Narrative coherence in multiple forensic interviews with child witnesses alleging physical and sexual abuse

This study investigated the narrative coherence of children's accounts elicited in multiple forensic interviews. Transcriptions of 56 police interviews with 28 children aged 3–14 years alleging physical and sexual abuse were coded for markers of completeness, consistency and connectedness. We found that multiple interviews increased the completeness of children's testimony, containing on average almost twice as much new information as single interviews, including crucial location, time and abuse‐related details. When both contradictions within the same interview and across interviews were considered, contradictions were not more frequent in multiple interviews. The frequency of linguistic markers of connectedness remained stable across interviews. Multiple interviews increase the narrative coherence of children's testimony through increasing their completeness without necessarily introducing contradictions or decreasing causal‐temporal connections between details. However, as ‘ground truth’ is not known in field studies, further investigation of the relationship between the narrative coherence and accuracy of testimonies is required

An examination of the limitations in investigative interviewer\u27s use of open-ended questions

Best-practice guidelines in the area of investigative interviewing of children specify the importance of using open-ended questions. However, use of open-ended questions per se does not maximise interview outcome; open-ended questions can vary markedly in quality. The aim of this study was to identify the nature of investigative interviewers\u27 limitations when using open-ended questions, and to compare how representative these limitations are in three distinct interview paradigms. These interview paradigms include: (a) interviews in which trained actors played the role of a 5-6-year-old child; (b) interviews where 5-6-year-old children recalled an innocuous event that was staged in their school; and (c) actual field interviews where child witnesses aged 5 to 7 years recalled an abusive event. Overall, several common problems that would restrict children\u27s opportunity to provide elaborate and accurate narrative accounts of events were identified and described. Our identification of these problems (using a dichotomous rating scale) was found to be consistent with an independent expert, and their presence was not limited to those interviewers who used a low frequency of open-ended questions. The implications of the findings for researchers and trainers in the area of investigative interviewing of children are discussed. <br /

Initiating earthquake talk with young children: Children's social competence and the use of resources

The importance of children receiving timely support to talk about past traumatic events is well-known in psychological research, where the process is intended to prevent the possibility of post-traumatic stress developing (National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE), 2005). In relation to the natural earthquake disaster in Christchurch New Zealand (February 2011), one such recovery strategy is ‘Respond, Renew Recover’, where the ‘Recover’ phase involves talking and recalling experiences in order to come to terms with the event (Brown, 2012). This chapter aims to reveal how talk about the traumatic experiences of being involved in the Christchurch earthquake is initiated and managed in one early childhood centre through the everyday interactions between the teachers and children. The use of supporting educational resources is discussed here, that respect the children’s social competence in attending to their use and the social context to initiate conversations about the earthquake. The resources include Learning Story books, outdoor excursions to broken environments, and play equipment such as traffic cones, hard hats and tape to section off chosen areas. The usefulness of these resources to initiate conversations that support recovery talk is demonstrated in transcriptions of unfolding talk about aspects of the earthquake event. The chapter includes a reflection by the teachers who were involved in the research. Their discussion reflects on the inclusion of these resources and their usefulness for initiating earthquake talk. Together, this chapter and the subsequent teacher reflection aim to prompt other teachers to include such resources to help support children’s recovery from traumatic experiences