Children's Testimony E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Wiley Series in The Psychology of Crime, Policing and Law
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 858

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

The second edition of Children's Testimony is a fully up-to-date resource for practitioners and researchers working in forensic contexts and concerned with children's ability to provide reliable testimony about abuse. * Written for both practitioners and researchers working in forensic contexts, including investigative interviewers, police officers, lawyers, judges, expert witnesses, and social workers * Explores a range of issues involved with children's testimony and their ability to provide reliable testimony about experienced or witnessed events, including abuse * Avoids jargon and highly technical language * Includes a comprehensive range of contributions from an international group of practitioners and researchers to ensure topicality and relevance

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Wiley Series in The Psychology of Crime, Policing and Law

Title Page

Copyright

Contributors

Series Preface

Acknowledgements

1: Developmentally Sensitive Interviewing for Legal Purposes

WHAT WE SET OUT TO DO IN THIS UPDATED HANDBOOK

WHAT TO EXPECT

CHAPTER OVERVIEW

2: Setting Realistic Expectations: Developmental Characteristics, Capacities and Limitations

DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION

SUGGESTIBILITY OF CHILD WITNESSES

INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERISTICS

FANTASY

CONCLUSIONS

3: The Development of Memory in Childhood

THE DEVELOPMENT OF MEMORY

MEMORY CHANGES OVER TIME

THE RECONSTRUCTIVE NATURE OF MEMORY AND SUGGESTIBILITY

TWO IMPORTANT WAYS WE REMEMBER: FREE RECALL VERSUS RECOGNITION

CONTEXT REINSTATEMENT AND THE THEORY OF ‘ENCODING SPECIFICITY’

STRESS, TRAUMA AND MEMORY

CONCLUSIONS

4: Assessing the Competency of Child Witnesses: Best Practice Informed by Psychology and Law

BASIC COMPETENCY: PERCEPTION, MEMORY, AND NARRATION

TRUTH–LIE COMPETENCY: SINCERITY

CONCLUSIONS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

5: Planning the Interview

PLANNING INFORMATION

USING THE PLANNING INFORMATION

PREPARING THE WITNESS FOR THE INTERVIEW

CONCLUSIONS

6: Rapport Building in Investigative Interviews of Children

EFFECTS OF SOCIAL SUPPORT

PRACTICAL GUIDELINES FOR ESTABLISHING RAPPORT

STYLE OF RAPPORT BUILDING

LENGTH OF RAPPORT BUILDING

AGE AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES

ESTABLISHING RAPPORT WITH RELUCTANT CHILDREN

DIFFICULTIES INVESTIGATORS FACE ESTABLISHING RAPPORT WITH CHILDREN USING EXISTING GUIDELINES

NEW GUIDELINES FOR ENHANCING RAPPORT BUILDING

THE CHALLENGE FOR CHILD INVESTIGATORS: PROVIDING NON-SUGGESTIVE SUPPORT

CONCLUSIONS

7: Practice Narratives

RATIONALE: WHY A PRACTICE NARRATIVE IS IMPORTANT AND USEFUL

WHAT SHOULD YOU EXPECT FROM A PRACTICE NARRATIVE? COGNITIVE AND MOTIVATIONAL ADVANTAGES OF PRACTICING NARRATIVES

COMMON REASONS FOR NOT CONDUCTING A PRACTICE NARRATIVE

PRACTICAL GUIDELINES FOR PRACTICE NARRATIVE

CONCLUSIONS

8: Investigating Substantive Issues

THE SUBSTANTIVE PHASE OF INVESTIGATIVE INTERVIEWS

INTERVIEWING STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES AND RATIONALE FOR THEIR USE

HIERARCHICAL STRUCTURE OF THE SUBSTANTIVE INTERVIEW

SEQUENTIAL ORGANIZATION OF THE SUBSTANTIVE INTERVIEW

IMPLEMENTING INTERVIEWING STRATEGIES: PROMPT TYPES AND RATIONALE FOR THEIR USE

USING RESEARCH-BASED MEMORY ENHANCING TECHNIQUES

ADAPTING INTERVIEWING PRACTICES TO CHILDREN'S DEVELOPMENTAL LEVEL

CONCLUSIONS

9: Reviewing the Case (Post-interview)

IS THE INFORMATION OBTAINED FROM THE CHILD RELEVANT TO THE INVESTIGATION?

FORENSIC EVIDENCE TO BE RETRIEVED AND ANALYSED

CASE PROGRESSION

REASONS FOR LACK OF CASE PROGRESS

INVESTIGATIVE DECISION-MAKING PROCESSES

IF THE CASE IS NOT READY TO MOVE FORWARD, WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

CONCLUSIONS

10: Managing Children's Emotional and Clinical Needs

FORENSIC AND CLINICAL ROLES

DETERMINING THE INDIVIDUAL NEEDS OF THE ALLEGED CHILD VICTIM

TREATMENT CHALLENGES

INTERVENTIONS FOR CHILDREN: CLASSIFIED UNSUBSTANTIATED, SOME INDICATORS, OR SUBSTANTIATED

CONCLUSIONS

11: Training Forensic Interviewers

GOAL OF INVESTIGATIVE INTERVIEWER TRAINING

IMPORTANCE OF A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO INTERVIEWING

IMPORTANCE OF ONGOING FEEDBACK AND TRAINING FOR INTERVIEWERS

INITIAL TRAINING

INITIAL FEEDBACK OPPORTUNITIES

FEEDBACK IN TEAM MEETINGS

ONGOING INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP TRAINING AND FEEDBACK

CONTENT OF THE TRAINING PROGRAMMES

BARRIERS TO TRAINING

CONCLUSIONS

APPENDIX A

APPENDIX B: FEEDBACK/GUIDANCE

12: The Use of Supplementary Techniques in Forensic Interviews with Children

RATIONALE FOR USING SUPPLEMENTARY TECHNIQUES IN INTERVIEWS WITH CHILDREN

ANATOMICALLY DETAILED DOLLS

BODY DIAGRAMS

PROPS: REAL ITEMS, TOYS, AND PHOTOGRAPHS

REINSTATEMENT OF CONTEXT

DRAWINGS

TRUTH INDUCTION

LEGAL ISSUES

FUTURE RESEARCH

CONCLUSIONS

13: Children with Intellectual Disabilities and Developmental Disorders

SOME KEY CONCEPTS

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES

IDENTIFYING CHILDREN WITH INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES

FORENSIC ISSUES RELEVANT TO ALL VULNERABLE WITNESSES

CHILDREN WITH NON-SPECIFIC INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES

CHILDREN WITH DOWN SYNDROME

CHILDREN WITH AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER

CHILDREN WITH WILLIAMS SYNDROME

CONCLUSIONS

14: Evidence and Cross-Examination

CROSS-EXAMINATION AS A LEGAL INSTITUTION

THE CURRENT LAW IN RELATION TO THE CROSS-EXAMINATION OF CHILD WITNESSES IN CRIMINAL PROCEEDINGS IN ENGLAND AND WALES

CONCLUSIONS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

APPENDIX: CRIMINAL PROCEDURE RULES (2010) RULE 1

15: Children's Disclosure Statements as Evidence in the United States Legal System

INVESTIGATIVE DECISIONS BASED ON CHILDREN'S DISCLOSURE STATEMENTS

CHILDREN'S DISCLOSURE STATEMENTS IN COURT – HEARSAY

THE EXCITED UTTERANCE EXCEPTION

MEDICAL DIAGNOSIS OR TREATMENT EXCEPTION

RESIDUAL HEARSAY EXCEPTIONS

CONCLUSIONS

16: Consequences of Legal Involvement on Child Victims of Maltreatment

CHARACTERISTICS OF CHILD VICTIMS INVOLVED IN LEGAL CASES

CONSEQUENCES OF LEGAL INVOLVEMENT

CONCLUSIONS

17: Expert Testimony

WHAT IS EXPECTED FROM EXPERT TESTIMONY?

WEAKNESSES IN, AND ATTACKS ON THE VERACITY OF CHILDREN'S TESTIMONY

INTERVIEWERS AVOIDING PITFALLS

DEFENDING ATTACKS ON INTERVIEWS WITH CHILDREN

EVALUATING THE CREDIBILITY OF THE CHILD'S EVIDENCE

UNUSUAL AND RARE PRESENTATIONS

18: Relationship between Research and Practice

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RESEARCH AND PRACTICE

RESEARCH ON THE RELIABILITY OF CHILDREN'S MEMORY

DEVELOPMENT OF LEGAL AND PROFESSIONAL GUIDELINES

SPECIAL MEASURES FOR CHILDREN: THE USE OF CCTV

RESEARCH AND PRACTICE: THE WAY FORWARD?

CONCLUSIONS

19: Child Protection Considerations in the United States

THE MAIN ORGANIZATIONAL TASK IS DECISION MAKING

GATE 1: SCREENING

GATE 2: INVESTIGATIONS

GATES 3 AND 4: PLACEMENT AND SERVICES

CONCLUSIONS

20: Facilitating Effective Participation by Children in the Legal System

APPENDIX: The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Protocol: Interview Guide

I. INTRODUCTION

II. RAPPORT BUILDING

III. TRAINING IN EPISODIC MEMORY

THE SUBSTANTIVE PART OF THE INTERVIEW

IV. TRANSITION TO SUBSTANTIVE ISSUES

V. INVESTIGATING THE INCIDENTS

VI. BREAK

VII. ELICITING INFORMATION THAT HAS NOT BEEN MENTIONED BY THE CHILD

VIII. IF CHILD FAILS TO MENTION INFORMATION YOU EXPECTED

IX. INFORMATION ABOUT THE DISCLOSURE

X. CLOSING

XI. NEUTRAL TOPIC

Index

Wiley Series in The Psychology of Crime, Policing and Law Series Editors Graham Davies and Ray BullUniversity of Leicester, UK

The Wiley Series in the Psychology of Crime, Policing and Law publishes concise and integrative reviews on important emerging areas of contemporary research. The purpose of the series is not merely to present research findings in a clear and readable form, but also to bring out their implications for both practice and policy. In this way, it is hoped the series will not only be useful to psychologists but also to all those concerned with crime detection and prevention, policing, and the judicial process.

For other titles in this series please see www.wiley.com/go/pcpl

This second edition first published 2011 © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Edition history: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. (1e, 2002)

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Children's testimony : a handbook of psychological research and forensic practice / edited by Michael E. Lamb... [et al.]. -- 2nd ed. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-0-470-68677-5 (cloth) -- ISBN 978-0-470-68678-2 (pbk.) 1. Child witnesses. I. Lamb, Michael E., 1953-- K2271.5.C49 2011 347'.066083--dc22 2011002206

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This book is published in the following electronic formats: ePDFs 9781119998501; Wiley Online Library 9781119998495; ePub 9781119996156

Contributors

Caroline Bettenay Senior Lecturer, London South Bank University, London, United Kingdom e-mail: [email protected]

Rebecca Brigham MSW graduate of School of Social Policy and Practice, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, United States e-mail: [email protected]

Deirdre Brown Lecturer in Clinical and Forensic Psychology, School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected]

Sonja P. Brubacher PhD Student in Psychology, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada e-mail: [email protected]

Daniel P.J. Carney Graduate Teaching Assistant, London South Bank University, London, United Kingdom e-mail: [email protected]

Mary Connell Clinical and Forensic Psychologist, Independent Practice, Fort Worth, Texas, United States e-mail: [email protected]

Graham M. Davies Professor Emeritus of Psychology, University of Leicester, Leicester, United Kingdom e-mail: [email protected]

Richard J. Gelles Dean, School of Social Policy and Practice, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, United States e-mail: [email protected]

Lucy A. Henry Professor of Psychology, London South Bank University, London, United Kingdom e-mail: [email protected]

Irit Hershkowitz Professor of Social Work, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel e-mail: [email protected]

Carmit Katz (Editor) Research Associate, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom e-mail: [email protected]

Kathryn Kuehnle Clinical and Forensic Psychologist, Independent Practice, Tampa, Florida, United States; Associate Professor of Psychology, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, United States e-mail: [email protected]

Michael E. Lamb (Editor) Professor of Social and Developmental Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom e-mail: [email protected]

David J. La Rooy (Editor) Scottish Institute for Policing Research Lecturer, University of Abertay Dundee, Dundee, United Kingdom e-mail: [email protected]

Thomas D. Lyon Professor of Law & Psychology, University of Southern California, United States e-mail: [email protected]

Lindsay C. Malloy (Editor) Assistant Professor of Psychology, Florida International University, Florida, United States e-mail: [email protected], [email protected]

Rebecca Milne Reader in Forensic Psychology, Institute of Criminal Justice Studies, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, United Kingdom e-mail: [email protected]

John E. B. Myers Professor of Law, University of the Pacific, California, United States e-mail: [email protected]

Trond Myklebust Detective Chief Superintendent, Norwegian Police University College, Oslo, Norway e-mail: [email protected]

Yael Orbach Senior Scientist, US National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, United States e-mail: [email protected]

Gavin E. Oxburgh Senior Lecturer in Forensic Psychology, Teesside University, Middlesbrough, United Kingdom e-mail: [email protected]

Margaret-Ellen Pipe Professor of Psychology, Brooklyn College, New York, United States e-mail: [email protected]

Martine B. Powell Professor of Psychology, Deakin University, Melbourne Campus at Burwood, Victoria, Australia e-mail: [email protected]

Heather L. Price Assistant Professor of Psychology, University of Regina, Regina, Canada e-mail: [email protected]

Jodi A. Quas Associate Professor, University of California, Irvine, California, United States e-mail: [email protected]

Kim P. Roberts Professor of Psychology, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada e-mail: [email protected]

Kevin Smith National Vulnerable Witness Adviser, Specialist Operations Centre, UK National Policing Improvement Agency, United Kingdom e-mail: [email protected]

John R. Spencer Professor of Law, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom e-mail: [email protected]

Heather Stewart Assistant Program Manager, Salt Lake County Children's Justice Center, Salt Lake City, Utah, United States e-mail: [email protected]

Mariya Sumaroka PhD Student in Psychology, University of California, Irvine, Caliornia, United States e-mail: [email protected]

Bryan Tully Registered Clinical and Forensic Psychologist, Chartered Neuropsychologist, Psychologists at Law Group, London, United Kingdom e-mail: [email protected]

Series Preface

The Wiley Series in the Psychology of Crime, Policing, and the Law publishes both single and multi-authored monographs and edited reviews of emerging areas of contemporary research. The purpose of this series is not merely to present research findings in a clear and readable form, but also to bring out their implications for both practice and policy. Books in this series are useful not only to psychologists, but also to all those involved in crime detection and prevention, child protection, policing, and judicial processes.

Concerns over the gathering and giving of children's evidence have been a consistent theme of books in this series. The first, Dent and Flin's Children as Witnesses (1992) reviewed research that undermined the view that child witnesses were necessarily unreliable and suggestible, and highlighted the legal and procedural difficulties children faced in having their evidence heard under the adversarial system of justice operated in courts in Britain, the United States, and most Commonwealth countries. It foreshadowed legal changes designed to make it easier for children to have their evidence heard in court, including the use of the live television link and pre-recorded interviews conducted by specially trained police officers and social workers as a substitute for live examination at court. In the ensuing years, such innovations were rapidly adopted in the United Kingdom and spread rapidly to other Commonwealth countries (Davies, 1999). However, the consequent increase in children testifying at court in turn provoked a backlash in legal and psychological opinion, fuelled by actual or potential miscarriages of justice involving inappropriate or leading interview procedures being used with vulnerable witnesses (Ceci & Bruck, 1995).

How to resolve the conflict between the need for children to have their voice heard in court and the rights of an accused to a fair and balanced trial formed a central theme for the second book in the series: Children's Testimony (2002), edited by Westcott, Davies, and Bull. This first international handbook devoted to the evidence of children placed an emphasis upon accessible presentations and wide perspectives for a wide, non-specialist audience. A more recent volume in the series, Tell Me What Happened (2008) by Lamb, Hershkowitz, Orbach, and Esplin demonstrated from an analysis of actual interview transcripts that investigators overly rely upon closed or specific questions when interviewing children with a consequent risk of minimal or suggestive responding. The authors advocated the use of a new interview technique with a rigorous emphasis upon open-ended questions -- the NICHD Protocol -- which allows children more opportunity to express their own version of events and to provide the kind of detail that the courts require to reach safe verdicts.

A decade has passed since the chapters were written for Westcott\break et al.'s handbook and a great deal of research has been conducted in the interim on the characteristics of children's memory as well as developments in interviewing practice. Likewise, legislation and court procedure on hearing children's evidence in common law has also changed and progressed. It seemed timely to produce a second edition of Children's Testimony to bring the story up to date.

In seeking an editor for the new edition, I unhesitatingly turned to Michael Lamb and his colleagues. Since his return from the United States, where he led research on social and emotional development for the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Professor Lamb has headed the Department of Social and Developmental Psychology at Cambridge University, where he continues to conduct research on interviewing techniques as part of his wider concern for policy-related family issues.

Professor Lamb's international reputation as a scientist has ensured that the new edition of Children's Testimony contains contributions from leading researchers and practitioners from around the globe. As with the first edition, the focus is not merely on current research on interviewing and the characteristics of children's memory, but also the implications of that research for court practice and child protection policy. It is written and designed for the wider audience who are involved in policy and practice in the child forensic area, including investigators, lawyers, judges, expert witnesses, and legislators.

I am confident that this second edition will have the same positive impact upon the development of research and practice in the field as the first edition. My major concern is the changed economic climate into which the new volume emerges. The original Children's Testimony appeared at a time of relative economic prosperity in both public and private sectors in most leading industrial countries: there was finance available for training personnel, building dedicated interviewing facilities and funds for research. The second edition appears in more straightened times. As a sign of that changed climate, one need look no further than the policy on the fees charged to local authorities in England and Wales for bringing child protection cases to court. Originally, these were set at {\char'243}150, but then rose to {\char'243}4825 in 2008. Following public concern over sensational instances of child abuse, there were moves to abolish fees entirely, but in the light of current cutbacks in governmental expenditure, it has been announced that higher fees will be maintained, reducing still further the likelihood of care cases coming to court (Doward, 2010). Research and policy on child witnesses can never be divorced from wider economic considerations. It is to be hoped that the many positive messages emerging from this important new book may serve to convince governments everywhere that effective child protection and child witnesses are causes worthy of support.

Graham M. DaviesUniversity of Leicester

REFERENCES

Ceci, S.J., & Bruck, M. (1995). Jeopardy in the Courtroom: A Scientific Analysis of Children's Testimony. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Davies, G.M. (1999). The impact of television on the presentation and reception of children's evidence. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 22, 241--256.

Dent, H.R., & Flin, R.H. (1992). Children as Witnesses. Chichester: Wiley.

Doward, J. (2010). Abused children `at greater risk' after U-turn on court fees. The Observer (31 October 2010, p. 20).

Lamb, M.E., Hershkowitz, I., Orbach, Y., & Esplin, P.W. (2008) Tell Me What Happened: Structured Investigative Interviews of Child Victims and Witnesses. Chichester: Wiley.

Westcott, H., Davies, G.M., & Bull, R. (Eds). (2002). Children's Testimony: A Handbook of Psychological Research and Forensic Practice. Chichester: Wiley.

Acknowledgements

We were honoured and thrilled when the original editors of Children's Testimony: A Handbook of Psychological and Forensic Practice (2002) invited us to edit the second edition of this volume. Because we greatly admire Helen Westcott, Graham Davies, and Ray Bull's groundbreaking first edition of Children's Testimony, we would first like to thank them for entrusting us with preparation of this up-to-date revision. Secondly, we are grateful to our contributors for sharing their knowledge and expertise while working diligently to create a comprehensive and practical handbook. Thirdly, we appreciate the remarkable dedication and efforts of all who work in the field of children's testimony – investigative interviewers, law enforcement officers, social workers, lawyers, judges, psychologists, and more. This field (and this book) would not exist without the extensive efforts of this diverse group of professionals around the world. Although they are far too numerous to name, we would like to acknowledge their many contributions. Fourthly, we would like to extend a massive `thank you' to all those legal, child protection, medical, and charity agencies that promote cooperation and collaboration with researchers. Fifthly, we thank Karen Shield, Maxim Shrestha, Andrew Peart, and the whole Wiley team who have supported our efforts cheerfully and efficiently. Finally, the research presented in this book would not have been possible without the help of countless children and families, many in very stressful and difficult circumstances. We thank them for their critical roles in advancing the science and practice of children's eyewitness testimony and dedicate this book to them.

1

Developmentally Sensitive Interviewing for Legal Purposes

Lindsay C. Malloy, David J. La Rooy, Michael E. Lamb, and Carmit Katz

Originally edited by Helen Westcott, Graham Davies, and Ray Bull and published in 2002, Children's Testimony: A Handbook of Psychological and Forensic Practice represented a significant collaborative achievement of researchers and practitioners. The book not only provided a comprehensive guide to the available research on children's testimony, but also called attention to unanswered questions and issues remaining to be resolved by researchers and practitioners striving to ensure that investigators elicited detailed and accurate testimony from child witnesses so that children and innocent suspects could be protected and guilty perpetrators prosecuted.

A comprehensive understanding of children's testimony requires expertise from a diverse group of professionals with knowledge of topics ranging from memory to language to law to mental health, with insights drawn from both practitioners and researchers. Not surprisingly perhaps, such interdisciplinary collaboration is, unfortunately, rare. Because the past decade has been marked by substantial progress and achievements, the time is ripe for a new and fully up-to-date edition of Children's Testimony.

Before providing an overview of the book and describing our goals, we begin by placing the field of children's testimony in context. A complete review of the social and historical context is beyond the scope of this chapter (for such discussions see Bruck, Ceci, & Principe, 2006; Poole & Lamb, 1998), but it is necessary to explain the development of the field – even since the first edition of this book was published almost a decade ago – in order to make sense of current issues and debates. Frankly, there is too much yet to be discovered to repeat the lessons and mistakes of the past.

When children are asked to testify, it is usually about maltreatment (Bruck et al., 2006; Lamb, 2003; Lamb, Hershkowitz, Orbach, & Esplin, 2008); a body of knowledge about ‘children's testimony’ largely exists because a shocking number of children around the world do not live in safe and secure circumstances. In the United States, for example, about 3.5 million investigations or assessments are carried out annually in response to reports of suspected child maltreatment. Following these investigations, nearly 800 000 children were classified as victims of maltreatment in 2007 (US Department of Health and Human Services, Administration on Children, Youth, and Families, 2009). Similarly alarming situations exist in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2007; Creighton, 2004; Trocmé et al., 2001). Increased awareness of child maltreatment beginning in the 1970s complemented by the reduction of barriers to children's participation in the legal system in the 1980s together ensured that increasing numbers of children have come to be viewed as potential witnesses (Lamb, 2003).

Each year, increasing numbers of children thus come into contact with the legal, social service, and child welfare systems around the world. As a result, children represent ‘a large and growing legal constituency, one that possesses a special set of constraints involving basic developmental competencies, including cognitive, social, and emotional, that may constrain their effective participation’ (Bruck et al., 2006, p. 777). In response to these trends, the amount of research concerning children's testimony has grown rapidly; it remains one of the fastest-growing areas in all of developmental psychology (Bruck et al., 2006).

Accurate identification of child maltreatment and its victims is crucial if we wish to end victimization, protect children, and provide children, families, and, potentially, perpetrators with appropriate services and treatment. This is particularly important given that maltreatment can profoundly affect children's cognitive, socio-emotional, and even physical, development (for a review see Cicchetti, 2010). Early identification is often difficult because (as we explain in this book) child maltreatment is a crime that is extremely difficult to investigate. Because corroborative evidence is often absent, especially when sexual abuse is involved, suspected victims may often be the sole sources of information about their experiences.

For this reason, investigative interviewers have vital roles in the investigation of child maltreatment. The investigative interview typically sets into motion criminal proceedings and/or a variety of other interventions for children and families. Information originating from investigative interviews may powerfully affect legal and administrative decisions that may profoundly affect the lives of children, families, and suspects, so it is imperative that children's reports are clear, consistent, detailed, and accurate.

Enough has been written about the McMartin and similar trials to make an extensive review unnecessary here, but it is worth noting how cases such as this highlighted the importance of careful interviewing and the profound need for empirical research on children's testimony. These highly publicized cases involving allegations of child sexual abuse in daycare centres occurred around the world (e.g., in the United States, Norway, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom) particularly underscored the counterproductive ways in which alleged victims were sometimes questioned, at times rendering their testimony flawed and inaccurate (Bruck et al., 2006; Ceci & Bruck, 1995). In the McMartin case, for example, children made bizarre allegations (e.g., that they were taken into tunnels underneath the school, saw witches fly, went on hot-air balloon rides, and witnessed human and animal sacrifice), but the charges were eventually dropped after years of expensive investigation and litigation. Defendants in other cases similarly served long periods in jail before their convictions were overturned (Ceci & Bruck, 1995; Nathan & Snedeker, 1995).

As so often happens in child maltreatment cases, these daycare cases relied almost entirely on children's allegations, and it was the jury's task to determine whether the children could be believed. These decisions had to be made in the face of competing claims by prosecutors that children never lie about sexual abuse, and by defence lawyers that children could easily be led to provide false reports following repeated suggestive interviews by zealous therapists. Such competing claims were made about child witnesses’ capabilities and limitations despite scant research on children's testimony and a strong need for empirical research on these issues.

Researchers responded to this need enthusiastically. In the last 30 years, literally hundreds, if not thousands, of studies have been conducted by an international and disciplinarily diverse group of researchers. These studies have revealed much about children's abilities, capacities, and limitations, and the factors that influence children's eyewitness testimony. Drawing upon the findings of laboratory research, researchers have developed (and continue to develop) creative ways to conduct more ecologically valid research – interviewing children about stressful medical procedures, and involving maltreated children as research participants, for example. By identifying children's strengths, weaknesses, and characteristics, investigative interviewing procedures and protocols have improved the quality of information elicited from children. We have learned quite a lot, therefore, even since the 2002 publication of the first edition of Children's Testimony.

What do we know and what have we accomplished? We now know that children – even very young children – can provide reliable and accurate testimony about experienced or witnessed events. We also know that children (like adults) are suggestible, and that we must be aware of ways in which suggestibility can be minimized. We further know that the level of accuracy and the amount of detail provided by young witnesses is largely dependent on the ways in which children are interviewed and that the role of the interviewer is thus paramount.

Close collaboration between researchers, interviewers, legal experts, and the police has been especially marked in this field, as exemplified by the achievements of the team who developed the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Investigative Interview Protocol, a set of structured guidelines for interviewing children about experienced or witnessed events which has been validated extensively around the world (Bull, 2010; Lamb et al., 2008). In fact, it has now been more than a decade since publication of the first field study validating the NICHD Investigative Interview Protocol (Orbach, Hershkowitz, Lamb, Esplin, & Horowitz, 2000). Many researchers have also tested a variety of techniques and procedures ostensibly designed to enhance children's testimony (e.g., dolls/props, CCTV, drawing). Growing confidence in scientific research is evident in the development of a professional organization that focuses specifically on investigative interviewing and facilitates meaningful interaction among a diverse group of researchers and practitioners from around the world – the International Investigative Interviewing Research Group (iIIRG). Research on child testimony also features prominently at the conferences organized by such organizations as the American Psychology–Law Society, the European Association of Psychology and Law, the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, and the Society for Research in Child Development. Professionals in many different fields have come to realize that there is much to gain – practically, theoretically, and methodologically – from studying children's eyewitness testimony in both laboratory and field contexts. Above all else, we have learned that, in this field, researchers and practitioners need and complement one another in unique and important ways and that the promotion and pursuit of children's welfare requires cooperation with and learning from each other.

Of course, there is much yet to learn. The willingness to learn and draw on new evidence characterizes good investigative interviewers and researchers alike. Research on children's testimony that is informative and helps to solve problems in the field needs to be implemented by practitioners, whose insights and experiences in the field should help in the formulation of new studies and in the interpretation of their findings. The NICHD Investigative Interview Protocol, described in detail throughout this volume, continually strives to accommodate the results of new research and changing needs. Recognition of its overall effectiveness has prompted other researchers and practitioners to consider ways in which it might be altered to address the differing needs of specific groups of individuals who need to be interviewed forensically, including those who are very young or especially reluctant to talk, those who are suspects rather than victims or witnesses, and those who have mental or intellectual difficulties.

Clearly, we have come a long way since the McMartin trials and the associated intense debates about what child witnesses can and cannot do, and we have come a long way since the first edition of Children's Testimony was published in 2002. Surely, the next decade promises to be as exciting and productive as the last.

WHAT WE SET OUT TO DO IN THIS UPDATED HANDBOOK

Our aim in preparing this handbook is to create a resource that will be valuable to all professionals working in the field of children's eyewitness testimony – academics and practitioners alike – because it provides a fully up-to-date review of the significant developments made in the last decade. This book contains valuable and practical information of direct relevance, not only to investigative interviewers, but also to lawyers, judges, expert witnesses, social workers, intermediaries, academics, and students. We believe that new advancements must be shared in accessible ways, and have thus asked both academic and practitioner contributors to write in a user-friendly style that make their conclusions available to a wide audience. The book comprises a collection of short focused chapters, organized to deal with the issues in the sequence with which they must often be addressed as investigations unfold and progress.

Whereas most comparable resources emphasize the research and issues of concern to scholars and practitioners in individual countries, we have invited authors from as diverse an array of national and disciplinary backgrounds as the consumers of the burgeoning literature on children's testimony. The editors themselves have experience working in the British, American, New Zealand, Canadian, and Israeli systems and we have included contributors from both these and other national backgrounds because it is so advantageous and important to learn from the experiences and diversity of other systems and practices. Knowledge of what is done elsewhere allows us to reflect on the procedures that characterize our own jurisdictions, helping us to generate new ideas for both research and implementation. Although it was not possible or desirable to address every concern in every jurisdiction, we have attempted to build a diverse knowledge base from which international researchers and practitioners can draw.

This book is also distinguished by our determination to include contributors from many different professional backgrounds. We are pleased to have secured contributions by psychologists, police officers, lawyers and legal scholars, clinicians, expert witnesses, and experienced investigative interviewers and trainers. This allows us to provide a truly comprehensive overview of children's testimony while ensuring that information is topical and directly relevant to practitioners.

WHAT TO EXPECT

The contributors consider all aspects and stages of the investigative process. First, we provide some critical foundational chapters and address issues pertaining to child development and memory. Second, we discuss the various phases of the investigation – from planning the interview to reviewing its value after the fact. Finally, other important issues (including the challenges of interviewing children with intellectual disabilities, the use of supplementary interview techniques and interviewer training) are discussed.

Authors were asked to provide short and focused chapters emphasizing information of direct relevance to practitioners in the field. Of course, relevant theory is discussed when applicable but the focus is on practical recommendations and solutions. In that sense, we asked authors to stress non-technical information and to present research findings in ways that could be readily applied by investigative interviewers and ‘consumers’ (e.g., decision makers) of the information provided in those interviews. We asked authors to avoid using jargon and highly technical language or providing unnecessary methodological details. Whenever possible, authors reference key resources (reviews and secondary sources) and provide examples directly from the field. To facilitate learning, each chapter begins with bullet points foreshadowing key concepts discussed in the chapter and their relevance for practice.

CHAPTER OVERVIEW

The first chapters (Chapters 2 and 3) provide essential background for those who study and work within the field of children's testimony, because interviewers and legal professionals need to understand the body of knowledge about children's developmental characteristics (Chapter 2) and memory capacities (Chapter 3) that has allowed development of the best-practice guidelines that shape their everyday work. Readers may find that this information helps them better understand why they need to behave (or not behave) in certain ways, and may also help them describe and defend their practices when they are challenged in court, or wish to challenge the behaviour of others. The developmental considerations chapter provides a brief overview of developmental concepts that are directly relevant to interviewing, including, for example, language, children's concept of time, and children's understanding of the word ‘touch’. In the memory foundations chapter, we discuss key aspects of human memory and its developmental characteristics that must be taken into account when evaluating accounts of allegedly experienced events. These two chapters set the stage for the remainder of the book by reminding us that our expectations of children must be reasonable and that our demands must respect their developmental capacities and limitations. The field of children's testimony owes a tremendous debt to basic developmental and memory researchers, and this knowledge is summarized in these initial chapters.

Chapter 4, written by an American law professor/developmental psychologist, focuses on issues of testimonial competency, with distinctions made between basic competency and the ability to distinguish between truth and falsehood. In the chapter, Thomas Lyon shows how these competencies can be assessed in ways that are sensitive to children's developmental capacities and limitations. Furthermore, he reveals that truth–lie competency does not predict children's honesty, but that eliciting a developmentally appropriate promise to tell the truth does – an important consideration given the need to encourage truthful reports from victims/witnesses.

Chapters 5–10 take us through phases of the investigative process. Planning is a prerequisite for good interviewing and is thus the focus of Chapter 5 by Kevin Smith (UK police force) and Rebecca Milne (British forensic psychologist) in which detailed advice is provided about the planning process. Key tasks include collating relevant information, setting interview objectives, and making other key practical decisions, such as when the child should best be interviewed.

In Chapter 6, Irit Hershkowitz (an Israeli professor of social work) shows that rapport building is an essential part of the interview process, especially because children may be reluctant to disclose intimate and perhaps embarrassing details about their experiences (e.g., of sexual abuse) unless they feel comfortable with the interviewer. Hershkowitz also describes and provides easy-to-use examples of empirically based best-practice methods for developing rapport. As she shows, the NICHD Investigative Interview Protocol includes a sequence of prompts designed to build rapport with children in the pre-substantive part of the interview. For example, rapport building should involve open-ended invitations for children to talk about personally meaningful experiences. She also emphasizes that interviewers must evaluate how children are responding to rapport-building attempts, asking themselves whether the child is sufficiently engaged and cooperative for an effective interview to proceed.

In Chapter 7, Kim Roberts, Sonja Brubacher, Martine Powell, and Heather Price (a team of Canadian and Australian developmental forensic psychologists) describe the important role that a practice narrative can have in preparing children to talk. The practice interview involves asking children to describe an episodic event (e.g., their last birthday) so they can become familiar with an unusual task – providing a detailed narrative in response to open-ended invitations. As Roberts and her colleagues show, practice narratives have both cognitive and motivational benefits. Although research on the practice narrative is not as abundant as in some other areas addressed in this book, the authors show that practice leads children to later provide longer and more accurate reports of substantive issues. In a sense, children actually learn how to exploit their memories by practicing with interviewers. Practice helps interviewers, too. Practice interviews, which should adhere to the same best-practice guidelines as regular interviews, allow interviewers to practice asking open-ended questions, thereby reducing the total number of questions and the number of less desirable questions asked in the subsequent substantive phase of the interview.

Margaret-Ellen Pipe and Yael Orbach (respectively, New Zealand and Israeli cognitive psychologists now based in the United States) describe the desired hierarchical structure and sequential organization of the substantive portion of the interview in Chapter 8. They provide examples about the ways in which interviewers can maximize the amount of information obtained using open-ended prompts, while delaying the use of focused-recall directive prompts, minimizing focused-recognition prompts and eliminating suggestive prompts. These exemplary descriptions are accompanied with an invaluable description of the reasons why these strategies should be adopted.

However, after the interview has been conducted (ideally in accordance with best-practice guidelines), the job is not done. In Chapter 9, Trond Myklebust and Gavin Oxburgh (respectively, Norwegian and British academics with police backgrounds and responsibilities) describe how investigators must review the case after the interview is conducted and show in the process how and why some cases progress (or fail to progress) and how decisions concerning case progression are made. Of particular relevance to interviewers and other legal professionals, they describe steps (such as examining the crime scene or interviewing the child again) that can be taken if a case is not ready to progress. Thus, among other helpful recommendations, this chapter provides practical suggestions about what to do when it is not appropriate to close an investigation but additional information is needed.

While gathering and reviewing information about the alleged event, the clinical circumstances must also be considered. In Chapter 10, Kathryn Kuehnle and Mary Connell (US clinical and forensic psychologists) thoroughly discuss the risks associated with children's involvement in the legal system – particularly during the period between the abuse report and any possible judicial determination. This period can be very stressful for children, especially when, for example, they face or fear the loss of family members. Kuehnle and Connell discuss the delicate balance between the children's clinical needs and the requirements of the legal case. They advocate that abuse-specific therapy should not be provided for children involved in Family or Dependency court proceedings until their abuse status has been determined legally and remind forensic interviewers that they are uniquely placed to assess the stresses that children are experiencing and, where necessary, ensure that they get referred to appropriate services. As the authors point out, all children do not react similarly to abuse, and thus their vulnerabilities and strengths must be determined on an individual basis.

The remaining nine chapters discuss a number of important issues, techniques, and dilemmas.

We cannot say enough about the importance of interviewer training. It is imperative that those who deal with children's testimony – both on the front lines and behind the scenes – are trained in empirically based best practices. In Chapter 11, Heather Stewart (a US social worker), Carmit Katz (an Israeli social worker), and David La Rooy (a New Zealand-born Scotland-based forensic psychologist) focus on interviewer training. This chapter underscores the need for empirically based training methods and discusses the successful NICHD training model developed by teams involving researchers, practitioners, and expert witnesses. This model emphasizes the crucial importance of ongoing training for maintaining best practices, and Stewart et al. discuss studies showing considerable deterioration after the termination of ongoing feedback sessions. Interviewers, their managers or trainers, and policy makers will all find the chapter invaluable.

In Chapter 12, Deirdre Brown (a clinical and forensic psychologist from New Zealand) discusses the use of supplementary techniques that interviewers sometimes choose to help elicit testimony from children, with emphasis on what empirical research has (or has not) revealed about their effectiveness in enhancing children's reports. In her overview, Brown explains the issues (such as the developmental level of the child) that interviewers must consider before using supplementary techniques and draws attention to the potential risks associated with use and misuse of the techniques.

In Chapter 13, Lucy Henry, Caroline Bettenay, and Daniel Carney (British psychologists) discuss the special considerations that attend interviews with children and adults who have special needs or intellectual disabilities. As the authors point out, such children are at greater risk of maltreatment but have difficulty participating effectively in the legal system. Recent research shows that children with mild and moderate intellectual disabilities are capable of providing forensically relevant details about their experiences, however, and the authors of this chapter provide practical recommendations regarding interviewees with specific disabilities (e.g., Down syndrome, autistic spectrum disorder). Too often ‘children with intellectual disabilities’ are lumped together even though they do not comprise a homogeneous group with respect to either causes or presentation (e.g., severity, symptoms).

The next two chapters focus on the evaluation and utilization of children's testimony in court proceedings. In Chapter 14, British law professor John Spencer puts cross-examination in context by discussing different legal traditions and diverse attempts to elicit reliable testimony from witnesses in the course of criminal proceedings, noting the centrality of cross-examination in the Anglo-American legal tradition. Spencer also highlights the problems associated with cross examination, particularly when children are involved, and suggests how such problems might be mitigated. Spencer presents the legal theory and cases in a straightforward fashion, closing with a solid legal and practical argument in favour of fully implementing the 1989 Pigot Commission proposal that child witnesses should provide direct evidence and be cross-examined as soon as possible after the alleged crime, even when the trial itself is delayed.

In Chapter 15, an American law professor, John Myers, focuses on the special difficulties associated with hearsay evidence. Like John Spencer and Thomas Lyon, he discusses legal concepts clearly and concisely, beginning with definitions of hearsay and hearsay exceptions. The chapter documents the critical role hearsay testimony has in legal cases and calls for all professionals who interact on a regular basis with children (e.g., teachers, medical doctors, child care providers) to be trained in the importance of hearsay evidence as well as in the collection of hearsay evidence. Disclosures made by children need to be documented carefully and not followed up with suggestive questioning. Training should also explain the factors considered when determining whether children's statements qualify for one of the hearsay exemptions.

In Chapter 16, we learn about potential consequences of children's involvement in the legal system. Jodi Quas and Mariya Sumaroka (American developmental psychologists) begin by characterizing the children likely to be involved in the legal system. The authors emphasize aspects of legal involvement that may be particularly difficult and problematic for children, including, for example, multiple delays and continuances, testifying in open court and lacking support from non-offending family members. As they point out, it is not feasible to eliminate such stresses entirely, but some risks and consequences can be recognized and minimized.

In Chapter 17, Bryan Tully reflects on his years of experience providing expert testimony in British courtrooms. In this chapter, he discusses what the courts can expect from expert testimony. Of particular value to interviewers, he explains how they can avoid common pitfalls and attacks on children's testimony. Based on his extensive experience as an expert witness, Tully gives interviewers a snapshot of the expert witness's role and helps them to take the expert's perspective, thereby teaching interviewers how to evaluate children's evidence critically and how to anticipate challenges and criticism, perhaps by modifying their practices.

In Chapter 18, Graham Davies and Lindsay Malloy (a team of British and American forensic developmental psychologists) focus on the relationship between researchers and practitioners. Their chapter addresses the strengths and weaknesses of basic and applied research and touches on some of the important lessons and controversies in the field of children's testimony. As anyone who has worked in this field knows, there are many difficulties and complexities encountered when conducting research in the ‘real world’ and translating such research into practical guidelines. Davies and Malloy draw attention to areas in which researchers and practitioners collaborated productively (e.g., while studying how investigative interviews should be conducted, or how children's evidence is presented in court) and suggest ways in which communication and dissemination might be improved.

In Chapter 19, the penultimate chapter, Richard Gelles and Rebecca Brigham (American social work academics) shed light on the ‘screening process’ employed as child protective service workers try to determine whether children have been maltreated, helpfully represented by reference to a series of ‘gates’. Surprisingly little attention is paid to these decision-making processes, even though child protection decisions are importantly influenced by the quality of investigative interviews. Gelles and Brigham recommend that the workers concerned be given training about the implications of their decisions and the frequency with which they serve as ‘gate keepers’ while systems are reformed to ensure that child protection workers get the information they need in a timely fashion so that they can make the best possible decisions.

In the final chapter, the editors bring the book to a close by highlighting key overall conclusions that can be drawn from the informative contributions provided by the diverse and knowledgeable authors involved in producing this volume. They also remind readers of current challenges and the work that lies ahead by emphasizing the continued need for practical and ecologically valid research in this broad and ever-changing field. Finally, the editors underscore the critical need for both academics and practitioners to keep abreast of new developments in the field.

The field of ‘children's testimony’ is broad and complex, requiring expertise from diverse groups of researchers and practitioners whose knowledge concerning a wide range of topics must be compiled in an accessible manner to facilitate comprehensive understanding and interdisciplinary communication. We must consider the ‘child as a whole’ – with attention paid to developmental, cognitive, and social capacities and limitations. We must bear in mind the normal workings of human memory. And, of course, we must work within the constraints of various legal and social service systems. It is a rewarding and challenging field peopled by an interdisciplinary group of researchers and practitioners all working toward a common goal – the elicitation of detailed and accurate testimony from child witnesses so that children and innocent suspects can be protected and guilty perpetrators prosecuted. By preparing this fully up-to-date review of the research on children's testimony, we hope to further that goal.

REFERENCES

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2007). Child Protection Australia 2005–06. Child Welfare Series no. 40, Cat. no. CWS 28. Canberra, Australia: AIHW.

Bruck, M., Ceci, S.J., & Principe, G.F. (2006). The child and the law. In K.A. Renninger, I.E. Sigel, W. Damon, & R.M. Lerner (Eds), Handbook of Child Psychology (6th ed., Vol. 4, pp. 776–816). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Bull, R. (2010). The investigative interviewing of children and other vulnerable witnesses: Psychological research and working/professional practice. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 15, 5–23.

Ceci, S.J., & Bruck, M. (1995). Jeopardy in the Courtroom: A Scientific Analysis of Children's Testimony. Washington, DC: APA Books.

Cicchetti, D. (2010). Developmental psychopathology. In R.M. Lerner (Gen Ed.), M.E. Lamb & A. Freund (Vol. Eds), Handbook of Lifespan Development (Vol. 2 Social and personality development). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Creighton, S.J. (2004). Prevalence and incidence of child abuse: International comparisons. National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Retrieved on September 5, 2009 from www.nspcc.org.uk/Inform/research/Briefings/prevalenceandincidenceofchildabuse_wda48217.html

Lamb, M.E. (2003). Child development and the law. In R.M. Lerner, M.A. Easterbrooks, & J. Mistry (Eds), Handbook of Psychology: Developmental Psychology, Vol. 6. (pp. 559–577). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Lamb, M.E., Hershkowitz, I., Orbach, Y., & Esplin, P.W. (2008). Tell Me What Happened: Structured Investigative Interviews of Child Victims and Witnesses. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Nathan, D., & Snedeker, M. (1995). Satan's Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt. New York: Basic Books.

Orbach, Y., Hershkowitz, I., Lamb, M.E., Esplin, P.W., & Horowitz, D. (2000). Assessing the value of structured protocols for forensic interviews of alleged child abuse victims. Child Abuse and Neglect, 24, 733–752.

Poole, D.A., & Lamb, M.E. (1998). Investigative Interviews of Children: A Guide for Helping Professionals. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Trocmé, N., MacLaurin, B., Fallon, B., Daciuk, J., Billingsley, D., Tourigny, M., Mayer, M., Wright, J., Barter, K., Burford, G., Hornick, J., Sullivan, R., & McKenzie, B. (2001). Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect: Final Report. Ottawa, Ontario: Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada.

US Department of Health and Human Services, Administration on Children, Youth and Families (2009). Child Maltreatment 2007. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office.

2

Setting Realistic Expectations: Developmental Characteristics, Capacities and Limitations

Michael E. Lamb, Lindsay C. Malloy, and David J. La Rooy

Key Points

Compared to adults, young children have more limited and idiosyncratic vocabularies; they interpret words more concretely and restrictedly, and they are less effective in coping with misunderstandings and understanding the concept of time.Even very young children can nonetheless provide temporally organized and coherent narratives if they are interviewed appropriately.Although preschool children are particularly suggestible, suggestibility is multiply determined by cognitive, social, and motivational variables.Fantasy and pretend play are normal aspects of childhood. Beliefs in imaginary characters (e.g., Tooth Fairy) do not mean that children cannot provide accurate and reliable reports of their experiences.

Because children are often crucial sources of information about the offences in which they have been involved as victims or witnesses, it is important to know how well children can remember and describe stressful experiences. Our goal in this chapter is to summarize what we currently know about the capacities and limitations of young witnesses, with the development of memory discussed in the next chapter. We first discuss research on children's abilities to communicate about their experiences before turning to some aspects of cognitive development, suggestibility and some social characteristics that affect their behaviour in interview contexts.

Both the amount and the reliability of information reported by children are affected by the children's developmental level, characteristics of the events in question, and the techniques used by interviewers to elicit testimony. Numerous studies have shown a developmental progression in the amount of information that children report, with younger children typically reporting less than older children, but there is also huge variability among children of similar ages, and differences can be minimized or maximized by changing the types of questions asked (for reviews see Bruck, Ceci, & Principe, 2006; Goodman, Quas, & Ogle, 2010; Lamb, Hershkowitz, Orbach, & Esplin, 2008). Age, it seems, does not determine children's ability to recount personal experiences but rather serves to encapsulate the influence of a number of interrelated factors.

DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION

The clarity and completeness of children's testimony is clearly affected by their developing communicative abilities. Young children often do not articulate individual sounds consistently even after they seem to have mastered them (Reich, 1986), so it is quite common for interviewers to misunderstand children, especially preschoolers. In addition, although young children actually have large vocabularies (perhaps as many as 6–8 thousand words by the age of 6, according to Clark & Clark, 1977) the vocabularies of young children are more limited, less descriptive, and more idiosyncratic than those of adults (Brown, 1973; Dale, 1976; de Villiers & de Villiers, 1999), and their statements are likely to lack adjectival and adverbial modifiers (e.g., very, quickly). Misunderstandings between children and interviewers may also occur because children's rapid vocabulary growth often leads adults to overestimate their linguistic capacities and thus use words, sentence structures or concepts that are age-inappropriate and exceed the children's competencies (Evans, Lee, & Lyon, 2009; Saywitz & Camparo, 1998; Saywitz, Nathanson, & Snyder, 1993; Walker, 1999; Zajac & Hayne, 2003). Despite their apparent maturity, young children – especially preschoolers – frequently use words before they know their conventional adult meaning, may use words that they do not understand at all or only understand in certain contexts, and may understand poorly some apparently simple concepts, such as ‘any’, ‘some’, ‘touch’, ‘yesterday’, and ‘before’ (Harner, 1975; Orbach & Lamb, 2007; Walker, 1999). For example, Bruck's (2009) research demonstrates that young children have a narrow understanding of the word ‘touch’ and may fail to report touches in laboratory analogue studies because children classify the touching actions as, for example, ‘rubbing’ or ‘scratching’ instead.

The accuracy of children's accounts is greatly influenced by the linguistic style and the complexity of the language addressed to them by questioners, especially in legal contexts (Carter, Bottoms, & Levine, 1996; Imhoff & Baker-Ward, 1999; Perry et al., 1995; Zajac, Gross, & Hayne, 2003). Children are often asked to negate adult statements or to confirm multifaceted ‘summaries’ of their accounts (e.g., ‘Is it not true that…?’), and are expected to understand unfamiliar words and syntactically complex or ambiguous compound sentences (Dent, 1982; Evans et al., 2009; Perry & Wrightsman, 1991; Saywitz, 1988; Walker, 1993; Walker & Hunt, 1998; Warren, Woodall, Hunt, & Perry, 1996). For example, consider the question, ‘Did you say that when they were playing this game called Bingo that you knew that somebody was going to hurt people and when that happened you hid? Do you remember that?’ asked of a 5-year-old girl who had allegedly witnessed a murder (Walker, 1993, p. 66). In a recent study of felony child sexual abuse cases (Evans et al., 2009), neither defence nor prosecution attorneys varied the length or complexity of their sentences despite the fact that the age range of the alleged child victims varied widely (i.e., 5–15 years). Evidence reveals that lawyers are not the only professionals who fail to vary their language in accordance with children's developmental level. Even mental health professionals who specialize in children and trained investigative interviewers ask children developmentally inappropriate or complex questions in investigative interviews (Korkman, Santtila, Dzewiecki, & Sandnabba, 2008; Plotnikoff & Woolfson, 2009).

Certainly, empirical evidence shows that children struggle to answer complex questions. Brennan and Brennan (1988) showed that fewer than two-thirds of the questions addressed to 6- to 15-year-olds in court were comprehensible to their peers. Perry et al. (1995) similarly showed that kindergarten- to university-aged students had much more difficulty correctly answering complex questions than more simply phrased questions about the same witnessed event. More importantly, the kindergarteners did not even recognize that they misunderstood the complex questions. Such failures to recognize miscomprehension may help explain why children rarely ask for clarification (Saywitz, 1995; Saywitz, Snyder, & Nathanson, 1999).

Children's comprehension-monitoring skills and mechanisms for coping with misunderstandings likely develop gradually over time (Flavell, Speer, Green, & August, 1981; Saywitz, Jaenicke, & Camparo, 1990; Singer & Flavell, 1981). For instance, metacognitive and metalinguistic awareness and skills develop more fully after age 5 (Markman, 1977, 1979; Saywitz & Wilkinson, 1982), meaning that preschool children are seldom able to monitor their comprehension as effectively as older children or adults (Markman, 1977, 1979). Stress, challenging memory searches, difficult-to-comprehend questions as well as the complexity and unfamiliarity of the investigative interview may further tax the ability of young children to monitor their comprehension successfully.

The more impoverished children's language, the greater the likelihood that their statements will be misinterpreted or that they will misinterpret the interviewers’ questions and purposes (King & Yuille, 1987; Perry & Wrightsman, 1991; Walker, 1993). When interviewers misrepresent what children say, furthermore, they tend not to be corrected, and thus the mistakes, rather than the correct information, may be reported by the children later in the interview (Roberts & Lamb, 1999). Hunt and Borgida (2001) confirmed that disagreement with mistaken assertions was uncommon, with adults significantly more likely than children to disagree when interviewers distorted their answers. In subsequent interviews, 4- and 5-year-old children were more likely than older children or adults to incorporate the interviewers’ earlier distortions into their later reports about witnessed events, suggesting that their memories of the event might have been distorted. This further underscores the extent to which the interviewers’ behaviour – particularly their vocabularies, the complexity of their utterances, their suggestiveness, and their success in motivating children to be informative and forthcoming – profoundly influences the course and outcome of the interviews they conduct with children.

In addition, children frequently interpret words very concretely and restrictedly (e.g., a child may not respond to a question about something that happened at ‘home’ if the child lives in an ‘apartment’), or make references that fall outside of the listener's knowledge base (e.g., ‘He looked like my English teacher’), thus making their accounts ambiguous (Hewitt, 1999; Saywitz et al., 1999; Walker, 1999). Their vocabularies, of course, may also be very idiosyncratic, as indicated earlier.

Children also learn how to participate in conversations, and this learning is often still a work in progress at the time that children are interviewed forensically. Children must learn how to stay on topic, how to adapt their speech appropriately to different audiences (e.g., an unfamiliar interviewer who does not know their family members and was not present during the event in question) and how to structure coherent narratives about past events (Nelson & Fivush, 2004; Warren & McCloskey, 1997). The challenge confronting investigators is to obtain organized accounts that are sufficiently rich in descriptive detail to permit an understanding of the children's testimony. Unlike adults and older children, furthermore, young children cannot draw upon an array of past experiences to enrich and clarify their descriptive accounts.

The richness and usefulness of children's accounts of abusive experiences are also influenced by social or pragmatic aspects of communication. For example, when asked questions such as ‘Do you remember his name?’, ‘Do you know why you are here today?’, or ‘Can you show me where he touched you?’, older children usually read between the lines and provide the desired information, whereas younger children may simply answer literally ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ (Walker & Warren, 1995; Warren et al., 1996). In addition, young witnesses are typically unaware of the amount and type of information being sought by forensic investigators and are unaccustomed to being viewed as informants rather than novices being tested about the quality of their knowledge. Children are used to being questioned by adults who are already knowledgeable about the topic of conversation (Lamb, Orbach, Warren, Esplin, & Hershkowitz, 2007). By contrast, alleged victims of abuse are often the sole sources of information about the suspected events. As a result, interviewers need to communicate their needs and expectations clearly, motivating children to provide as much information as they can. One of the goals of the ‘pre-substantive’ portions of forensic interviews is to ensure that children understand the unique demands of forensic interview contexts (e.g., see Chapter 6; Sternberg, Lamb, Esplin, Orbach, & Hershkowitz, 2002). If children fail to appreciate that the interviewer has little, if any, knowledge of the alleged events, or attribute superior knowledge to the adult interviewers (e.g., Ceci, Ross, & Toglia, 1987a,b), they may fail to report all they know. Children are cognizant of differences between knowledgeable and naïve adults and vary their responses accordingly (Welch-Ross, 1999).

Even when interviewers have attempted to communicate that they do not know what the children experienced, they may, by using the wrong sorts of questions, inadvertently encourage young children to respond as though they are being tested. For example, forensic interviewers frequently ask very specific questions (such as ‘Did he touch you?’). Young children (those under 6) have special difficulty answering specific questions, and may exhibit a response bias (e.g., Ahern, Lyon, & Quas, in press; Fivush, Peterson, & Schwarzmeuller, 2002; Peterson, Dowdin, & Tobin, 1999), or a reluctance to give ‘don't know’ responses when they would be appropriate (Davies, Tarrant, & Flin, 1989; Saywitz & Snyder, 1993). Children rarely say ‘don't know’ in response to difficult questions or questions for which they do not know the answer (Bruck & Ceci, 1999; Lamb, Sternberg, & Esplin, 1998; Memon & Vartoukian, 1996; Poole & White, 1991) and do not provide more ‘don't know’ responses to complex as opposed to simple questions (Carter