Children's True and False Disclosures of Transgressions: Balancing Costs and Benefits of a Novel Interviewing Technique

Evidence suggests that maltreated children are often reluctant to disclose abuse. As such, researchers have begun to investigate interviewing techniques specifically aimed at decreasing children's reluctance to disclose. One recently developed technique, the Putative Confession (PC), involves telling children at the outset of an interview that the alleged perpetrator has already told what happened and wants the child to tell the truth. PC has shown promise in decreasing children's reluctance to disclose adults' transgressions. However, it has not been tested in an ecologically valid context in which children have had prior conversations with others about the transgression before an interview occurs. In actual maltreatment cases, children regularly talk to parents or other adults about allegations prior to being interviewed, and these conversations may expose children to misinformation. Thus, it is important to assess the utility of PC under conditions that simulate this context. In the current study, 188 4- to 7-year-old children experienced a play interaction with a confederate in which, for some children, a transgression occurred (some toys broke). Next, children had a conversation with a parent in which the parents were instructed to find out what happened during the play session. Prior to the conversation, some parents were informed that toys may have broken during play (suggestion condition). All parents questioned children for 5 minutes, and parents in the suggestion condition also asked an additional set of scripted, highly suggestive questions that presupposed breakage had occurred. Finally, children participated in an investigative interview in which they received either PC or control instructions. Results revealed that the PC instructions nearly doubled the rate of true disclosures of toy breakage in the investigative interview. True disclosures in the interview were also predicted by prior disclosure during the parent conversations. Children in the suggestion condition were much more likely to disclose true toy breakage to their parent, but only after parents asked the highly suggestive scripted questions. Very few false reports were obtained, either to parents or to interviewers. Findings have implications for best-practice techniques for interviewing alleged child victims as well as for debates about children's suggestibility.