Children’s Signaling of Incomprehension: The Diagnosticity of Practice Questions During Interview Instructions

dc.contributor.authorHenderson, H. M., & Lyon, T. D.
dc.date.accessioned2022-04-15T14:40:27Z
dc.date.available2022-04-15T14:40:27Z
dc.date.issued2021
dc.description.abstractForensic interviewers are routinely advised to instruct children that they should indicate when they do not understand a question. This study examined whether administering the instruction with a practice question may help interviewers identify the means by which individual children signal incomprehension. We examined 446 interviews with children questioned about abuse, including 252 interviews in which interviewers administered the instruction with a practice question (4- to 13-year-old children; Mage = 7.7). Older children more often explicitly referred to incomprehension when answering the practice question and throughout the interviews, whereas younger children simply requested repetition or gave “don’t know” responses, and individual children’s responses to the practice questions predicted their responses later in the interviews. Similarly, older children were more likely to seek confirmation of their understanding of interviewers’ questions and to request specification. The results highlight the need for interviewers to test and closely monitor younger children’s responses for ambiguous signs of incomprehension.en_US
dc.identifier.citationHenderson, H. M., & Lyon, T. D. (2021). Children’s signaling of incomprehension: The diagnosticity of practice questions during interview instructions. Child maltreatment, 26(1), 95-104.en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1077559520971350
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/11212/5388
dc.language.isoen_USen_US
dc.publisherChild Maltreatmenten_US
dc.subjectchild abuseen_US
dc.subjectinterview techniquesen_US
dc.subjectchild sexual abuseen_US
dc.subjectevidence-based practiceen_US
dc.titleChildren’s Signaling of Incomprehension: The Diagnosticity of Practice Questions During Interview Instructionsen_US
dc.typeArticleen_US

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