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The negative effect of cross‐examination style questioning on children's accuracy: older children are not immune
Author(s) -
Zajac Rachel,
Hayne Harlene
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
applied cognitive psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.719
H-Index - 100
eISSN - 1099-0720
pISSN - 0888-4080
DOI - 10.1002/acp.1169
Subject(s) - psychology , style (visual arts) , cross examination , developmental psychology , empirical examination , history , archaeology , witness , classical economics , computer science , economics , programming language
We present data suggesting that the negative effect of cross‐examination style questioning on children's accuracy is not limited to young children. Using an identical paradigm to that used with 5‐ and 6‐year‐olds by Zajac and Hayne in 2003, we examined the effect of cross‐examination style questioning on 9‐ and 10‐year‐olds' accounts of a prior staged event. Like younger children, 9‐ and 10‐year‐old children made frequent changes to their original responses during cross‐examination style questioning. Although 9‐ and 10‐year‐old children were more likely to change incorrect responses than correct ones, they nonetheless changed over 40% of their correct responses, and cross‐examination still exerted a significant negative effect on their overall accuracy levels. The present findings suggest that although older children appear to be somewhat less vulnerable to cross‐examination style questioning, they are still not immune to the negative effects of this process on the accuracy of their reports. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.