Premium
The Effects of Adult Suggestion and Child Consistency on Young Children's Reports 1
Author(s) -
Gilstrap Livia L.,
Laub Cindy,
Zierten Elizabeth A.,
MuellerJohnson Katrin U.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2008.00373.x
Subject(s) - psychology , consistency (knowledge bases) , developmental psychology , social psychology , contrast (vision) , internal consistency , psychometrics , geometry , mathematics , artificial intelligence , computer science
The purpose of the present study was to contrast the effects of children's response consistency and adult leading questions in a structured memory interview. Children ( N = 70) who viewed a 2‐min video clip were asked 3 questions (leading, misleading, and neutral) related to the video. Children's responses (assent vs. deny) were predicted by the type of question asked by the adult (neutral, leading, and misleading), but not by the previous response given by the child or the child's age in months. Specifically, children assented the least often to misleading questions. Accuracy was predicted by both question type and in the last question–answer pair, children's previous response accuracy. These findings are discussed with relation to interview dynamics.