Issues and Techniques - Interviewing Children

Developmental Issues - Childhood Amnesia

• Prevalent belief that children can/will remember traumatic events from infanthood

  • 64% adults agree

• Evidence of absolute and relative amnesia

  • Amnesia for non-emotional events, including painful distressing intrusive medical interventions in genitourinary area

    • No children ages 2 remembered

    • 50% children aged 3 remembered

    • Most children aged 5+ remembered

• Freudian term ‘infantile amnesia’

  • Children repress the emotional conflicts of childhood

• Developmental explanations

  • Emergence of autobiographical memory and offset of childhood amnesia

  • Brain maturation

  • Language acquisition

  • Establishment of a self-concept

• Memories sparse and sporadic for first 4-6 years of life

• From 7 years on show adult levels of remembering

Developmental Issues - Language Development

• Early language

• Syntax issues – construction of sentences

  • Telegraphic speech

    • Compressed speech 

    • ‘Go park’

  • Use of negatives

    • Because it a word they have they might just use it ‘no’

  • Over generalisation of grammatical rules

  • Refinement of grammar

• Semantics issues

  • Basic understanding

  • Over and under extension of word meanings

    • ‘orange’ could be used to describe any fruit rather than specifically orange

    • Have their own words for certain things

  • Conceptual development

• Language problems

  • Young children are very literal

    • Example

      

      • Change from asking if the child ‘did’ something

        

      • Changed to did someone ‘do’ thins to them

      • Literally take the question

Developmental Issues - Cognitive Development

• Priorities

  • ‘central’ details best remembered for emotionally tagged events

  • ‘central’ to child may differ from central to adult

  • Descriptive information often needed but children tend to think such information is irrelevant

  • Interviews need to carefully explain importance of such information

    • Child may think it’s a test or you don’t believe them

• Specific knowledge

  • Measurement (height weight

  • Time (too abstract)

  • Example

    

• Feeling ‘touch’ vs feeling ‘emotion’

  • Associate a memory with emotion rather than the actual physical feeling of it

Cognitive Interview - Children

• Option posing/leading

  • Options to choose from, yes/no questions

    • Suggestive

    • Information provided by the interviewer that isn’t already provided by child

    • Implying that a particular response is desired

• Open prompts

  • invitations

    • Tell me what happened

  • Cued invitations/time segmentation

    • Earlier you mentioned …. Tell me everything about

    • Tell me everything from event until event

  • Free recall

    • Open prompts tap free-recall memory

    • Get more detailed responses

    • Information given is the most accurate

    • Non-suggestive

    • Difficult for defence to criticise

• Wh..? Important points about specific questions

  • Children use words before they understand them

  • Children try to andwer question they don’t understand

  • Specific questions tap cued-recall memory

  • Children have difficulty with some concepts

    • Behind/in front/over/under

    • Before/after

    • Times/dates/ages

    • Size/height/weight

    • Same/different

    • Neither/either

    • He/she/they

  • ‘Wh’ questions can vary greatly in difficulty and can be misunderstood

    • Easy to answer

      • ‘What is a persons name/age’

    • Hard to answer

      • ‘what’s on back of 50p’

    • Confusion

      • ‘what colour was car’ (inside or outside)

        §  Where were you hit (at home or on the head)

    • Not remembered

      • ‘when was this’

Research

• Obarch & Lamb (2001) – Open prompts vs closed question

  • Analysis of interviews with abused 5 year old

    • 90% of contradictory details were gained by closed questions and suggestive questions

    • 98% of contradictory information was about the allegation

    • No contradictory details were elicited to open prompts

  • Evidence based approaches

    • Good practice guideline strongly advocate use of open prompts

• Research on interviewing England and Wales

  • Sample 119 children who had allegations of abuse

  • 4-13 years old

  • Results

    • Only 7% were interviewed with open prompt

    • 33% was option posing

    • Found similar results in USA, Israel and Sweden

  • Worrying

    • Despite being trailed and aware of practise they believed they were adhering to those recommendations

NICHD Overview

• Introduction

• Ground rules

  • Truth and lies

  • Transfers of control – don’t know, don’t guess, correct interviewer

• Rapport – what do you like to do?

• Practice interview

  • Neutral event

  • Yesterday

• Transition

  • Why they are there and what’s going to happen

• Investigative incidents

  • Open ended prompts

  • Separation of incidents

• Break

• Focused questions about information not mentioned

• Disclosure information

  • Who did they tell

  • Who could have contaminated the witness

• Closure – anything else

• Neutral topic – what are you going to do

NICHD - Importance of ground rules

• Make children aware that they

  • Are in control

  • Not feeling pressured to answer questions

  • Shouldn’t guess

  • As interviewers to explain things

• Important as it removes the pressure to give answers but aren’t sure about

NICHD - Importance of practice interview

• Practice at remembering events

  • Focus on details rather than gist

  • Practice at open prompts

  • Maintain and build rapport

  • Motivates children to provide full descriptions

  • Child can feel in control/successful

• Practice for interviewer

  • Useful in cases of multiple incidents

  • Fewer questions needed in substantive phase

  • Helpful to better understand cognitive abilities

• Research

  • Two practice interviewing techniques compare

  • Open prompts

  • Direct question

  • Results

    • Response to first open prompt used interview was twice as long and detailed when practice interview had taken place

NICHD - Reported reasons for not conducting practice interview

• Takes to much time

  • 5-7 minutes of practice produces benefits

• Fatigues – tire child out

  • As it produces more information willing being produced its illogical to say t leads to fatigue

• Get to the point

  • Sometimes children what to get started – may be uncomfortable

  • May seem good to harness child’s eagerness

  • If child has already said about abuse may feel silly to stop them

  • BUT

    • Children don’t know how much detail to give

    • If preparation isn’t adequate they may never get to the point

Advantages of NICHD protocol

• Levels playing field, all children are given equal opportunity to disclose to not disclose alleged abuse

• Personal biases like underestimating child capabilities are minimized

• Interviews may lack self-awareness or monitoring their interview practise and standardised format helps maintain desirable interview standards

• Validated in over thousands of interviews world wide

• Unlike training NICHD protocol did increase the use of open prompts question interviewing (Lamb et al)

• Research

  • Benia et al 2015

    • Protocol interviews had more invitations, fewer option posing and suggestive prompts

    • Children interviewed by protocol provided more central details in response to invitations than controls

  • Pipe et al 2012

    • NICHD protocol interviews were more likely to result in charges being filed against a suspect

    • NICHD protocol interviews associated with higher conviction rate

Current: Revised NICHD protocol

• RP empathised intensive rapport building and provision of emotional support

• Supportive interviewing based on better rapport between children and interviewers appeared to enhance children’s willingness to make credible allegations

Issues in interviewing seriously abused/ maltreated children

• Little research on children who have been seriously abused

• Chae 2011

  • Abused status was not associated with memory deficit

  • Maltreated child were more likely to display trauma related psychopathologies (PTSD symptoms, higher dissociative tendency)

  • Importance of individual difference

• Malloy 2007 – disclosure and recantation

  • Examined 257 case files

  • Recantation rate of 23%

  • Consistent with Filial Dependency model: children who were more vulnerable to influence from assault family were mostly likely to recant

Interviewing vulnerable witnesses and victims

• Cognitive/social/developmental defects

• Both permanent and time limited (children, elderly, intoxicated)

• ABE guidelines – Policy for England and Wales

Interviewing Intellectual disability

• Increased risk of sexual abuse, physical maltreatment and criminal victimization

• Not a homogeneous group

  • Even when same or similar diagnosis in place

  • Ability related to severity of disability

    • Ability to recall is based on the individual  

• Henry & Gudjonsson 2003

  • Children with mild intellectual disability performance as well a mental age matched typically developing children

  • Children with moderate disabilities performed worse

    Use of NICHD protocol, appears to assist children with intellectual disability

Interviewing Autistic Spectrum Disorder

• Increases risk factors for becoming victims/witness

• Cognitive deficits and interpersonal nature of the interview may be challenging

• Not a homogenous group – specific need of an individual need to be assessed

• Care needed with interviewing technique

  • Mara & Bowler 2012 notes that elements of CI were problematic for this group – context and reinstatement