Children report suggested events even when interviewed in a non‐suggestive manner: what are its implications for credibility assessment?

Abstract

An important question in the legal context is how suggested statements about fictitious events develop over a course of various interviews. Sixty-seven first-graders were interviewed four times about one real and one fictitious event, applying various suggestive techniques. A fifth, nonsuggestive, interview was conducted by blind experts. Over the course of the interviews there was a considerable increase in assents to the fictitious events. Moreover, few significant differences in criteria-based content analysis-criteria were revealed between true and fictitious statements in the fifth interview. Accordingly, experts had difficulties in discriminating between true and suggested accounts. Furthermore, several children were convinced of the truth of their reports, even after having been partially debriefed in a sixth interview. Implications for statement validity assessment are discussed.

False rumors and true belief: Memory processes underlying children’s errant reports of rumored events

“…The generation of qualities characteristic of experienced events in representations of suggested events presumably can lead individuals to misattribute them to an experienced source. For instance, both children and adults who report being convinced about experiencing suggested events describe them with as much perceptual and contextual detail as they do experienced events (Blandon-Gitlin, Pezdek, Lindsay, & Hagen, 2009; Erdmann et al, 2004). This is not the case, however, for descriptions of suggested events for which individuals believe happened but deny any memory of experiencing.…”

“…Lindsay interpreted these findings as evidence that suggestibility effects are not entirely driven by social demands. Less direct warnings, such as cautions that the postevent information may have been inaccurate or that a few of the postevent details were wrong, have not reduced suggestibility in either adults (e.g., Christiaansen & Ochalek, 1983; Greene, Flynn, & Loftus, 1982) or children (e.g., Erdmann, Volbert, & Böhm, 2004), indicating that a direct warning likely is necessary to inhibit false reports due to demand characteristics.…”

Misconceptions about childhood sexual abuse and child witnesses: Implications for psychological experts in the courtroom

“…Contrary to this misconception, we now know that after repeated suggestions over a long period of time children can give convincing, detailed accounts of events that never occurred, even when asked ''gold standard'' free recall questions (e.g., Erdmann, Volbert, & Bohm, 2004;Poole & Lindsay, 2001).…”

“…In these kinds of studies adults typically have considerable difficulty evaluating the truthfulness of accounts from children (Ball & O'Callaghan, 2001;Block et al, 2012;Laimon & Poole, 2008;Leippe, Manion, & Romanczyk, 1992;Qin, Ogle, & Goodman, 2008) or from adults reporting childhood events (Ost, Vrij, Costall, & Bull, 2002;Schooler, Gerhard, & Loftus, 1986). Even the ability of experts to discern true from false reports is uniformly poor; in many instances professionals are no better than chance and some are reliably worse (Bond & DePaulo, 2006;Ekman, O'Sullivan, & Frank, 1999;Erdmann et al, 2004;Kassin, Meissner, & Norwick, 2005;Leichtman & Ceci, 1995;Vrij & Mann, 2001).…”

Value of Content-Based Deception Detection Methods

“…For example, Saykaly (2009) observed that the presence of CBCA criteria decreases and altogether disappears at the third interrogation of a child. Erdmann, Volbert and Bohm (2004) noticed that in the fi fth interrogation of a child, only one CBCA criterion (quantity of details) diff erentiates true statements from false, and additionally some children begin to believe that they witnessed an event that never happened already after the fourth interrogation. Granhag, Stromwall and Landstrom (2006) observed a similar impact on RM in the case of fi ve consecutive inter-rogations.…”