Adults' Ability to Detect the Pseudotemporal Problem when Children Give "I Don't Know" Responses.

Past research has identified a source of miscommunication known as the "pseudotemporal" problem, whereby children mistakenly interpret invitations including the word 'time' (e.g., "tell me about the last time") as requests for temporal information (Friend et al.

Training Humans to Detect Children's Lies Through Their Facial Expressions.

The accurate detection of children's truthful and dishonest reports is essential as children can serve as important providers of information. Research using automated facial coding and machine learning found that children who were asked to lie about an event were more likely to look surprised when hearing the first question during an interview about said event. The present studies explored if humans can be trained to look for surprised expressions to detect children's deception.

Subtle Forms of Reluctance in Commercially Sexually Exploited Adolescents' Responses when Questioned by the Police and at Trial.

Research examining commercially sexually exploited adolescents' (CSEA) reluctance has found lower rates of reluctance in court than in police interviews. One possible explanation is that the constrained courtroom questioning environment leads witnesses to express reluctance in novel ways. This study analyzed the responses ( = 4163) of six female CSE witnesses aged 15-17 (age = 16.

Automated question type coding of forensic interviews and trial testimony in child sexual abuse cases.

Objective: Question-type classification is widely used as a measure of interview quality. However, question-type coding is a time-consuming process when performed by manual coders. Reliable automated question-type coding approaches would facilitate the assessment of the quality of forensic interviews and court testimony involving victims of child abuse.

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%).

Using rapport building to improve information yield when interviewing adolescents: A systematic review and call for research.

Background: Adolescents frequently experience and witness violence and crime, yet very little research has been conducted to determine how best to question these witnesses to elicit complete and accurate disclosures.

Objective: This systematic review integrated scientific research on rapport building with child and adult witnesses with theory and research on adolescent development in order to identify rapport building techniques likely to be effective with suspected adolescent victims and witnesses.

Method: Four databases were searched to identify investigations of rapport building in forensic interviewing of adolescents.

Adults' interpretation of invitations using the word 'time'.

The present study examined adults' interpretations of invitations using the word 'time'. Recent research has demonstrated that children may misunderstand these invitations as solely requesting temporal information (Friend et al., 2022).

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 (M = 43 years, SD = 10.

Children's Elaborated Responses to Yes-No Questions in Forensic Interviews About Sexual Abuse.

Children tend to answer yes-no questions with unelaborated "yes" and "no" responses, but the types of details likely omitted from unelaborated answers have not been explored. This study examined 379 4- to 12-year-olds' answers to yes-no questions in forensic interviews about CSA ( = 11,187), focusing on age differences in elaborated responses. As expected, older children elaborated more frequently than younger children.

Appellate Review of Child Sexual Abuse Convictions: The Importance of Character Evidence.

This study examined the role of character evidence and other issues in criminal appeals of child sexual abuse (CSA) convictions. Character evidence includes uncharged acts and character witnesses who testify to another's reputation or opinion and is offered to prove an individual's propensities. Examining 168 appellate court opinions reviewing CSA convictions between 2005 and 2015 in Maricopa County, Arizona, we found that when specific types of evidence were at issue, they were most often character evidence issues (49%).

Successful Criminal Prosecutions of Sex Trafficking and Sexual Abuse of Minors: A Comparative Analysis.

Despite increased awareness of sex trafficking of minors in the U.S., prosecution of traffickers remains difficult, in part because of victim uncooperativeness.

Attorneys' Questions and Children's Responses Referring to the Nature of Sexual Touch in Child Sexual Abuse Trials.

Eliciting clear descriptions of sexual body parts and abusive touch in child sexual abuse trials is challenging because of children's immaturity and embarrassment. This study examined references to sexual body part knowledge and sexual touch in attorneys' questions and 5- to 10-year-old children's responses ( = 2,247) in 113 child sexual abuse trials. Regardless of children's age, attorneys and children primarily used unclear colloquialisms to refer to sexual body parts.

Elaborations and Denials in Children's Responses to Yes-No Any/Some Questions in Forensic Interviews.

This study examined 379 4- to 12-year-old children's answers to any/some and other yes-no questions in forensic interviews about sexual abuse ( = 10,041). Yes-no questions that include the terms any/some (e.g.

Maltreated and non-maltreated children's truthful and dishonest reports: Linguistic and syntactic differences.

Introduction: Adults are typically poor judges of the veracity of statements, requiring the need for alternative methods for detecting lies. One alternative method to human lie-detectors is using computer-based linguistic analysis which may present a more reliable method for detecting dishonesty. Moreover, while previous research has examined linguistic differences between typically developing children's and adults' truthful and dishonest reports, no study to date has examined whether maltreated children exhibit different linguistic cues to dishonesty.

The Utility of the Birthday Prompt in Narrative Practice with Maltreated and Non-maltreated 4- to 9-year-old Children.

Forensic interviewers are encouraged to elicit a practice narrative from children in order to train them to answer free recall questions with narrative information. Although asking children about their last birthday has been recommended, concerns have been raised that many children will have nothing to report. This study asked 994 4- to 9-year-old maltreated and non-maltreated children to recall their last birthday.

Do children unintentionally report maltreatment? Comparison of disclosures of neglect versus sexual abuse.

Background And Aims: Children's initial reports often play a key role in the identification of maltreatment, and a sizeable amount of scientific research has examined how children disclose sexual and physical abuse. Although neglect constitutes a large proportion of maltreatment experiences, relatively little attention has been directed toward understanding whether and how children disclose neglect. The overarching aim of the present study was to document this process by comparing disclosure patterns in cases of neglect to those in cases of sexual abuse.

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.

Foster youth's placement preferences: The roles of kin, siblings, and age.

Background: Debates exist regarding whether foster youth should be asked about their placement preferences following removal, with only youth aged 12 years and older at times assumed legally competent to provide input.

Objectives: The present study evaluated whether placement-related factors known to predict youth's well-being also shape their placement preferences and whether preferences differ between youth below and above the age at which they are considered legally competent to provide input.

Method: Data (N = 1033, ages 6-17 years, 54 % female) were obtained from NSCAW-I.

4- to 15-year-old children's misinterpretation of invitations asking "about the time" as requests for temporal information in forensic interviews.

Background: Forensic interviewers are taught to ask children invitations using the word "time" to refer to a specific episode (e.g., "Tell me about the last time he touched you.

Novel Forms of Reluctance Among Suspected Child Sexual Abuse Victims in Adolescence.

Adolescents tend to be neglected in research examining child sexual abuse (CSA) interviews, yet are often said to be particularly reluctant. This study examined reluctance among 119 10- to 17-year-old females questioned about suspected CSA ( = 25,942 responses), utilizing a scheme identifying previously overlooked types of reluctance in commercially sexually exploited (CSE) youth. In contrast to the CSE youth in a prior study, in which 26% of responses were reluctant, only 8% of CSA victims' responses expressed reluctance.

Pseudotemporal Invitations: 6- to 9-year-Old Maltreated Children's Tendency to Misinterpret Invitations Referencing "Time" as Solely Requesting Conventional Temporal Information.

Forensic interviewers ask children broad input-free recall questions about individual episodes in order to elicit complete narratives, often asking about "the first time," "the last time," and "one time." An overlooked problem is that the word "time" is potentially ambiguous, referring both to a particular episode and to conventional temporal information. We examined 191 6-9-year-old maltreated children's responses to questions about recent events varying the wording of the invitations, either asking children to "tell me about" or "tell me what happened" one time/the first time/the last time the child experienced recent recurrent events.

Suppositional Wh-Questions About Perceptions, Conversations, and actions are More Productive than Paired Yes-No Questions when Questioning Maltreated Children.

Forensic interviewers are taught to pair yes-no questions with open-ended requests for recall in order to reduce the likelihood that they will be misled by false "yes" responses. However, yes-no questions may elicit false "no" responses. Questioning 112 6- to 11-year-old maltreated children about three innocuous events (outside activities, yesterday, last birthday), this study compared the productivity of paired yes-no questions about perceptions, conversations, and actions involving the hands and mouth (e.

Police Interviewing Behaviors and Commercially Sexually Exploited Adolescents' Reluctance.

Little is known about the relation between law enforcement interviewing behaviors and commercially sexually exploited children's (CSEC) reluctance. This study examined the relation between officers' use of maximization, (references to) expertise, minimization, and support and adolescent CSEC victims' reluctance in a small sample of police interviews ( = 2,416 question-answer pairs across ten interviews). Twenty-six percent of officers' utterances contained at least one interviewing tactic.