Increasing maltreated and nonmaltreated children's recall disclosures of a minor transgression: The effects of back-channel utterances, a promise to tell the truth, and a post-recall putative confession

Interviewing Asylum-Seeking Children: A Scoping Review of Research to Inform Best Practices

Immigration interviews with asylum-seeking youth have been largely understudied. In domestic legal settings, children interviewed about abuse and maltreatment provide more detailed, relevant responses when asked open-ended questions and when interviewed in a neutral environment, among other supportive practices. In asylum settings, guidance for interviews with youth derives from the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is not clear to what extent best practices are employed during asylum interviews with youth. This scoping review was performed to (a) provide an overview of empirical literature on interviews with children in immigration settings, including border screenings, interviews with representatives, and asylum hearings, (b) explore whether best practices derived from forensic psychology and children's rights are observed in asylum interviews, (c) identify unique interview needs of asylum-seeking youth, and (d) derive implications for research and practice. A scoping review of three databases conducted in October 2023 yielded titles, of which 29 articles met inclusion criteria. These comprised quantitative and qualitative studies in English from 2003 to 2023. Three articles identified were quantitative, and 26 were qualitative. While several articles touched on interview practices and youth's experiences of interviews, only a few examined how asylum-seeking youth responded to different interview factors such as question type and interview setting. Key findings highlight inconsistent application of best practice principles, and several areas where best practices to support asylum-seeking children require clarification through further research.

The Role of Wait Time During the Questioning of Children: A Systematic Review

The benefits of wait time in classroom discourses have been well documented in the field of education since the 1970s. While current forensic interview guidelines recognize the importance of pauses, whether there is sufficient empirical evidence to inform wait time guidelines in the legal context remains unanswered. This systematic review aimed to synthesize and provide a holistic update on the available research on the role of wait time when questioning children and recommended future direction to develop wait time guidelines specific to child forensic interviews. Systematic searches were conducted using four databases (PsycINFO, MedLine, ERIC, and Scopus). A total of 3,953 unique articles were returned, following a title and abstract screening, 68 full texts were reviewed, and 26 (including five additional studies identified through a hand search) were included. Inclusion criteria were the study sample included children under 18, published a measure of wait time in a questioning context, and in English. Overall, most knowledge of wait time remains in the field of education. Natural wait time is short, but with training, extended wait time yields significant benefits for both child and adult talk. Only one study examined the role of wait time in the forensic interviewing setting where a 10-s wait time appears to be more productive than shorter pauses. Extended wait time is a promising and simple interviewing practice with the potential to facilitate children's disclosure. The current review is a call for research in the area as it pertains to forensic interviewing of children and youth.

Maltreated and non-maltreated children's truthful and dishonest reports: Linguistic and syntactic differences

Introduction

Adults are typically poor judges of the veracity of statements, requiring the need for alternative methods for detecting lies. One alternative method to human lie-detectors is using computer-based linguistic analysis which may present a more reliable method for detecting dishonesty. Moreover, while previous research has examined linguistic differences between typically developing children's and adults' truthful and dishonest reports, no study to date has examined whether maltreated children exhibit different linguistic cues to dishonesty. Thus, the current study examined maltreated and nonmaltreated children's linguistic and syntactic cues to children's truthful and dishonest reports.

Methods

Nine- to 12-year-olds, half of whom were maltreated, played a computer game with a confederate: half of the children experienced a transgression (i.e., playing a forbidden game and crashing the computer) and were coached to conceal it, and half of the children experienced no transgression (i.e., simply played a computer game). All children were then interviewed about the event. The current study utilized automated linguistic and syntactic analysis software to compare children's truthful reports (no transgression occurred) with dishonest reports.

Results and Discussion

Results indicated that maltreated and non-maltreated children did not differ in their indicators of dishonesty. Dishonest reporters used more first-person plural pronouns and cognitive mechanism terms and had less syntactically complex reports compared to truthful reporters. Finally, first-personal plural pronouns, cognitive mechanism terms, and syntactic complexity accurately classified (74.2%) the veracity of children's reports. The current findings present a new indicator of dishonesty (syntactic complexity) and suggest that indicators from typically developing populations may apply to maltreated children when coaching occurred.

The Utility of the Birthday Prompt in Narrative Practice with Maltreated and Non-maltreated 4- to 9-year-old Children

Forensic interviewers are encouraged to elicit a practice narrative from children in order to train them to answer free recall questions with narrative information. Although asking children about their last birthday has been recommended, concerns have been raised that many children will have nothing to report. This study asked 994 4- to 9-year-old maltreated and non-maltreated children to recall their last birthday. Although a fair number of children initially failed to recall information (9%), virtually all children recalled information with persistent encouragement (99%). Younger children and maltreated children were less responsive and spoke less, but nevertheless, 93% of the youngest children (4-year-olds) and 97% of maltreated children recalled information with persistent encouragement. The results suggest that children's failures to recall information about birthdays are predominantly attributable to a failure to provide additional support.

Forensic Interviewers' Difficulty With Invitations: Faux Invitations and Negative Recasting

An ongoing challenge for forensic interviewers is to maximize their use of invitations, such as requests that the child "tell me more about" details mentioned by the child. Examining 434 interviews with 4- to 12-year-old children questioned about abuse, this study analyzed (1) faux invitations, in which interviewers prefaced questions with "tell me" but then asked a noninvitation, (2) negative recasts, in which interviewers started to ask an invitation but then recast the question as a wh- or option-posing question, and (3) other aspects of questions that may relate to productivity independent of their status as invitations. About one fourth of "tell me" questions were faux invitations, and over 80% of recasts were negative. The frequency of both faux invitations and negative recasts increased during the substantive phase of the interviews, and these were related to decreased productivity, increased nonresponsiveness, and increased uncertainty. In contrast, use of exhaustive terms (e.g., "tell me everything") and nonstatic questions (e.g., about actions) was related to increased productivity. The results suggest that training should teach interviewers when and how strategic use of invitations and other question types can elicit specific types of forensically relevant information.

Children's concealment of a minor transgression: The role of age, maltreatment, and executive functioning

This study examined the role of age, maltreatment status, and executive functioning on 752 4- to 9-year-old maltreated and nonmaltreated children's recall disclosure of a transgression in which the children appeared to have broken toys while playing with a stranger. Interviewers used narrative practice rapport building and then questioned children with free recall and cued recall questions. Younger and maltreated children were more likely to disclose during rapport building, whereas older and nonmaltreated children were more likely to disclose in response to recall questions. Working memory deficits appeared to mediate the relation between children's characteristics and disclosure during rapport but not during recall. The results demonstrate that how children are questioned affects the relations between deception and age, maltreatment, and executive functioning.

Identifying Liars Through Automatic Decoding of Children's Facial Expressions

This study explored whether children's (N = 158; 4- to 9 years old) nonverbal facial expressions can be used to identify when children are being deceptive. Using a computer vision program to automatically decode children's facial expressions according to the Facial Action Coding System, this study employed machine learning to determine whether facial expressions can be used to discriminate between children who concealed breaking a toy(liars) and those who did not break a toy(nonliars). Results found that, regardless of age or history of maltreatment, children's facial expressions could accurately (73%) be distinguished between liars and nonliars. Two emotions, surprise and fear, were more strongly expressed by liars than nonliars. These findings provide evidence to support the use of automatically coded facial expressions to detect children's deception.

The effects of the putative confession and evidence presentation on maltreated and non-maltreated 9- to 12-year-olds' disclosures of a minor transgression

The current study examined the influence of the putative confession (in which children are told that the suspect told them "everything that happened" and "wants [the child] to tell the truth") and evidence presentation on 9- to 12-year-old maltreated and non-maltreated children's disclosure (N = 321). Half of the children played a forbidden game with an adult confederate that resulted in a laptop computer breaking (no transgression occurred for the other half of the children), followed by coaching to conceal the forbidden game and to falsely disclose the sanctioned game. Children were then interviewed about the interaction with the confederate. Among the 9- and 10-year-olds, the putative confession led to a higher rate of breakage disclosure (62%) than the control condition (13%) and to a higher rate of leakage of incriminating details during recall (47% vs. 9%). Older children were more likely to disclose than younger children and to be uninfluenced by the putative confession. Among all ages, evidence presentation elicited disclosures from 63% of children who had not previously disclosed without eliciting any false disclosures.

Effects of the putative confession instruction on perceptions of children's true and false statements

The putative confession (PC) instruction (i.e., "[suspect] told me everything that happened and wants you to tell the truth") during forensic interviews with children has been shown to increase the accuracy of children's statements, but it is unclear whether adults' perceptions are sensitive to this salutary effect. The present study examined how adults perceive children's true and false responses to the PC instruction. Participants (n = 299) watched videotaped interviews of children and rated the child's credibility and the truthfulness of his/her statements. When viewing children's responses to the PC instruction, true and false statements were rated as equally credible, and there was a decrease in accuracy for identifying false denials as lies. These findings suggest that participants viewed the PC instruction as truth-inducing. Implications for the forensic use of the PC instruction are discussed.