Improving Eyewitness Reporting: Novel Approaches Across Development

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Historically, research on children as eyewitness has largely focused on young children (e.g., preschool-age), especially their suggestibility and proneness to err. Far less attention has been directed toward wider age ranges of youth, despite older children and adolescents being highly likely to experience victimization. Nor has sufficient attention focused on how to improve reporting across age. The presentations in this symposium directly address these omissions via rigorous experimental research that assesses effects of different questioning strategies on children’s, adolescents’, and adults’ disclosures and report completeness for events experienced earlier in life. The first research team will describe an investigation of how providing children reminders about the round rules of a forensic interview influences their later requests for clarification during a mock forensic interview about a prior experience. The second and third research teams will describe effects of developmentally appropriate rapport-building techniques on children and adolescents’ reports. One team evaluated the effects of building rapport on children’s disclosure of a transgression, and the other assessed whether rapport that targets motivations that inhibit adolescent responsiveness is effective at increasing their report completeness. The fourth research team systematically compared interviewing strategies used for adults to elicit disclosures of documented maltreatment in childhood and adolescence. Together, the symposium presenters will provide much-needed insight into effective ways of improving eyewitness reporting of negative and potentially stressful events from childhood and adolescents, thereby moving the field beyond its historical focus and toward better identification of vulnerable youth.

Sub Unit

• Attention, Learning, Memory

Chairs

• Emma Simpson, University of California - Irvine

• Jodi A Quas, University of California, Irvine

Individual Presentations

• Use of Reminders to Facilitate Children’s Clarification Requests in Interviews - Presenting Author: Lillian A Rodriguez Steen, The College of Saint Rose; Paulyn Mandap; Marta Figueiredo Neves; Erin T. Mattes, Ontario Tech University; Claudia McArthur; Sydney D. Spyksma, Ontario Tech University; Lindsay C Malloy, University of Ontario Institute of Technology

• Interviewer Rapport May Buffer the Negative Impact of Distress on Timing of Children’s Disclosures - Presenting Author: Emily Slonecker, Cabrini University; Joanna Peplak, University of California - Irvine; J. Zoe Klemfuss, University of California - Irvine

• Testing the Effects of Different Rapport-Building Techniques on Adolescents’ Disclosures - Presenting Author: Emma Simpson, University of California - Irvine; Rachel E. Dianiska; Jodi A Quas, University of California, Irvine

• Adults’ Memories of Traumatic Childhood Experiences - Presenting Author: Gail S. Goodman, University of California, Davis; Deborah Goldfarb, University of California, Davis; Yan Wang, University of California - Davis; Yuerui Wu, University of California - Davis; Miranda Kramer, University of California, Davis; Daisy E. Vidales, University of California - Davis; Ronald Fisher; Mitchell L. Eisen, California State University