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39. Young Children’S Difficulty With Indirect Speech Acts: Implications For Questioning Child Witnesses, Angela D. Evans, Stacia N. Stolzenberg, Kang Lee, Thomas D. Lyon
39. Young Children’S Difficulty With Indirect Speech Acts: Implications For Questioning Child Witnesses, Angela D. Evans, Stacia N. Stolzenberg, Kang Lee, Thomas D. Lyon
Thomas D. Lyon
Prior research suggests that infelicitous choice of questions can significantly underestimate children’s actual abilities, independently of suggestiveness. One possibly difficult question type is indirect speech acts such as “Do you know…” questions (DYK, e.g., “Do you know where it happened?”). These questions directly ask if respondents know, while indirectly asking what respondents know. If respondents answer “yes,” but fail to elaborate, they are either ignoring or failing to recognize the indirect question (known as pragmatic failure). Two studies examined the effect of indirect speech acts on maltreated and non-maltreated 2- to 7-year-olds’ post-event interview responses. Children were read a story …