The role of psychosocial factors in young children's responses to cross‐examination style questioning

The goal of the present study was to ascertain whether individual differences in self‐esteem, self‐confidence, assertiveness and number of siblings could predict young children's responses to cross‐examination style questioning. Five‐ and 6‐year‐old children (N = 137) participated in a unique staged event and were then interviewed with analogues of direct and cross‐examination. Despite highly accurate direct examination reports, children made a large number of changes to these reports during cross‐examination, resulting in a significant decrease in accuracy. Poor cross‐examination performance was associated with low levels of teacher‐rated self‐confidence, self‐esteem and assertiveness, raising concern that the children who are likely to fare poorly during cross‐examination may be the very children who are most likely to appear as witnesses in the courtroom. Furthermore, number of siblings was inversely related to cross‐examination performance. Further research is required to pinpoint the specific mechanism(s) behind this finding. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.