Children effect the questions asked in interviews

According to the results of a new study published in a recent issue of Child Development, the type of quesion a child is asked regarding memory for an even affects what answers the child provides, which in turn influences what kinds of questions the interviewer asks. The results have important implications for legal cases where children need to be interviewed and may be the only source of evidence.

Specifically, the researchers were interested in the effect of biasing questions compared to non-biasing questions on the children's responses.

"We discovered that children were more likely to disagree with a biasing question than disagree with a non-biasing question," said Livia Gilstrap, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Colorado. "That was the exact opposite of what we expected."

They did find an important exception, however, If the biasing question was inaccurate and being heard for the first time the children were more likely to agree with it.

They also found that when children disagreed with an earlier question the adults tended to ask more biasing questions.

For both types of questions, they found that if a child agreed with one question they were likely to continue to agree with later questions. The same was true if they disagreed with one question -- later questions were also likely to elicit disagreement.

"Taken together, our findings suggest it might be the children, not the interviewers, who are actually driving the interview," notes Dr. Gilstrap. "If an investigator is asking a child questions about alleged crimes and the child is disagreeing with the investigators assertions, these data suggest that the investigator will tend to ask biasing questions of the child."

The data suggest that if inaccurate biasing questions are asked for the first time, children tend to agree with the inaccurate statements (e.g. asking "Was his name George?" -- when his name was in fact Steve).

"Although these data are still exploratory," Dr. Gilstrap notes, "this raises the concern that children who are reluctant to talk will be asked questions that are more likely to distort their reports."

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