The Comparative Productivity of the Birthday Narrative in 6- to 11-year-Old Maltreated Children.

We asked 111 6- to 11-year-old maltreated children to tell "everything that happened" on their last birthday, the last time they did something they liked to do outside, and yesterday. All children produced details in response to the like to do and yesterday narratives, compared to 98% of children in response to the birthday narrative. Questions about yesterday were more likely to elicit productive responses (93%) than questions about the child's birthday (90%) or things they liked to do (88%). Older children produced the most details in response to questions about yesterday, and older children's birthday narratives were more productive than those about favorite activities. Narratives about children's birthday and yesterday produced comparable percentages of negative details (15%), whereas 32% of children mentioned something negative when discussing a favorite activity. The results suggest that although children find yesterday easier to recall than their last birthday, the birthday narrative is a productive tool for encouraging children to practice recalling more remote events, preparing them for abuse disclosures.

Forensic interviewers' difficulty with the birthday narrative.

BACKGROUND: Narrative practice increases children's productivity in forensic interviews, and one recommended topic is the child's last birthday, though interviewers have raised concerns about its productivity. STUDY 1 OBJECTIVE: Study 1 surveyed forensic interviewers' use of and attitudes about the birthday narrative. PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING: Participants included 170 forensic interviewers who subscribed to a webinar promoting use of the birthday narrative (Mage = 43 years, SD = 10.2, 94 % female). RESULTS: Over half (55 %) of interviewers reported that they rarely/never asked about children's birthdays, and non-users were especially likely to view the birthday narrative as never/rarely productive. Although interviewers viewed memory difficulties as more likely to occur with the birthday narrative than other practice topics (the child's likes, the child's day), non-users did not view memory difficulties, reluctance, generic reports, or religious objections as especially problematic. Open-ended responses identified negative experiences with the birthday as an additional concern, and interviewers' recommended wording of the prompts suggested suboptimal questioning strategies. STUDY 2 OBJECTIVE: Study 2 assessed the use of the birthday narrative in forensic interviews. PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING: The sample included 350 forensic interviews with 4- to 12-year-old children (Mage = 8.85, SD = 2.59). RESULTS: Only 4 % of children failed to recall substantive information if interviewers persisted, though another 11 % failed when interviewers stopped persisting. Invitations were more effective than other question types, especially among older children. 21 % of children mentioned a negative detail during their narrative. CONCLUSIONS: Interviewers' skepticism about the birthday narrative may be due to suboptimal questioning and sensitivity to occasional failures and negative information.

Describing Coercion in the Courtroom: The Influence of Language and Maltreatment Severity on Jurors' Perceptions of Child Witnesses.

Regardless of compliance to coercion by an alleged perpetrator, child maltreatment is abuse in any form. However, the extent to which coercion is described as an obligation (mandatory compliance) or permission (optional compliance) is legally relevant. The present investigation examined how attorneys question children about coercion and how children describe coercion in courtroom investigations of alleged child sexual abuse, and whether such language influences jurors' perceptions of children's testimony. Study 1 assessed 64 transcripts of children's testimonies and revealed that both attorneys and children use coercive language. Problematically, terms of permission were used when describing sexual abuse, potentially implying compliance was optional. Study 2 presented 160 adults with transcript excerpts, varied by coercive language (obligation or permission) and maltreatment type (sexual abuse or punishment). Coercive language influenced perceptions of coercion and whether the adult was to blame. Maltreatment type influenced perceptions of severity, credibility, and verdict. Overall, coercive language and maltreatment type influence perceptions of how the event unfolded.

Child Witnesses Productively Respond to "How" Questions About Evaluations but Struggle With Other "How" Questions.

Child interviewers are often advised to avoid asking "How" questions, particularly with young children. However, children tend to answer "How" evaluative questions productively (e.g., "How did you feel?"). "How" evaluative questions are phrased as a "How" followed by an auxiliary verb (e.g., "did" or "was"), but so are "How" questions requesting information about method or manner (e.g., "How did he touch you?"), and "How" method/manner questions might be more difficult for children to answer. We examined 458 5- to 17-year-old children questioned about sexual abuse, identified 2485 "How" questions with an auxiliary verb, and classified them as "How" evaluative (n = 886) or "How" method/manner (n = 1599). Across age, children gave more productive answers to "How" evaluative questions than "How" method/manner questions. Although even young children responded appropriately to "How" method/manner questions over 80% of the time, specific types of "How" method/manner questions were particularly difficult, including questions regarding clothing, body positioning, and the nature of touch. Children's difficulties lie in specific combinations of "How" questions and topics, rather than "How" questions in general.

Children's acquiescence to polysemous implicature questions about coaching: The role of parental support.

Children may be asked questions with subtle and implied meanings. The present study examined whether, and under what conditions, 5- to 10-year-old children affirmed polysemous implicature questions that implied coaching, when in fact no coaching occurred. Participants (N = 161) were presented with vignettes about a transgression where the child disclosed to a supportive or unsupportive parent, and were asked three polysemous implicature coaching questions (e.g., "Did the mom practice with the boy/girl what to say?"). Overall, children acquiesced to implied coaching questions, when in fact no coaching occurred (39% of the time), though acquiescence rates decreased with age and improved false-belief understanding. Furthermore, children were more likely to acquiesce when the mother was supportive, and when the question more subtly suggested coaching. These findings provide novel evidence of the developmental trajectory of children's understanding of polysemous implicatures and the underlying social-cognitive mechanisms, with implications for questioning children in investigative contexts.

Young children's understanding of the epistemic and deontic meanings of ask and tell.

The verbs ask and tell can be used both epistemically, referring to the flow of information, and deontically, referring to obligations through polite requests or commands. Some researchers suggest that children's understanding of deontic modals emerges earlier than their understanding of epistemic modals, possibly because theory of mind is required to understand epistemic modals. In the current study, 184 children aged 3-6 years were presented with vignettes depicting epistemic and deontic asking and telling and were asked whether the speaker asked or told, followed by first-order theory-of-mind tasks. An emergence of both epistemic and deontic understanding was found at 5 years of age, and both were correlated with children's theory-of-mind understanding. These findings are consistent with arguments that both epistemic and deontic understanding implicate theory-of-mind awareness and provide insight into the developmental trajectory of children's understanding.

Did Your Mom Help You Remember?: An Examination of Attorneys' Subtle Questioning About Suggestive Influence to Children Testifying About Child Sexual Abuse.

Researchers studying children's reports of sexual abuse have focused on how questioners overtly assess coaching and truthfulness (e.g., "Did someone tell you what to say?"). Yet attorneys, and defense attorneys, in particular, may be motivated to ask about suggestive influence and truthfulness in subtle ways, such as with implied meaning (e.g., "Did your mom help you remember?"). Such questions may be particularly challenging for children, who may interpret statements literally, misunderstanding the suggested meaning. The purpose of this study was to examine and categorize how attorneys' ask about suggestive influence and truthfulness. We wanted to learn how attorneys subtly accuse suggestive influence, and how frequently this occurred. We hypothesized that questions indirectly accusing suggestive influence would be common, and that defense attorneys would ask more subtle questions, and fewer overt questions, than prosecutors. We examined 7,103 lines of questioning asked by prosecutors and defense attorneys to 64 children testifying about alleged child sexual abuse. We found that 9% of all attorneys' lines of questioning asked about suggestive influence or truthfulness. The majority (66%) of these were indirect accusations. Indirect accusations of suggestive influence spanned a range of subtleties and topics, including addressing conversational influences (e.g., coaching), incidental influences (e.g., witnessing abuse), and others. We also found defense attorneys were less likely than prosecutors to ask about suggestive influence and truthfulness overtly. We conclude that attorneys commonly ask about suggestive influence and truthfulness in subtle ways that developing children may struggle to understand, and which may result in affirmations of influence, even when allegations are true.

Children's ability to edit their memories when learning about the environment from credible and noncredible websites.

One of the many sources of information easily available to children is the internet and the millions of websites providing accurate, and sometimes inaccurate, information. In the current investigation, we examined children's ability to use credibility information about websites when learning about environmental sustainability. In two studies, children studied two different websites and were tested on what they had learned a week later using a multiple-choice test containing both website items and new distracters. Children were given either no information about the websites or were told that one of the websites (the noncredible website) contained errors and they should not use any information from that website to answer the test. In both studies, children aged 7- to 9-years reported information from the noncredible website even when instructed not to, whereas the 10- to 12-year-olds used the credibility warning to 'edit out' information that they had learned from the noncredible website. In Study 2, there was an indication that the older children spontaneously assessed the credibility of the website if credibility markers were made explicit. A plausible explanation is that, although children remembered information from the websites, they needed explicit instruction to bind the website content with the relevant source (the individual websites). The results have implications for children's learning in an open-access, digital age where information comes from many sources, credible and noncredible. Education in credibility evaluation may enable children to be critical consumers of information thereby resisting misinformation provided through public sources.

Children's accuracy in answering Why and How Come questions.

Children's developing understanding of language may influence their ability to accurately respond to questions inquiring about their event knowledge (i.e., Why and How Come questions), potentially creating misinterpretations in adult-child communication. The present study examined 120 5-, 7-, and 9-year-old's accuracy in responding to Why and How Come questions about the cause of their behaviors. Children's accuracy improved with age, highlighting a developmental milestone whereby children become highly accurate by 7 years of age. Further, the semantic differences in question type did not influence children's responses, as there were no differences in children's accuracy when answering Why or How Come questions. The findings from this study highlight the developmental shift in children's abilities to answer Why and How Come questions, and thus the importance of considering the age and linguistic abilities of the child when inquiring about their event knowledge.

Adults' Perceptions of Children's Referentially Ambiguous Responses.

The present study examined adults' (N = 295) interpretations of child witnesses' referentially ambiguous "yes" and "no" responses to "Do You Know/Remember (DYK/R) if/whether" questions (e.g., "Do you know if it was blue?"). Participants were presented with transcripts from child sexual abuse cases modified based on question format (DYK/R vs. Direct) and child response type (Yes, No, I don't know) in a between subjects design. We assessed whether adults recognized that children's ambiguous responses were unclear, and if not, how they were interpreting children's responses compared to the control (Direct) conditions. More specifically, we assessed whether adults interpreted children's responses as answering the explicit (e.g., "No, I don't remember") or implicit (e.g., "No, it wasn't blue") question. Participants virtually never recognized ambiguous responses as unclear, and their interpretations were influenced by the attorney's question and child's response type. In sum, these results suggest that DYK/R questions often lead to misinterpretation, resulting in miscommunication.

Apologies Repair Trust via Perceived Trustworthiness and Negative Emotions.

The present study examined whether perceptions of a transgressor's trustworthiness mediates the relationship between apologies and repaired trust, and the moderating role of negative emotions within this process. Chinese undergraduate students (N = 221) completed a trust game where they invested tokens in their counterpart, and either experienced no trust violation (i.e., half of the tokens returned), a trust violation (i.e., no tokens returned), or a trust violation followed by an apology. Participant's trust behavior was measured by the number of tokens they re-invested in their counterpart in a second round of the game. Participants also completed measures to assess perceptions of the transgressor's trustworthiness and emotional state. Results revealed that participants who received an apology were more likely to trust in their counterpart, compared to those who did not receive an apology, and this relationship was mediated by perceptions of the transgressor's trustworthiness. Further, the relationship between apologies and perceptions of the transgressors trustworthiness was moderated by negative emotions; apologies only improved perceptions of trustworthiness for participants who experienced less negative emotions.

Apologies repair children's trust: The mediating role of emotions.

The current study examined whether emotions mediate the relationship between apologies and repaired trust following a transgression. Children (9- and 11-year-olds; N = 180) completed a two-round trust game where if they invested tokens in their counterpart, the tokens tripled in value and the counterpart would decide how many tokens to return. Based on participants' condition, either half of the tokens were returned, none of the tokens were returned, or none were returned followed by an apology. Children's investment in their counterpart in the second round of the trust game was a measure of trusting behavior. In addition, children completed an emotion evaluation measure of their feelings toward their counterpart. Results demonstrate that children who received an apology following a transgression were significantly more likely to demonstrate trusting behaviors and positive emotions compared with children who received no apology. In addition, both positive and negative emotions were found to mediate the effect of an apology on trust.