Evidence Commons^™

Children's resistance to unpleasant hypotheticals undermines their apparent understanding of the truth and lies. Better understanding of children's developmental limitations, improved questioning, and objections to developmentally insensitive questions could improve children's performance.

Early deceptive behavior often involves acts of wrongdoings on the part of children. As a result, it has often been assumed, although not tested directly, that children are better at identifying lies about wrongdoing than lies about other activities. We tested this assumption in two studies. In Study 1, 67 3- to 5-year-olds viewed vignettes in which a character truthfully or falsely claimed to have committed a good or bad act. Children were biased to label claims that the character had committed a good act as the truth and claims that the character had committed a bad act as lies. …

A great deal of research in the past 25 years has contributed to our understanding of how best to interview children about suspected maltreatment. The disastrous failures of the highly publicized daycare abuse cases led to a flood of research, initially emphasizing the failures of conventional approaches, and more recently highlighting the potential for eliciting complete and accurate reports.  If a child has disclosed abuse, and is willing to disclose again, we know what to do. Research supports the use of interview instructions, narrative practice rapport building, and the use of open ended questions to elicit and to elaborate on …

A total of two hundred ninety-nine 4- to 9-year-old maltreated and nonmaltreated children of comparable socioeconomic status and ethnicity judged whether children should or would disclose unspecified transgressions of adults (instigators) to other adults (recipients) in scenarios varying the identity of the instigator (stranger or parent), the identity of the recipient (parent, police, or teacher), and the severity of the transgression (‘‘something really bad’’ or ‘‘something just a little bad’’). Children endorsed more disclosure against stranger than parent instigators and less disclosure to teacher than parent and police recipients. The youngest maltreated children endorsed less disclosure than nonmaltreated children, but …

The research supports the proposition that CSA victims often delay disclosure or fail altogether to disclose abuse and that delays and nondisclosure are most common among children abused by a familiar person, especially a family member living in the child's household. The implications of the research are that inconsistencies and recantations in children's reports may be due to reluctance rather than a false allegation.