Researchers, clinicians, and child welfare professionals alike recognize that nondisclosure and delayed reporting of child maltreatment is a significant concern that prevents the identification and treatment of abuse victims. Because of this concern, interviewing techniques effective in increasing disclosures while remaining non-suggestive are sorely needed.
The current study will investigate such an interviewing technique termed the putative confession (PC), which involves an interviewer telling children that the perpetrator has already told everything that happened and wants [the child] to tell the truth. The technique follows from precepts of Social Cognitive Theory in that it directly addresses internal and external motivational influences on children?s disclosures by both providing reassurance and making an explicit appeal to tell the truth. Two studies have found that PC is effective in increasing disclosures of adults? transgressions. However, whether PC may augment false reports when children have been previously exposed to misinformation regarding allegations of wrongdoing has not been tested. It is critical to do so because in actual maltreatment investigations children often experience conversations with others (e.g. caregivers) that may expose them to misinformation about incorrect abuse allegations. In the current study, children will experience a laboratory play session during which a transgression (toys breaking) will or will not occur. Subsequently, children will be questioned by a parent, who has or has not been given suggestive information that something bad happened during play. Finally, children will experience an investigative interview in which the interviewer will employ either the PC or control instructions. The experimental methodology will allow a clear test of the impact of PC on true and false disclosures, and of how exposure to misinformation may augment its efficacy.
Results have the potential to advance our knowledge regarding how certain investigative interview technique specifically designed to elicit disclosures from reluctant children may operate in the field. Additionally, the research will provide opportunities for introducing undergraduates to the process of conducting scientific research.
For decades, research on how to best obtain complete and accurate information from children, particularly within legal contexts, has largely focused on interview conditions that minimize suggestibility and false reports of victimization. However, reluctance to disclose victimization is a major hurdle faced by child welfare professionals. Thus, in studying investigative interviewing techniques, researchers should seek to develop techniques that maximize true disclosures while also minimizing false reports. The present study sought to investigate the utility of a novel interviewing method for children (termed the "Putative Confession" or PC) that was designed to increase children's comfort with disclosing transgressions committed by adults (in this case, breaking a toy during a laboratory play session). The PC involved telling children at the outset of the interview that the alleged "perpetrator" has "already told what happened" and "wants [the child] to tell the truth." These instructions provide reassurance to children who did experience a transgression, but do not suggest any potentially false information about the allegations, and thereby should not increase false reports. The project further sought to determine the influence of intervening conversations with parents on children's later disclosures and interview responses. This latter component is especially noteworthy because in actual legal cases, children often do not come into the investigative interview having never been questioned about the allegations at hand. Rather, children often experience informal interviews, most often conducted by parents, before law enforcement is involved. Information, or possibly misinformation, to which children are exposed during these conversations may affect their later reports. Despite this, studies have not examined the impact of these types of conversations on the utility of interviewing techniques, as we aim to do here. In the study, children came to our laboratory and experienced a play event with a male confederate. For half of the children, two toys were rigged to break during play, while for the other half the toys functioned normally. After the play session, all children experience a parent-child interaction, wherein parents asked their children about what happened during the play session. Half of parents were told that negative things may have happened with the toys and that they should try to find out about these negative events (suggestive condition). The other half of parents were only told to find out everything that happened (non-suggestive condition). After the parent-child interaction, all children experienced an investigative interview conducted by a research assistant. Half of the children were provided putative confession (PC) instructions at the outset of the interview, which indicated that the play session confederate had "already told everything that happened" and the the confederate wanted the child to tell the truth. The other half of children were given control instructions, which merely asked them to tell everything that happened during the play session. Several key findings have emerged from the study. First, and unexpectedly, very few children who did not experience toy breakage made false disclosures of toy breakage, either to parents or to the investigative interviewers, even when questioned by parents and/or interviewers in an extremely suggestive manner. This finding has interesting forensic implications, especially given debates about children's susceptibility to suggestion. Children were largely unwilling to assent to false suggestions indicating that something negative (i.e. breaking a toy) had happened. Interesting findings also emerged regarding children's true disclosures of toy breakage. Although in the investigative interview, the vast majority of children who experienced breakage disclosed at some point, this was likely because the interview questions became increasingly direct and eventually very suggestive. Only about half of children disclosed during the open-ended portion of the interview. Open-ended quesitons (e.g., "Tell me what happened") are considered the most desireable in forensic interviews because of the much lower possibility of these questions being suggestive. Thus, we were particularly interested in predictors of children's disclosures during open-ended questioning. Suggestion condition did not predict children's open-ended disclosures in the investigative interview but previous disclosures to parents did. Children who had previously disclosed to their parent were significantly more likely to disclose in the free recall portion of the investivative interview than children who had not disclosed to their parent. Also, children who received the PC instructions were more likely to disclose in free recall than children who received control instructions. Overall, the fact that only half of children disclosed the transgression in open-ended questioning highlights children's reluctance to disclose adults' transgressions. PC appears to be an effective way to increase chidlren's free recall disclosures across the age range investigated (4-7 years old). Additionally, children appear to be quite resistant to false suggestions about a negative event. The findings have clear practical implications in terms of application to legal contexts, and also inform theoretical debates about children's memory and suggestibility.
