The quality of children's allegations of abuse in investigative interviews containing practice narratives

To enhance the accuracy and completeness of children's testimony, recommendations have included implementing a practice narrative, during which children are prepared for their role as informative witnesses before discussing the allegations. In the present study, we aimed to systematically examine interviewer behaviour and the informativeness of children's testimony in a field setting. As predicted, interviewers posed fewer prompts, proportionally more open-ended prompts, and children provided proportionally more details in response to open-ended prompts in the substantive phase when preceded by a practice narrative than when no practice narrative was conducted. The relationship was enhanced when the practice narratives were conducted as recommended vs those that were conducted in a less open-ended manner. Together with experimental studies showing clear benefits of practice narratives on children's reports, these results underscore the value of a simple practice narrative as a means of enhancing the reliability of children's testimony.     

Developmental differences in the effects of repeated interviews and interviewer bias on young children's event memory and false reports

The present study investigated developmental differences in the effects of repeated interviews and interviewer bias on children's memory and suggestibility. Three- and 5-year-olds were singly or repeatedly interviewed about a play event by a highly biased or control interviewer. Children interviewed once by the biased interviewer after a long delay made the most errors. Children interviewed repeatedly, regardless of interviewer bias, were more accurate and less likely to falsely claim that they played with a man. In free recall, among children questioned once after a long delay by the biased interviewer, 5-year-olds were more likely than were 3-year-olds to claim falsely that they played with a man. However, in response to direct questions, 3-year-olds were more easily manipulated into implying that they played with him. Findings suggest that interviewer bias is particularly problematic when children's memory has weakened. In contrast, repeated interviews that occur a short time after a to-be-remembered event do not necessarily increase children's errors, even when interviews include misleading questions and interviewer bias. Implications for developmental differences in memory and suggestibility are discussed.     

Assessing personality disorders using a systematic clinical interview: evaluation of an alternative to structured interviews

The aim of this study was to assess interrater reliability and provide initial data bearing on the validity of a method of assessing personality disorders (PDs) that does not presume that patients can accurately self-report personality pathology. In a sample of 24 outpatients, two clinician-judges independently applied the Shedler-Westen Assessment Procedure-200 (SWAP-200; Westen & Shedler, 1999a, 2000), a 200-item Q-sort procedure for assessing personality pathology, to data from the Clinical Diagnostic Interview (Westen, 2002), a systematic clinical interview that mirrors and standardizes methods used by experienced clinicians to diagnose personality. In 16 of the 24 cases, the treating clinician also independently described the patient using the SWAP-200 Q-sort, based on longitudinal knowledge of the patient over the course of treatment, blind to the interview data. Interrater reliability was uniformly high, with median correlations between interviewers at r > .80. Interviewer-treating clinician correlations were also high, with median convergent validity coefficients at r > .80. Diagnostic overlap (discriminant validity) was moderate for dimensional DSM-IV diagnoses, reflecting extensive comorbidity among disorders, but minimal for empirically derived diagnoses identified in prior research. Treating clinicians' dimensional PD diagnoses using this method also strongly predicted interviewer-rated measures of adaptive functioning. The findings provide preliminary support for the reliability and validity of an alternative to structured interviews for diagnosing personality pathology, and suggest that the way to improve validity of personality diagnosis may not be to minimize clinical inference but to quantify it using psychometric instruments.     

Anxiety-related biases in children's avoidant responses to a masked angry face

While anxious children often show escape and withdrawal behaviours towards threats, few studies have experimentally assessed avoidance. The present study examined whether children with high levels of anxiety showed more avoidant responses to a neutral conditioned cue (CS+) that was paired with an unconditioned threat stimulus (UCS), a masked angry facial expression. Thirty-six 10 and 11 year-olds participated in a task, which involved choosing between two CS card stimuli of different colours to win points. Whilst both cards awarded the same number of points, one colour was systematically paired with a masked angry face (CS+), whilst the other colour was paired with a masked neutral face (CS-). Children with higher anxiety scores had an overall tendency to choose the card associated with the neutral face, with some evidence suggesting that this tendency emerged gradually across trials. These results suggest a relationship between anxiety and stimulus-response learning for CS+-UCS associations that support behavioural avoidance.     

The role of inhibitory control in children's cooperative behaviors during a structured puzzle task

This study examined the role of inhibitory control (measured by Stroop interference) in children’s cooperative behaviors during a structured puzzle task. The sample consisted of 250 8-, 10-, and 12-year-olds (117 girls and 133 boys) attending classrooms in three primary schools in Northern Italy. Children individually completed an elaborated Stroop task, were paired with classmates into 125 dyads, and were observed during a 10-min puzzle task. Results confirmed that interaction partners exhibited similar levels of cooperative behaviors, and the cooperative behaviors of children predicted changes in the cooperative behaviors of their partners throughout the puzzle task. Cooperative behaviors of each interaction partner were predicted by the child’s own inhibitory control as well as the inhibitory control of the partner. Findings are discussed within a developmental contextual framework.     

Use of the maximal-operant principle to motivate children's intrinsic interest

The present research examined the hypothesis that in contrast to theory and research indicating that tangible reward decreases subsequent interest in enjoyable academic activities, rewards are perceived by adults as effective techniques to maximize long- and short-term subsequent interest for academic tasks of both high and low initial interest level. The results of our first three studies demonstrated that college students and parents view tangible reward as more effective than other less controlling techniques to enhance intrinsic motivation and value rewards more for intrinsically interesting academic behaviors in comparison with others (e.g., prosocial behaviors). Our fourth study supported the hypothesis that adults do not subscribe to the minimal-sufficiency analysis of increasing intrinsic motivation but prefer a maximal-operant principle in which the likelihood of producing long-term interest in academic tasks is assumed to vary positively with the size of a reward. Our fifth and sixth studies investigated illusory correlation as one mechanism that may perpetuate beliefs about the assumed positive relation between tangible reward and intrinsic interest in academic tasks.     

Cultural differences in young children's vulnerability to injuries: a risk and protection perspective.

Interview data from 100 lower income Hispanic and 50 White mothers from a nutritional service clinic extended prior research on cultural differences in the risk for unintentional pediatric injuries. Group differences were expected in reported injury incidence and in the prevalence and impact of contributing factors. As predicted, White mothers reported more injuries for a young child, and among Hispanic mothers, English language preference and use were associated with more reported injuries. Hierarchical regression analysis revealed that risky behaviors, mother's judgment about child compliance, and stressful life events were better predictors of injuries than housing quality, but among Hispanics, the impact of certain factors (e.g. child temperament) was qualified by mother's acculturation level. Stress and child temperament explained injury differences between more- and less-acculturated Hispanic families but only partially accounted for differences between White mothers and less-acculturated Hispanics. Pediatric injury risk and protective factors seemed to operate in concert with cultural processes.     

Birds of a feather bully together: Group processes and children's responses to bullying

Recent research has shown that a group‐level analysis can inform our understanding of school bullying. The present research drew on social identity theory and intergroup emotion theory. Nine‐ to eleven‐year olds were randomly assigned to the same group as story characters who were described as engaging in bullying, as being bullied, or as neither engaging in bullying nor being bullied. Participants read a story in which a bully, supported by his or her group, was described as acting unkindly towards a child in a different group. Gender of protagonists and the bully's group norm (to be kind or unkind to other children) were varied. Identification affected responses to the bullying incident, such that those who identified more highly with each group favoured this group. Moreover, children's group membership predicted the group‐based emotions they reported, together with the associated action tendencies. Implications for understanding the processes underlying bullying behaviour are discussed.     

Screening for feigned psychiatric symptoms in a forensic sample by using the MMPI-2 and the structured inventory of malingered symptomatology

Fifty-five men undergoing pretrial psychological evaluations for competency to stand trial or criminal responsibility in the federal justice system were administered the Structured Interview of Reported Symptoms (SIRS), the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory--2 (MMPI-2), and the Structured Inventory of Malingered Symptomatology (SIMS). On the basis of results from the SIRS, 31 were classified as honest responders and 24 as feigning. Significant differences between the 2 groups were found on all SIMS scales as well as on all tested MMPI-2 fake bad validity scales. The SIMS total score and the MMPI-2 Backpage Infrequency (Fb) scale had relatively high negative predictive power (100% and 92%, respectively). On the basis of this clinically relevant methodology, both tests have potential usefulness as screens for malingering.     

Development of young children's understanding that the recent past is causally bound to the present

The results of 6 studies (involving 304 children) suggested that 4- and 5-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, understand that very recent past events determine the present. In Studies 1-3, 3- and 4-year-old children were introduced to 2 empty hiding locations. With children's backs to these locations, a camera recorded an experimenter secretly hiding a puppet in one of them. Children then viewed the videotape of what had just happened, along with another tape that depicted identical events except with a different child and with the puppet hidden in the other location. Only 4-year-olds were subsequently able to locate the puppet, even though 3-year-olds remembered the contents of the tapes and understood the equivalence between the video events and the real world. In Study 4, similar effects were obtained when a verbal analog of the test was presented to 3-5-year-olds. Studies 5 and 6 showed that when children observed 2 events in which they had just participated, only 5-year-olds understood that the most recent events were relevant.     

The development of emotional responses to music in young children

Children aged 3 to 4 and 7 to 8 years listened to eight tunes which were either in the major or minor mode and either unaccompanied melody or harmonized. For each tune children selected one of two schematic faces chosen to depict happy or sad facial expressions. Children 7 to 8 years old showed a significant major-happy and minor-sad connotation, which was also shown by adults. However 3 to 4 year-olds did not show any such significant association between musical mode and emotional response. Harmonic accompaniment significantly increased the frequency of happy responses. The results support the idea of a learned association between mode and emotional response. We thank the teachers and children of Mauldeth Road County Primary School and Ladybarn Primary School, Manchester, for their cooperation, and we thank Debra Raye and Daniela Milone for help with testing.     

The role of testimony in young children's solution of a gravity-driven invisible displacement task

Previous research has shown that young children make a perseverative, gravity-oriented, error when asked to predict the final location of a ball dropped down an S-shaped opaque tube (Hood, 1995). We asked if providing children with verbal information concerning the role that the tubes play, in determining the ball's trajectory would improve their performance. Experiment 1 showed that performance of 3.5-year-olds improved after hearing testimony about the movement of the ball. Experiment 2 showed that the specific content of the testimony – rather than any accompanying non-verbal cues – helped children improve. These findings suggest that other people's testimony can be a valuable source of information when young children learn about the physical world. Indeed, under some circumstances children seem to benefit more from verbal than visual information. An educational implication is that it may sometimes be ineffective to focus on the impact of first-hand experience while marginalizing the role of verbal information.     

The development of young children's awareness of the word as a unit of spoken language

Young children's awareness of the word as a unit of spoken language was investigated in a series of five experiments that required children aged from 4 to 7 years to segment spoken language strings into words. The results of the first three experiments suggest that young children have considerable success in segmenting spoken language materials, regardless of the grammaticality of the strings, and regardless of the grammatical form class, plurality, or syllabic length of the component words. The basis of such successful segmentation ability was considered further in a fourth experiment, which indicated that children may use stress as a basis of response. A fifth experiment therefore manipulated syllabic stress and morphemic structure to determine what response strategies are employed by children of different ages in segmenting speech. The results suggest that 4- to 5-year-old children respond primarily on the basis of acoustic factors such as stress, whereas somewhat older 5- to 6-year-old children respond on the basis of (unbound) morphemic structure. By age 7, most children have abandoned strategies and now respond on the basis of word concept. Implications of these findings for reading acquisition are briefly indicated.This research was supported by a Tertiary Education Commission, General Development Grant (University of Western Australia), and by an Education Research Grant from the Education Research and Development Committee, Canberra.     

Semantic response consistency and protocol validity in structured personality assessment: the case of the NEO-PI-R

In this study we tested the hypothesis that groups of NEO Personality Inventory-Revised (NEO-PI-R; Costa & McCrae, 1992a) protocols identified as potentially invalid by an inconsistency scale (INC; Schinka, Kinder, & Kremer, 1997) would show reduced reliability and validity according to a series of psychometric tests. Data were obtained from 2 undergraduate student samples, a self-report group (n = 132) who provided NEO-PI-R self-ratings on 2 occasions separated by a 7- to 14-day interval and an informant group (n = 109) who provided ratings of well-known friends or relatives on 2 occasions separated by a 6 month interval. INC scores from the Time 1 protocols were used to divide these samples into low, moderate, and elevated inconsistency groups. In both samples, these 3 groups showed equivalent levels of reliability and validity as measured by: contingency coefficients for the 20 INC item responses across occasions; test-retest intraclass correlations of NEO-PI-R domain scores; convergent correlations with Goldberg's (1992) Bipolar Adjective Scale scores; and discriminant correlations between the 5 NEO-PI-R domain scores. The similarity of results across self-report and informant assessment contexts provides additional evidence that semantic consistency approaches to assessing protocol validity may overestimate the prevalence of random or careless response behavior in standard administration conditions. Several theories are discussed that accommodate the existence of valid inconsistency in structured personality assessment.     

Use of the abikoff classroom observation coding system on a children's inpatient psychiatric unit

The Abikoff systematic observation coding system (Abikoff, Gittelman-Klein, & Klein, 1977) has received considerable attention in the literature for assessing disruptive and off-task classroom behavior. However, its use has been restricted to regular classrooms with clinic outpatients. The present study investigated the reliability and validity of this code when used in a classroom setting with children hospitalized on an inpatient psychiatric unit. Results demonstrated excellent reliability and acceptable concurrent and discriminant validity of the code when used in an inpatient setting, although data were equivocal regarding the ability of the code to discriminate medication status within subjects.We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Nicholas lalongo and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments on a draft of this article.