1. Interviewing Children in Legal Contexts
Harlene Hayne, ONZM, PhD, HonDSc, FRSNZ
University of Otago
Dunedin, New Zealand

2. Memory Development Basic Research Clinical Contexts Legal Contexts
Educational Contexts
Relevant to the clinic and to the family and criminal court

3. Questions Matter Amount/Accuracy Trade off
Free Recall (open-ended questions)
Dolls, props, specific questions
Accuracy
Amount
Amount
Encoding---Storage----Retrieval
This situation presents interviewers with a problem
Accuracy

4. Does Anything Help?

5. Tell Target Event Draw and Tell Open-ended questions
Interviews audio- and video-taped
Only verbal information was coded

6. Drawing Has no effect on accuracy Is effective for 3- to 16-year-olds
Helps children to describe educational, entertaining, and emotional events
Effective over delays of 1 year
Facilitates mental health assessment
Trip to the Dunedin Fire Station
3-4 and 5-6 year olds
Interviewed 1 month later
Describe clauses
Advantage here is that we can assess accuracy

7. Not All Drawing is Created Equal
Trip on the Polaris
5- to 7-year-olds
Interviewed 48 hours later
General open-ended questions
Errors included confabulation (mistakes about colour, timing, amount, names –Mary instead of Emily)
Fantastical = we saw mermaids, we saw a hippopotamus, we drank wine, we saw blood, we went to Emily’s house.

8. Memory Encoding Storage Retrieval Three basic memory processes
When we interview people, we

9. Memory Encoding Storage Retrieval
What happens between an event and an interview is also extremely important

10. Pre-Interview Contamination
Target Event
New Information
5- to 7-year-olds
Police station
Event = fingerprints taken, looked in the jail cell
Did not put on handcuffs, see someone report a stolen bicycle
Interviewed 6 weeks later using general, open-ended questions.
Interview

11. Pre-Interview Contamination
Reporting of False events:
Control = none
Adult tell= 40%
Combined with drawing = 80%
Not only reported what they had been told, but elaborated on the false events
Highly resistant to cross-examination
Same findings with 9- and 10-year-olds

12. Earshot Target Event New Information Interview
Family members, teachers, peers
Interview

13. Findings
Children who overhear conversations about an event either from adults or from other children are as likely to report the event during a formal interview as children who actually experienced it;
Children who overhear adults or children talking about a fictitious event spontaneously report the (fictitious) event, even when they are asked free-recall questions;
When specifically probed, children who simply overhear, claim to have actually seen the fictitious event;
Children’s reports of the overheard event are accompanied by a high level of additional false elaboration and detail;

14. Our Assumptions Are Often Wrong
Common sense is often not sensible
Problems with anatomically-detailed dolls, moved to body maps
Fire station dress-up
Touched in 5 locations, interviewed 1 month later

15. Touches Reported 11.3% at least one genital touch
25% reported being touched on the breast
Error rate consistent even with no delay between touch and test
Brown et al. found that 5- to 7-year-olds had difficulty even demonstrating a touch to their elbow and use of the drawing.

16. Conclusions
In general, open-ended questions yield the most accurate accounts from children, but these accounts are sometimes too lean to be forensically (or clinically) useful.
Some ancillary interview techniques increase the amount of information that children report, but they do so at the expense of accuracy.
Drawing in conjunction with open-ended questions can increase amount without decreasing accuracy.

17. Conclusions Drawing is not a magic bullet:
Free drawing leads to high levels of error and confabulation.
Drawing during suggestive questioning increases errors.
Body maps do not facilitate children’s reports of touch; in fact, they increase errors.
If children are exposed to misinformation prior to an interview, that information can change how they remember and report the target event, even in response to open-ended questions.
Misinformation comes in all shapes and sizes.

18. Future Directions
Basic Science
Practice

19. Future Directions
The effect of truncated testimony on jurors’ evaluation of children’s reports
The effect of the Judge’s instructions on jurors’ decision making
New practice is introduced into evidential interviews that are motivated by good intention, but without testing them first.
Education Amendment Act, 1989
Evidence-in-Chief via a pre-recorded interview
Reduces delay
Saves time
Reduces child’s stress
2. Not necessary to show the entire interview

20. PhD Students Masters Students Sarnia Butler Clark Sim Julien Gross
Henry Pharo
Anne Dowden
Thomas Jenkins
Nathan Findlay
Melanie Burton
Rachael Collie
Hannah Walker
Linda Kedzlie
Mikala Graham
Joanne Boniface
Elizabeth Walker
Sarah Mellor
Beatrix Gardiner
Amanda Poole
Melinda Elfield
Philippa Croy
Nicole Brown
Tanya Seggessenmann
Lakin Anderson
Esther Yong
Vahideh Karimirad
Kylie Brownfield
Alice McClintock
Michael Francis
Eilis Gallagher
Nicola Davis
Wulin Tian
Ghazi Metoui
Emilia Barna
Katherine Dorgan
Larnee Flannery
Nicola Perkins
Wei Lao
Bridget McDonald
Georgia Cowan
Sabine Seehagen
Emily Ware
Shelley MacDonald
Henry Pharo
Rachel Barr
Kana Imuta
Sue Bidrose
Alexandra Horne
Julien Gross
Shannon Westgate
Jane Herbert
Ann Cronin
Rachel Sutherland
Weiwei Zhang
Gabrielle Simcock
Jayde Flett
Paula Sowerby
Jerry Hsu
Rachel Zajac
Fatemeh Sajjadi
Nora Dowse
Kirstie Morgan
Tess Patterson
Emma Willcock
Jenny Richmond
Kay McKenzie
Sarah Valentine
Katrina Sugrue
Fiona Wright Jack
Saskia Righarts
Karen Tustin
Emily Crawford

21. Acknowledgements
A special thanks to all of the children and their families who have participated in our research.

22. Thank You!