Stress at encoding, context at retrieval, and children's narrative content

Nonverbal Emotions While Disclosing Child Abuse: The Role of Interviewer Support

Statements by alleged victims are important when child abuse is prosecuted; triers-of-fact often attend to nonverbal emotional expressions when evaluating those statements. This study examined the associations among interviewer supportiveness, children's nonverbal emotions, and informativeness during 100 forensic interviews with alleged victims of child abuse. Raters coded the silent videotapes for children's nonverbal emotional expressions while other raters coded the transcripts for interviewer support, children's verbal emotions, and informativeness. Results showed that children's nonverbal signals were more common than and preceded the verbal signs. Interviewer support was associated with children's expressivity. When children expressed more nonverbal emotions, they were more responsive during the pre-substantive phases and more informative about the abuse. Nonverbal emotions partially mediated the association between support and informativeness. The findings underline the value of nonverbal emotional expression during forensic interviews and demonstrate how the interviewers' supportive demeanor can facilitate children's emotional displays and increase informativeness.

Fact- and emotion-focused conversations elicit differential patterns of reporting and distress in children

We examined the role of emotion- versus fact-focused conversations in the details children reported about a stressful event and whether the details provided were prompted or spontaneously offered. We also tested how these conversational strategies, in conjunction with children's emotion regulation skills, influenced children's event-related distress. Children (N = 100 8- to 13-year-olds) experienced a stressor in the laboratory and were randomly assigned to participate in a fact-focused conversation (prompted about objective event elements) or an emotion-focused conversation (prompted about subjective reactions to the event) with an unfamiliar adult. Caregivers reported on children's emotion regulation skills. Children reported more overall prompted and spontaneous details in the fact-focused condition, but reported proportionally more spontaneous details than prompted detail in the emotion-focused condition compared to the fact-focused condition. Children with lower emotion regulation skills found the emotion-focused conversation (but not the fact-focused conversation) about the laboratory stressor significantly less distressing than children with high emotion regulation skills (when controlling for initial distress about the task). We propose that combining both fact- and emotion-focused conversational techniques may be most effective for encouraging detailed disclosures from children and for providing a respite from distress for children with emotion-regulation difficulties.

Children's Narrative Coherence in "Achieving Best Evidence" Forensic Interviews and Courtroom Testimony

In the United Kingdom, Section 27 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act permits "Achieving Best Evidence" (ABE) forensic interviews to replace the evidence-in-chief in cases involving children. It is therefore imperative that forensic interviewers elicit complete, reliable, and coherent narratives from children. The goal of the current research study was to assess the coherence of forensic interviews and whether the interviewers' emotional or cognitive support was associated with increases in the coherence of these interviews. Children's narrative coherence was examined in 80 transcripts of ABE investigative interviews with 7- to-15-year-olds who disclosed sexual abuse. Narrative coherence was assessed using the Narrative Coherence Coding Scheme, including three dimensions of narrative coherence: chronology, consistency, and theme (Reese et al., 2011). Findings revealed that first elicited events were more likely to be more coherent compared to subsequently elicited events, and child engagement was positively associated with all dimensions of narrative coherence. Interviewer support was positively associated with chronology, script accounts of abuse were associated with decreased consistency and chronology (but not theme), and cognitive support was not associated with any dimension of narrative coherence.

Parents' attachment orientation, interviewers' support, and children's memory for a mildly distressing event

Parents' attachment orientations predict children's memory about distressing life events, such that parents who are less secure in close relationships tend to have children who are less accurate in their memory reports. This study examined whether socially supportive interviewing would reduce differences in children's memory performance associated with parents' attachment. Children (3 to 5 years, N = 63) and their primary caretakers took part in the Preschool Attachment Classification System (PACS), a moderately distressing event for children of preschool age that is based on the Strange Situation Procedure. Children's memory for the event was then tested shortly thereafter by either a supportive or a non-supportive interviewer. In the non-supportive condition, children whose parents scored higher on attachment avoidance provided lower proportions of correct free recall. However, the association was not significant for children in the supportive condition. In addition, higher parental attachment anxiety predicted lower proportions of correct free recall for children of highly avoidant parents, but not for children of parents lower in attachment avoidance. For direct questions, age differences in proportion correct and proportion incorrect favoured older children. Findings provide insight into interviewing techniques at time of memory retrieval that benefit children of insecure parents.

Talking about emotions: Effects of emotion-focused interviewing on children's physiological regulation of stress and discussion of the subjective elements of a stressful experience

This is the first study to examine the effect of questioning children about emotions and cognitions versus facts on children's stress reactivity and regulation, as well as children's abilities to discuss their subjective experiences, in the context of adult-child discussions about a stressful event. A total of 80 8- to 12-year-old children participated in a stressful laboratory task (i.e., Trier Social Stress Test). Following the task, half of the children were engaged in an emotion-focused conversation with an adult interviewer about the event, and half were engaged in a fact-focused conversation. Electrodermal and cardiac preejection activity and respiratory sinus arrhythmia were derived at baseline, during the laboratory stressor, and during the conversation to index stress reactivity and regulation. Children's narratives were coded for indicators of emotion processing (i.e., positive and negative emotion words, cognitive words [e.g., think, know]). Children's English language abilities, self-reported stress, and several parent-report measures (demographics, child life stress, and children's emotion regulation strategies) were also obtained. Results indicate that the emotion-focused interview facilitated children's discussions of their subjective experiences without increasing their stress reactivity and that children showed enhanced physiological stress regulation during the emotion-focused interview. This research will be of interest to those in the fields of child narratives, stress, and social context as well as to parents and practitioners interested in improving children's understanding, reporting, and recovery after stressful experiences.

Implicit Encouragement: Enhancing Youth Productivity when Recounting a Stressful Experience

In recent years, increasing efforts have been focused on testing strategies of improving victimized children's narrative productivity, given that, for many youth, finding out what has happened to them is crucial to intervening and promoting their well-being. Implicit encouragement strategies, such as back channeling by conversational partners, have shown some preliminary promise, but their precise effects on productivity and accuracy have not been adequately examined. In this study, 98 youth, ages 8-14, completed a laboratory-based stressful activity, and a week later, a surprise memory test regarding what happened in the lab activity. Interviewers varied their use of implicit encouragement. Open-ended recall questions asked youth about both factual details and detail about their feelings and thoughts during the laboratory activity. Implicit encouragement increased the amount of both types of details and had no effect on errors. In fact, few youth provided any incorrect information in their recall reports. Neither age nor stress was related to youth's productivity or accuracy, directly or in conjunction with implicit encouragement. Results highlight the value of interviewers using encouraging behaviors when questioning children and adolescents to elicit a range of information about prior stressful experiences.

Facilitating the Expression of Emotions by Alleged Victims of Child Abuse During Investigative Interviews Using the Revised NICHD Protocol

Children's testimony is often critical to the initiation of legal proceedings in abuse cases. In forensic interviews, the expression of emotions can powerfully enhance both the quality of children's statements and perceptions that their statements are coherent and credible. However, children rarely express their emotions when reporting abusive events. The Revised The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Protocol (RP) was designed to emphasize socioemotional communication during forensic interviews and thus should be associated with more extensive and diverse expressions of emotions by alleged victims of abuse. The present study focused on forensic interviews (178 using the Revised and 100 using the Standard NICHD Protocol) with victims of physical child abuse whose allegations were corroborated using independent evidence. Detailed content coding showed that the RP was associated with the expression of more different emotions, more expression of abuse-related emotions, and more expression of emotions related to the interview context. Emotional expressiveness was associated with increased informativeness, and the association between the type of protocol and informativeness was fully mediated by emotional expressiveness. These results suggest that the Revised Protocol facilitates the expression of emotions by alleged victims of abuse in a way that enhances the value of children's testimony in multiple ways.

Using implicit encouragement to increase narrative productivity in children: Preliminary evidence and legal implications

Statements made by children in a range of legal settings can irrevocably impact their family structure, relationships, and living environment. Because these statements can fundamentally alter children's futures, efforts have been made to identify methods to enhance children's reports by increasing comprehensiveness, completeness, and accuracy. Interviewer support has broadly been considered a method of interest, but variations in what constitutes "support" have highlighted the need for greater specificity in documenting how different facets of supportive behaviors relate to children's reporting tendencies. In this review, we describe work focused on the effects of interviewer support, on children's memory completeness and accuracy. We then describe to a subset of interviewer behaviors that encourage elaboration in dyadic interactions: back-channeling and vocatives. We present preliminary evidence suggesting that these utterances, referred to as implicit encouragement, can increase the amount of detail provided without compromising accuracy. Implications for custody evaluations are discussed.

Effects of Interviewer Support on Children's Memory and Suggestibility: Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses of Experimental Research

The accuracy of children's reports of abuse has been hotly debated in the press, academia, and the courtroom. Yet, children's accuracy depends, in part, on the context in which children are interviewed. Guidelines often recommend creating a supportive psychosocial context to promote open, honest responding; however, there is also concern that support promotes social desirability and acquiescence to suggestion, leading children to report more of what they perceive adults want to hear than the truth. The question remains as to whether there is a sufficient body of scientific research to determine whether interviewer supportiveness improves interview outcomes while minimizing children's stress or whether it increases suggestibility and impairs accuracy. Using a systematic search strategy and meta-analyses, this study identifies and reviews findings from experimental studies of the effects of interviewer supportiveness on the accuracy of children's reports. Although the number of studies in the evidence base is small ( n = 15), the studies are of relatively good quality. Results suggest noncontingent interviewer support bolsters children's accuracy. Children are more resistant and less acquiescent to suggestive questions when interviewers are supportive as compared to nonsupportive or neutral. Effects are in the moderate range. Interviewer support is also associated with fewer errors on nonsuggestive questions. Discussion focuses on implications for practice; directions for future research; identifying vulnerable subgroups; and underlying cognitive, social, and emotional mechanisms.

Experimental manipulation of the Trier Social Stress Test-Modified (TSST-M) to vary arousal across development

Reliable laboratory protocols manipulating the intensity of biobehavioral arousal for children are uncommon, and those available have minimal converging evidence of their efficacy in manipulating arousal across multiple biological systems. This report presents two studies of the efficacy of the modified Trier Social Stress Test (TSST-M). In Study 1, sixty-three 7-15-year olds, and 19 young adults (18-25 yrs) completed the TSST-M. Comparable reactivity across age groups was observed for salivary cortisol, salivary alpha-amylase (sAA), pre-ejection period (PEP) and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), whereas self-reported stress was higher in adults compared to children. In Study 2, eighty-four 7-8-year olds and eighty-six 12-15-year olds were randomly assigned to a standard or low-stress TSST-M condition. Cortisol and self-reported stress responses were higher in the standard compared to the low-stress condition. In contrast, sAA and PEP were higher in the low-stress condition and RSA responses were comparable between the two TSST-M conditions. In addition, age group differences emerged in Study 2, though never in conjunction with the TSST-M manipulation. To test, refine, and advance theory about the implications of stress for child development, laboratory tasks that manipulate and enable assessment of biobehavioral arousal in children are needed.

Stress, interviewer support, and children's eyewitness identification accuracy

Few studies have investigated how stress affects eyewitness identification capabilities across development, and no studies have investigated whether retrieval context in conjunction with stress affects accuracy. In this study, one hundred fifty-nine 7- to 8- and 12- to 14-year-olds completed a high- or low-stress laboratory protocol during which they interacted with a confederate. Two weeks later, they attempted to identify the confederate in a photographic lineup. The lineup administrator behaved in either a supportive or a nonsupportive manner. Participants who experienced the high-stress event and were questioned by a supportive interviewer were most accurate in rejecting target-absent lineups. Results have implications for debates about effects of stress on eyewitness recall, how best to elicit accurate identifications in children, and developmental changes in episodic mnemonic processes.