Narrative coherence in multiple forensic interviews with child witnesses alleging physical and sexual abuse
Date
2020
Journal Title
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Publisher
Applied Cognitive Psychology
Abstract
This study investigated the narrative coherence of children's accounts elicited in multiple forensic interviews. Transcriptions of 56 police interviews with 28 children aged
3–14 years alleging physical and sexual abuse were coded for markers of completeness, consistency and connectedness. We found that multiple interviews increased
the completeness of children's testimony, containing on average almost twice as
much new information as single interviews, including crucial location, time and
abuse-related details. When both contradictions within the same interview and
across interviews were considered, contradictions were not more frequent in multiple interviews. The frequency of linguistic markers of connectedness remained stable
across interviews. Multiple interviews increase the narrative coherence of children's
testimony through increasing their completeness without necessarily introducing
contradictions or decreasing causal-temporal connections between details. However,
as ‘ground truth’ is not known in field studies, further investigation of the relationship
between the narrative coherence and accuracy of testimonies is required.
Description
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Article
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Keywords
forensic interview, child sexual abuse, child witness, multiple interviews, children's testimony
Citation
Szojka, Z. A., Nicol, A., & La Rooy, D. (2020). Narrative coherence in multiple forensic interviews with child witnesses alleging physical and sexual abuse. Applied Cognitive Psychology.