Poster #48 - “When Did That Happen?”: Children’s Understanding of Sequence and Use of Sequential Terms

• In Event: Poster Session 08

Abstract

Investigation and prosecution of maltreatment cases often require children to report their experiences, including situating events within a temporal context. Nevertheless, there remains limited understanding of children’s abilities to provide temporal information and how this differs by age. In this study, we focused on questions of the format “when did X happen” given that these questions are ambiguous in terms of the time scale requested and whether they are asking about simultaneous or sequential information, and given that this question format is used to gather important legal information (e.g., age at victimization). We examined patterns in children’s responses from early childhood (when sequencing term comprehension emerges) through early adolescence (an age group over-represented in maltreatment cases).

Children completed a 30-minute Zoom session with an interviewer wherein they watched pre-recorded videos of two stories. Each story showed Character A playing with three toys in sequence. Character B played with a toy at the same time Character A played with the second toy, introducing a simultaneous event to the sequence. Following each story, the interviewer asked “when” each action in the sequence occurred (“when did [Character A] play with the X?”). Data from a preliminary sample (N = 45 4- to 12-year-olds; Mage = 7.18, SD = 2.80) were transcribed and children’s responses were coded for (1) accuracy and (2) sequencing language (specific: first, second, last; before/after; when/while; broad: beginning, ending, start).

Adolescents (9- to 12-year-olds) were more likely to provide correct responses compared to children (4- to 8-year-olds), Pearson χ2 (1) = 4.78, p = .029 (Figure 1). Adolescents were (marginally) more likely to use specific sequencing terms across all questions compared to children, Pearson χ2 (1) = 2.94, p = .087. When assessing term use by reference question (Figure 2), children were more likely to use “before/after” when being asked about the second toy, Wald χ2 (1) = 17.25, p < .001, OR = 5.82, and third toy in the sequence, Wald χ2 (1) = 17.25, p < .001, OR = 3.96, than the first toy. They were more likely to refer to sequence location (e.g., first) when asked about the first toy than when asked about the second, Wald χ2 (1) = 15.97, p < .001, OR = 4.69, or third, Wald χ2 (1) = 8.04, p = .005, OR = 2.55. Children were more likely to use the term “when” (i.e. X happened when Y happened) to refer to sequential actions (82.4%) than simultaneous actions (17.6%).

Results suggest that sequencing comprehension is developing past early childhood given that adolescents more accurately identified when actions occurred. Supporting previous research, children demonstrated comfort with the term “first” by spontaneously labeling the first action in the sequence. Their use of sequencing terms further supported a tendency to move forward in a sequence such that children rarely used simultaneous language (e.g., “while”), and used “when” language to refer to sequential, rather than simultaneous, events. In addition to theoretical contributions, these findings may inform forensic questioning practices with youth.

Authors

• Deborah Zonenschein Kamliot, University of California - Irvine
  Presenting Author

• Joanna Peplak, University of California - Irvine

• J. Zoe Klemfuss, University of California - Irvine