understand their role and how effectively interviewers take advantage of children's competencies and abilities to help them maximize their informativeness. Unfortunately, agreement regarding ways in which interviews should be conducted has not been paralleled by changes in the way interviews are actually conducted in the field and more attention thus needs to be paid to training and implementation. Copyright r 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Key words: interviews with children; child abuse victims; interviewing techniques Reliable information about experienced events can be obtained from children as young as 4 years of age provided interviewers converse with and question them carefully and appropriately, adapting their techniques to accommodate children's needs and capacities. This can be especially important when interviewing alleged child abuse victims because they are often the only sources of information about the crimes in question. This places the children in

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Section: Probing Memorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Making the most of information‐gathering interviews with children

Larsson

Lamb

2008

Infant and Child Development

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“…Human body diagrams may have an advantage over dolls because they invite less exploration that may be misinterpreted as attempts to communicate experienced events, but only four studies have examined the effectiveness of interviewer-provided HBDs (Aldridge et al, 2004;Brown, Pipe, Lewis, Lamb, & Orbach, 2007;Willcock, Morgan, & Hayne, 2006). Steward et al (1996) found that 3-to 6-year-old children's free recall reports of bodily touches during a pediatric examination were very accurate but incomplete.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Many new forensically relevant details were reported during the HBD phase of the interviews, especially by the youngest (4-to 7-year-old) children but the accuracy of the children's accounts could not be established. Willcock et al (2006) found that when five-to six-year-old children were shown (clothed) body diagrams and questioned about touch, they failed to mention many of the innocuous touches that had occurred during a scripted event 1 month earlier, and reported many inaccurate touch details, including touches of the genital and breast/chest areas. In a second experiment, children were questioned using the HBD in one of three delay conditions, that is, immediately, 24 hours, or 1 month after the event.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the above studies, children's recall of touch was assessed over relatively short delays of up to a month (e.g., Brown et al, 2007;Willcock et al, 2006), with only one study examining touch reports after a much longer (6 months) delay (Steward et al, 1996). Most case evaluations in forensic contexts are delayed for weeks or even months (Hershkowitz, Horowitz, & Lamb, 2005) and several additional months may pass before investigations reach court (Plotnikoff & Woolfson, 1995;Pipe et al, 2008).…”

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confidence: 99%

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How Do Body Diagrams Affect the Accuracy and Consistency of Children's Reports of Bodily Touch Across Repeated Interviews?

Brown

Pipe

Lewis

et al. 2011

Applied Cognitive Psychology

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We examined the amount, accuracy, and consistency of information reported by 58 5-to 7-year-old children about a staged event that included physical contact/touching. Both 1 and 7 months following the event, children were asked both open and yes/no questions about touch [i] when provided with human body diagrams (HBDs), [ii] following instruction and practice using the HBDs, or [iii] without HBDs. Children interviewed with HBDs reported more information at 7 months, but a high proportion of inaccurate touches. Children seldom repeated touch-related information across the two interviews and did not incorporate errors made in the 1-month interview into their open-ended accounts 6 months later. Asking children to talk about innocuous touch may lead them to report unreliable information, especially when HBDs are used as aids and repeated interviews are conducted across delays that resemble those typical of forensic contexts.

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“…To be able to aid children to recall more information about the perpetrator(s), several attempts have been made to improve children's eyewitness testimony but they have had limited success. These have included the usage of anatomical dolls (Ceci and Bruck 1995), a body map (Willcock et al 2006), a 'Draw and Tell' technique (Poole and Lamb 1998), and using a 'standard model of comparison' (to compare children's memories with a person in their visual field, Kask et al 2007). As the first three methods are more or less connected to increase the amount of information concerning child abuse cases rather than person descriptions, therefore only the latter method is covered in this review more in depth.…”

Section: Attempts To Improve the Quality Of Children's Person Descripmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Person Descriptions to Interviewing Methods: What Can Be Done to Improve Child Witnesses’ Testimonies?

Kask¹,

Bull²

2009

Trames

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Abstract.Recently an increasing number of studies have been conducted in psychology and law. This paper reviews more closely relevant research concerning child witnesses. Several factors which may affect witness testimonies are covered, including theoretical issues regarding person descriptions such as verbal and visual processing, and characteristics influencing these processes. Also, archival and empirical studies of person descriptions and characteristics of witnesses are reviewed. Finally, the outcomes of different methods which were intended to increase the quality and quantity of children's person descriptions (but have had limited success) are overviewed such as the standard model for comparison. In order to achieve the best balance between quantity and quality in children's accounts, it is recommended that interviewers learn to use structured methods such as the NICHD protocol or the cognitive interview.

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Body maps do not facilitate children's reports of touch

Cited by 37 publications

References 11 publications

Making the most of information‐gathering interviews with children

Making the most of information‐gathering interviews with children

How Do Body Diagrams Affect the Accuracy and Consistency of Children's Reports of Bodily Touch Across Repeated Interviews?

From Person Descriptions to Interviewing Methods: What Can Be Done to Improve Child Witnesses’ Testimonies?

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