Pairing Visuals with Direct Questions: Can Children’s Response Accuracy Be Improved?

Are visual aids effective in improving children’s response accuracy to direct questions? One hundred and five children ages 4to 7-years-old (55.24% female) were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions: visual aids present or visual aids absent. The visual aids present condition included a “yes” visual aid, a “no” visual aid, and an “I don’t know” visual aid. The visual aid absent condition did not contain any visual aids. The children were individually interviewed and asked a series of 9 questions. Of the 9 questions, 3 were answerable and 6 were unanswerable in nature. It was hypothesized that the presence of visual aids would improve the children’s accuracy in response to direct questions. The hypothesis was not supported, as there was no significant difference in accuracy between the visual aids present and visual aids absent condition. However, the results showed that young children can be as accurate as older children in response to answerable questions, while the older children were more accurate than younger children in response to unanswerable questions. PAIRING VISUALS WITH DIRECT QUESTIONS 3 Pairing Visuals with Direct Questions: Can Children’s Response Accuracy Be Improved? The information that child witnesses provide in forensic interviews may be important, especially in cases where the child is the sole witness to the alleged crime or there is little physical evidence. Because of the critical reliance on children’s testimony, research has been conducted in order to elicit accurate accounts from children (Peterson & Bell, 1996; Poole & White, 1991). Much of this research was in response to high profile cases that have employed inappropriate interviewing techniques. Such inappropriate and suggestive interviewing techniques have rendered children’s testimony unreliable in high stakes investigations and can have serious consequences for the involved parties (Ceci & Bruck, 1995). Asking young children direct or specific questions appears to be a problematic interviewing technique that often produces inaccurate responses, while young children seem to provide very accurate accounts in response to open-ended questions (Cassel, Roebers, & Bjorklund, 1996). In order to improve response accuracy from children, specific interviewing protocol and guidelines have been developed including The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) (Lamb, Orbach, Hershkowitz, Esplin, & Horowitz, 2007). The NICHD interviewing protocol recommends the use of open-ended questions when interviewing children in forensic investigations (Lamb et al., 2007). The use of direct questioning is discouraged, and the NICHD protocol recommends employing specific questions only when essential information is required. Despite the NICHD protocol’s acknowledgement that direct questioning may be essential in some cases, research has mainly aimed to compare open-ended and direct questioning. Little research has been conducted toward improving children’s accuracy in response to direct questioning techniques specifically. The purpose of the present study was to PAIRING VISUALS WITH DIRECT QUESTIONS 4 test whether children’s response accuracy to direct questions can be improved by employing visual aids. The goal when questioning children in forensic investigations is to elicit the most accurate information possible, while limiting and preventing the disclosure of inaccurate information. Children can provide reports as accurate as adults when asked open-ended questions, while specific or direct questions tend to result in more inaccurate information from children (Poole & White, 1991). For example, Peterson and Bell (1996) examined the impact of stressful emotional events on children’s response accuracy and detail of response. The researchers recruited 2to 13-year-olds from a hospital emergency room. The children attended the emergency room for traumatic injury as defined by emergency room staff. The parents and children were first interviewed approximately 6 days following the emergency room treatment. The children were interviewed using free recall questions such as, “Tell me about what happened. ” Following the free recall, children were asked specific questions such as, “Did it bleed? ” The parental interviews and medical records from the emergency room were used to corroborate the children’s statements. After 6-months, the children were re-interviewed using the same format and questions as the 6-day post-event interview. The researchers concluded that the children’s level of stress had little impact on the children’s response accuracy and type of details disclosed. However, the question format impacted children’s response accuracy: the children reported information with 91% accuracy in response to open-ended questions but only with 45% accuracy in response to direct or specific questioning. Direct questioning is especially problematic for young children. Brady, Poole, Warren, and Jones (1999) studied the appropriateness of specific yes-no questioning in forensic interviews and age differences in response accuracy to these specific questions. The 3to 7-yearPAIRING VISUALS WITH DIRECT QUESTIONS 5 olds viewed a videotaped event depicting a boy and girl arguing over a baby doll. After a 2minute delay, the interviewer asked the child 16 yes-no questions such as, “Was the baby’s name Sally? ” Following another 2-minute delay the child was asked the same 16 questions in a forcedchoice format (e.g., “Was the baby’s name Sally, yes or no? ”). The results indicated that the children’s responses to specific questions were highly inaccurate. Furthermore, the younger children (3to 4-year-olds) had lower response accuracy than the older children (5to 7-yearolds). Such results indicate that specific questioning is especially problematic for young children. One explanation of why children struggle to provide accurate responses to direct questions is their perception of the adult interviewer (Ceci, Ross, & Toglia, 1987). Children view adults as cooperative, truthful, credible, and competent source of information (Nelson & Gruendel, 1979). Because of this perception, children may assume that questions posed by adults must be answerable. As a result, young children often provide answers to unanswerable questions (Waterman & Blades, 2011). For example, Poole and White (1991) examined the impact of repeated questioning on the use of open-ended and direct questions. Four age groups including 4-year-olds, 6-year-olds, 8-year-olds, and adults witnessed an altercation in which a male confederate took a pen away from a female confederate. In one condition, participants were interviewed one week following the event. Participants in the second condition were interviewed immediately following the event and again one week following the event. In each interviewing session, participants were asked seven open ended and specific questions, each repeated three times. The questions also included the unanswerable question: “Do you know what the man does for a living-what is his job? ” The results showed that despite the repeated questioning, responses to open-ended questions remained accurate and consistent amongst the age groups. However, the 4-year-olds were substantially more inconsistent than older children PAIRING VISUALS WITH DIRECT QUESTIONS 6 and adults in response to specific questions. Furthermore, the 4-year-olds often provided answers regarding the man’s occupation despite the unanswerable nature of the question. The first study to specifically examine children’s responses to unanswerable questions was conducted by Hughes and Grieve (1980). The researchers asked 5-and 7-year-olds four unanswerable questions (e.g., “Is milk bigger than water? ”). If the child did not provide a response to the question or responded, “I don’t know,” the question was repeated. If a child provided a response without justifying their answer, the researcher replied, “Why? ” prompting the child to elaborate on their answer. The results indicated that the 5-year-olds answered the unanswerable questions 87% of the time without ever qualifying a response. Furthermore, the 7year-olds provided answers to the unanswerable questions 100% of the time but qualified approximately 28% these responses, indicating greater uncertainty than the 5-year-olds in their answering. Overall, the researchers noted that despite the unanswerable nature of the questions, the children provided answers in most instances. In order to improve children’s response accuracy in forensic interviews, the NICHD protocol has suggested providing children with ground rules. Specifically, ground rules include informing the child that it is appropriate to answer, “I don’t know,” when responding to questions that are unanswerable or the answer is unknown (Lamb et al., 2007). However, research testing the effectiveness of the ground rule has produced mixed results (Earhart, LaRooy, Brubacher, & Lamb, 2014). For example, Cassel et al. (1996) examined children’s responses to questioning after being provided with the guideline that it is acceptable to answer “I don’t know. ” Children in kindergarten, grade-2, and grade-4 viewed a video in which a boy argued with a girl over a bicycle and subsequently took the bicycle away from the girl. Approximately one week later, participants were interviewed and provided with the ground rule PAIRING VISUALS WITH DIRECT QUESTIONS 7 that the children can answer, “I don’t know,” if the question is unanswerable. The participants were then asked free recall questions followed by increasingly misleading questions about the video. Despite being informed about the “I don’t know” ground rule and the unanswerable nature of questions, children provided specific answers 81% of the time. Furthermore, Earhart et al. (2014) investigated patterns of “I don’t know” responding in investigative interviews. The researchers examined 76 transcripts of investigative interviews with abused childre