Browsing by Author "Stolzenberg, S. N., McWilliams, K., & Lyon, T. D."
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Item Children’s conversational memory regarding a minor transgression and a subsequent interview(Psychology, Public Policy, & Law, 2018) Stolzenberg, S. N., McWilliams, K., & Lyon, T. D.Children’s memories for their conversations are commonly explored in child abuse cases. In two studies, we examined conversational recall in 154 4- to 9-year-old children’s reports of an interaction with a stranger, some of whom were complicit in a transgression and were admonished to keep it a secret. Immediately afterwards, all children were interviewed about their interaction. One week later, children were asked recall questions about their interaction with the stranger, their conversations with the stranger, and their conversations with the interviewer. Overall, interaction recall questions elicited few details about children’s conversations, whereas conversation recall questions were effective in doing so. Accuracy was high in response to both the interaction and conversation recall questions, with no differences observed. Questions explicitly inquiring about coaching elicited higher error rates, as well as apparent attempts to maintain secrecy. Source errors were rare. Conversation recall questions elicited new transgression disclosures among a substantial percentage of children. The results provide tentative support for the use of recall questions in eliciting conversational information from children.Item Spatial language, question type, and young children’s ability to describe clothing: Legal and developmental implications(Law and Human Behavior, 2017) Stolzenberg, S. N., McWilliams, K., & Lyon, T. D.Children’s descriptions of clothing placement and touching with respect to clothing are central to assessing child sexual abuse allegations. This study examined children’s ability to answer the types of questions attorneys and interviewers typically ask about clothing, using the most common spatial terms (on/off, outside/inside, over/under). Ninety-seven 3- to 6-year-olds were asked yes/no (e.g. “Is the shirt on?”), forced-choice (e.g., “Is the shirt on or off?”), open-choice (e.g., “Is the shirt on or off or something else?”), or where questions (e.g., “Where is the shirt?”) about clothing using a human figurine, clothing, and stickers. Across question types, children generally did well with simple clothing or sticker placement (e.g. pants completely on), except for yes/no questions about “over,” suggesting children had an under-inclusive understanding of the word. When clothing or sticker placement was intermediate (e.g., pants around ankles, and therefore neither completely on nor off), children performed poorly except when asked where questions. A similar task using only stickers and boxes, analogous to forensic interviewers' assessments of children's understanding, was only weakly predictive of children's ability to describe clothing. The results suggest that common methods of questioning young children about clothing may lead to substantial misinterpretation.