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Awareness of the origin of knowledge predicts child witnesses' recall of alleged sexual and physical abuse
Author(s) -
Thierry Karen L.,
Lamb Michael E.,
Orbach Yael
Publication year - 2003
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.933
Subject(s) - attribution , psychology , recall , sexual abuse , child abuse , child sexual abuse , physical abuse , developmental psychology , multilevel model , suicide prevention , human factors and ergonomics , cognition , poison control , social psychology , psychiatry , medical emergency , medicine , cognitive psychology , machine learning , computer science
Children who understand that knowledge may have different origins produce more information in their free‐recall accounts than children who are less aware of source. We examined whether the tendency to make knowledge attributions was related to the number and proportion of details elicited from child witnesses using open‐ended invitations and whether this relationship varied depending on the number of incidents of abuse reported. The tendency to make knowledge attributions was measured in the presubstantive portion of protocol‐guided interviews with 3‐ to 11‐year‐old alleged victims of abuse. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that the production of knowledge attribution details was positively related to the proportion of substantive episodic details produced by 3‐ to 6‐year‐olds recalling a single incident and by 3‐ to 11‐year‐olds recalling multiple incidents of abuse. Presubstantive source details were also positively correlated with the amount of source information recalled about incidents of abuse. These findings remained significant after controlling for the children's verbosity, the relative prominence of open‐ended invitations, and the children's ages. © 2003 US Government work.