Young Children's Reports Research Articles

Increasing young children's honest reports and decreasing their transgressions.

Young children break rules (i.e., transgress) and then lie about those transgressions. By adolescence, lying is associated with decreased trust, communication, and quality of relationships, and with befriending antisocial peers. To decrease lies, we replicated differentially reinforcing honest reports about transgressions for one 6-year-old neurotypical child and two 7-year-old children who were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. After all children learned to report honestly about transgressions, we extended past research to decrease transgressions by differentially reinforcing alternative play behaviors. For all children, this resulted in increased levels of play, decreased transgressions, and continued honesty about infrequent transgressions. Caregivers were satisfied with children's increased honest reports and decreased transgressions. The results support first reinforcing children's honest reports about transgressions and then decreasing transgressions to satisfying levels for caregivers.

Young children's ability to report on past, future, and hypothetical pain states: a cognitive-developmental perspective.

Children are at times asked by clinicians or researchers to rate their pain associated with their past, future, or hypothetical experiences. However, little consideration is typically given to the cognitive-developmental requirements of such pain reports. Consequently, these pain assessment tasks may exceed the abilities of some children, potentially resulting in biased or random responses. This could lead to the over- or under-treatment of children's pain. This review provides an overview of factors, and specifically the cognitive-developmental prerequisites, that may affect a child's ability to report on nonpresent pain states, such as past, future, or hypothetical pain experiences. Children's ability to report on past pains may be influenced by developmental (age, cognitive ability), contextual (mood state, language used by significant others), affective and pain-related factors. The ability to mentally construct and report on future painful experiences may be shaped by memory of past experiences, information provision and learning, contextual factors, knowledge about oneself, cognitive coping style, and cognitive development. Hypothetical pain reports are sometimes used in the development and validation of pain assessment scales, as a tool in assessing cognitive-developmental and social-developmental aspects of children's reports of pain, and for the purposes of training children to use self-report scales. Rating pain associated with hypothetical pain scenarios requires the ability to recognize pain in another person and depends on the child's experience with pain. Enhanced understanding of cognitive-developmental requirements of young children's pain reports could lead to improved understanding, assessment, and treatment of pediatric pain.

Young Children's Reports of When Events Occurred: Do Event Type and Assessment Method Matter?

Studying young children's reporting about when various events occurred informs about the development of episodic memory and metacognition. In two experiments, 55 3‐ to 5‐year‐old children participated in two activity sessions, a week apart. During the activity sessions, they learned novel animal facts and body movements, and they coloured animal pictures and posed for body movement photos. Immediately after the second activity session, children were interviewed about when they experienced the various events. Overall, children were as accurate about learning events as physical events, but they were more accurate when asked temporal distance (e.g. ‘Which did you learn a longer time ago, “X” or “Y”?’) than temporal location questions (e.g. ‘Which did you learn before today, “X” or “Y”?’). The results suggest that young children's apparent difficulty recognizing new learning is not due to a rapid ‘remember‐to‐know shift’. Rather, the way we ask young children about when they experienced various events determines their accuracy. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The effects of different paraphrasing styles on the quality of reports from young child witnesses

Young children's descriptions of sexual abuse are often sparse thus creating the need for techniques that elicit lengthier accounts. ‘Paraphrasing’, or repeating information children have just disclosed, is a technique sometimes used by forensic interviewers to clarify or elicit information (e.g. if a child stated ‘He touched me’, an interviewer could respond ‘He touched you?’). However, the effects of paraphrasing have yet to be scientifically assessed. The impact of different paraphrasing styles on young children's reports was investigated. Overall, paraphrasing per se did not improve the length, richness, or accuracy of reports when compared to open-ended prompts such as ‘tell me more’, but some styles of paraphrasing were more beneficial than others. The results provide clear recommendations for investigative interviewers about how to use paraphrasing appropriately, and which practices can compromise the quality of children's reports.

Children's Reports of Past-Life Memories: A Review

Researchers have studied young children's reports of past-life memories for the last 45 years. The children usually describe a recent, ordinary life, and many of them have given enough details so that one particular deceased individual has been identified to match the children's statements. These cases occur worldwide, and although they are easiest to find in cultures with a belief in reincarnation, many cases have been found in the West as well. This review explores the facets of this phenomenon and presents several recent American cases.

The Effects of Adult Suggestion and Child Consistency on Young Children's Reports1

The purpose of the present study was to contrast the effects of children's response consistency and adult leading questions in a structured memory interview. Children (N = 70) who viewed a 2‐min video clip were asked 3 questions (leading, misleading, and neutral) related to the video. Children's responses (assent vs. deny) were predicted by the type of question asked by the adult (neutral, leading, and misleading), but not by the previous response given by the child or the child's age in months. Specifically, children assented the least often to misleading questions. Accuracy was predicted by both question type and in the last question–answer pair, children's previous response accuracy. These findings are discussed with relation to interview dynamics.

Photograph reminders and young children's event reports: The influence of timing

Purpose. We compared the influence on preschoolers' event recall of photograph reminders presented at different points between the event and the interview.Methods. Seventy‐seven children aged 3.5‐4.5 years participated in a quasimedical event and were interviewed 10 weeks later. The children were allocated to one of three reminder conditions: early reminder (3 or 4 days after the event); late reminder (24 hours before the interview); and reminder‐at‐interview (at the beginning of the interview). There were two control groups: no reminder and reminder only (children who did not take part in the event but received the reminder at the beginning of the interview).Results. The photograph reminder did not facilitate recall relative to no reminder. Nonetheless, the event reports of children in the late reminder condition contained a greater proportion of information consistent with the event than of those in the no‐reminder and reminder‐at‐interview conditions, and a strong trend toward reporting more event‐consistent information than of those in the early‐reminder condition. Notably, children in the reminder‐only condition reported moderate amounts of information consistent with the event, including event‐consistent information that was not present in the reminder photographs.Conclusions. A photograph reminder presented 24 hours before the interview enhances children's recall to a greater extent than reminders presented at other points. Photographs may not be optimal reminders for preschoolers, however. The impact of reminders may be masked when children have scripted knowledge relevant to the event.

A further look at the prognostic power of young children's reports of depressed mood and feelings.

A primary objective of the present study was to determine the validity of first graders' self-reports of depressed mood and feelings. To that end, the prognostic power of first grade self-reports of depressed mood and feelings was examined with respect to later psychopathology and adaptive functioning in a population of urban school children (N = 946). First grade self-reports of depressed mood predicted later child academic functioning, the need for and use of mental health services, suicidal ideation, and a diagnosis of major depressive disorder by age 14. The prognostic power of these early self-reports suggests that children as young as 5 or 6 years of age are capable of providing valid reports of depressed mood and feelings.

Recovered Memories: Context and Controversy

With the article Recovered Memory Therapy: A Dubious Practice Technique by J. T. Stocks (September 1998, pp. 423-436), Social Work has acknowledged, and obliquely, the controversy about trauma victims' recovered memories. I use the term belatedly because many professional publications, some with special editions, have, for several years now, focused directly on this extended and heated debate; for example, the Harvard Mental Health Letter (1993, 1994, 1995); almost all of the Winter 1995 Journal of Psychohistory; Professional Psychology: Research and Practice (October 1996); American Psychologist (September 1996, September, 1997). I use the term obliquely because Stocks never outright mentioned the controversy and thus failed to place the Social Work article in context. Most obviously, Stocks neglected to mention the main protagonists in the recovered memory or false memory debate: Peter and Pamela Freyd and their daughter, Jennifer Freyd. In 1990 Jennifer, a psychologist, recalled childhood sexual by her father, a mathematics professor. In response, her mother, an educator, founded in 1992, the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF), now with more than 18,000 members, people allegedly falsely accused of sexually abusing children (Brown, Scheftin, & Hammond, 1998). The foundation helps link alleged abusers with attorneys, who specialize in portraying therapists as false memory implanters, and with prominent scientist-experts, such as Elizabeth Loftus, who testify on the ease of implanting false memories of childhood trauma. Thus, a woman charging her father with molesting her as a child may face a well-orchestrated defense team, expert at discrediting her accusations and memories. This is the context never mentioned in Stocks's (1998) article, which began: Throughout most of this century, public response to sexual of children had been to disregard, minimize, or deny allegations of child sexual abuse (p. 423). In fact, the tactics of FMSF are a new and apparently scientific way of disregarding, minimizing, or denying allegations of child abuse. Not surprisingly, those accused of abuse, innocent or guilty, are likely to deny. Also, according to Rubin (1996), abusers, and not just victims, may have false memories; abusers certainly are strongly motivated to have false memories. They also are motivated to implant false memories in their victims. And they have considerable opportunity to influence or brainwash a child whom they may be with 24 hours a day by withholding or dispensing primary reinforcers, such as food or security. Compare this with a therapist working with an adult, an hour a week, withholding or dispensing secondary reinforcers, such as praise. Who has more power to implant so-called false memories? Who is more strongly motivated? Yes, some therapists may persuade some clients of that never happened. But some perpetrators may persuade victims - as well as courts or researchers - that the never happened. As Rubin has cautioned, perpetrator denial should not be denied: A balanced discussion must include consideration of explanations for forgetting episodes of perpetrating childhood sexual abuse, because accused perpetrators are certainly motivated not to admit abusive acts. . . . The longstanding denial of childhood sexual harms society by permitting future victims. Denial harms perpetrators by ignoring the need and opportunity for treatment. . . . As psychologists, we must not perpetrate the denial of any aspect of sexual victimization. (p. 450) A very effective way of denying or muting charges of sexual is to focus on so-called false memories. A very misleading term, false memory confuses two separate measures of memory: completeness and accuracy. As Brown et al. (1998) noted, a given memory may be incomplete yet highly accurate, as is often the case in young children's memory reports, or a given memory may be complete yet highly inaccurate. …

Assessing the accuracy of young children's reports: Lessons from the investigation of child sexual abuse

Procedures for investigating allegations of child sexual abuse have come under intense scrutiny by social critics, researchers, and the courts. Concerns about under- and overidentification have fueled two approaches to evaluation: the indicator approach, which seeks to specify symptoms that can be used to identify sexually abused children, and the assessments approach, which analyzes conditions associated with accurate versus inaccurate event reports. A review of research from these approaches reveals a number of gaps between empirical results and commonly cited aphorisms about how to discriminate between true and false reports. Four principles for designing studies and communicating findings are suggested to improve the interface between research and practice.

Reliability and credibility of young children's reports: From research to policy and practice.

Reliability and credibility of young children's reports: From research to policy and practice.

Reliability and credibility of young children's reports. From research to policy and practice.

In this article, some issues, concerns, and research regarding the interviewing of young child witnesses are reviewed. The article focuses on research on suggestibility and the influence of various interviewing techniques on the reliability and credibility of young children's reports. Implications of this research for future research and for policy are discussed.

The good, the bad, and the ugly: accuracy, inaccuracy, and elaboration in preschoolers' reports about a past event

This study investigated how suggestions provided to interviewers prior to questioning preschoolers affected children's reports of past events. Children aged 3–5 years (N=20) were exposed to a series of game-like events that varied on a number of dimensions: the events involved being physically touched or not, carrying out unusual or usual actions, and acting or observing another child act. One and two months after the events, every child received two interviews from separate adults who had been briefed with either correct or incorrect information about each event. Results indicated that suggestions to interviewers determined the questions they asked, and that younger children acquiesced more often than older children to questions based on inaccurate information. Children of all ages agreed more readily with questions about unusual than usual actions, and younger children's reports became more inaccurate over time. These trends may have relevance to the accuracy of young children's eyewitness testimony. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Determinants of Reliability in Psychiatric Surveys of Children Aged 6–12

The reliability of young children's self reports of psychiatric information is a concern of epidemiologists and clinicians alike. This paper explores the determinants of test-retest reliability in a sample of children from the general population using reliability coefficients constructed from a kappa statistic. Age, cognitive ability, and gender are related to consistency of reports in a test-retest paradigm. Controlling for age, cognitive ability and gender, children report more reliably on observable behaviors, and less reliably on questions involving unspecified time, reflections of one's own thoughts, and comparison of themselves with others. The reliability of reports of emotions lies between these two extremes. Surprisingly, sentence length of up to 40 words and psychiatric impairment of the child as measured by the Child Global Assessment Scale did not influence reliability. As might be expected, parents' reports of their children are more reliable than their children's reports.

Does anxiety affect children's reports of memory for a stressful event?

AbstractThe study was conducted to explore the effects of anxiety on children's memory for a naturalistic, potentially stressful event. Eighty children of two age groups, 4‐5 and 7‐8 years, visited the dentist for either a teeth‐cleaning check‐up or an operative procedure. Anxiety was assessed by a behavioural rating scale, as well as through Likert‐scale ratings by the hygienist, parent, and child. Memory for the event was elicited through free recall and specific central and peripheral questions. High anxiety had a debilitative effect on the reports of the older children, but not on young children's reports. However, experience with the dental event mediated the influence of age and anxiety on memory. Although all measures of anxiety were significantly associated with each other, only the behavioural rating scale yielded statistically reliable effects of anxiety on memory. The anxiety‐memory relationship is believed to be more complex than previous research with children suggests.

Does “Telling” Less Protect More? Relationships Among Age, Information Disclosure, and What Children with Cancer See and Feel

Parents report telling young children less about the diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of cancer than older children and adolescents. This is often based on the desire to spare children from being overwhelmed. 43 children diagnosed with cancer reported on information disclosed to them at diagnosis, their causal attributions, illness-related stress, and coping strategies. Consistent with parental reports, children under 9 years (n = 18) were told less than children 9-14 years (n = 15) and adolescents (n = 10). Young children's reports of illness impact differed from older children and adolescents only with respect to school and social domains. Younger children reported fewer cognitive strategies than older children and adolescents. Even though young children were told much less than older children they reported similar levels of distress. This suggests that nondisclosure fails to mask the salient and distressing aspects of the illness.

Children's Knowledge of the Integration of Successive Emotions

Knowledge of the integration of successive emotions was tested in 7- and 12-yr.-old children by presenting them stories in which an affectively charged target-situation was preceded either by an affectively neutral situation or by an affectively charged initial situation that was opposite in valence to the target situation. Children indicated the emotion they would feel in the target-situation by choosing one of five schematically presented facial expressions as well as by giving the reason for their choice. Older children's reports of affect in the target-situation were influenced more by the initial affective situation than were younger children's reports. Age-related differences were especially clear in girls' reports. It was concluded that there are age-related differences in children's awareness of the enduring character of emotions across situations.

Relationships among preadolescents' reports of their parents' child-rearing behaviors.

Intercorrelations were calculated among CRPBI dimension scores attributed by 147 fifth and 113 sixth graders to their mothers and fathers. Although the dimensions are hypothetically orthogonal, consistent patterns of negative correlations were found between the extent of parental control and both the degree of parental acceptance and the laxness of parental discipline. Consistently high positive correlations were found between parent pairs' scores on each of the separate dimensions. Characteristics of the subject population and method of questionnaire administration were discussed; it was suggested that young children's reports of parental behavior may not be sufficiently differentiated to support a three-dimensional model appropriate for the views of older children and adults.