The difficulty of teaching adults to recognize referential ambiguity in children's testimony: The influence of explicit instruction and sample questions

Abstract

Adults often fail to recognize the ambiguity of children's unelaborated responses to “Do you know/remember (DYK/R) if/whether” questions. Two studies examined whether sample questions and/or an explicit instruction would improve adults' ability to recognize referential ambiguity in children's testimony. In Study 1 (N = 383), participants rarely recognized referential ambiguity in the sample questions or in children's testimony, and answering sample questions had no influence on their ability to detect ambiguity in children's testimony. Study 2 (N = 363) attempted to clarify the meaning of ambiguity for participants with explicit instructions. Results revealed that although an explicit instruction improved performance on sample questions, this also led to an overcorrection, and instructions and sample questions only modestly improved adults' ability to recognize referential ambiguity in children's testimony. Ultimately, the absence of an effective strategy for alerting adults to the problem of referential ambiguity highlights the dangers of DYK/R if/whether questions.

Pseudotemporal Invitations: 6- to 9-year-Old Maltreated Children’s Tendency to Misinterpret Invitations Referencing “Time” as Solely Requesting Conventional Temporal Information

“…When interviewers ask “do you remember the time…” and children simply answer “no,” it will be unclear whether they don’t remember the event or merely the time. This adds to the growing evidence that “do you remember” questions in general should be avoided, both because they elicit under informative and ambiguous responses (Ahern et al, 2016; Evans et al, 2014; 2017), and because their ambiguity is overlooked by adults (Wylie et al, 2021).…”

Lawyer questioning practices in Canadian courtrooms.

“…"; Evans et al, 2017). Even adults fail to recognize the ambiguity of "Do you know/ remember" questions (Wylie et al, 2019;Wylie, Gongola, et al 2021). Declarative questions are thought to be a less complex form of suggestive prompt (fewer words, fewer clauses, and fewer false starts; Henderson & Lamb, 2019), though they frequently elicit agreement rather than elaborated responding (Bishop et al, 1998;Stolzenberg et al, 2019).…”

“…“Do you know/remember” questions are complex because children may fail to understand the pragmatics of the question (“Do you know what colour it was?” “Yes.” “Ok, what colour was it?”) or provide ambiguous responses (“Do you know if it was blue?” “No.” “No, you don’t know or no, it’s not blue?”; Evans et al, 2017). Even adults fail to recognize the ambiguity of “Do you know/remember” questions (Wylie et al, 2019; Wylie, Gongola, et al 2021). Declarative questions are thought to be a less complex form of suggestive prompt (fewer words, fewer clauses, and fewer false starts; Henderson & Lamb, 2019), though they frequently elicit agreement rather than elaborated responding (Bishop et al, 1998; Stolzenberg et al, 2019).…”

Adults' interpretation of invitations using the word ‘time’

“…Wylie et al (2019) found that adults were equally likely to interpret unelaborated ‘no’ responses as answering the implicit question (34% interpreted as ‘No, it did not happen’) and explicit question (26% interpreted as ‘No, I don't remember’), and rarely identified children's responses as being unclear (7% of the time). Wylie et al (2021) found that even when they were given an explicit instruction explaining that unelaborated responses to ‘do you remember’ questions lead to ambiguity, adults failed to recognize referential ambiguity when presented with transcripts containing ambiguous answers to ‘do you remember’ questions.…”