Abstract
There have been numerous suggestibility studies in recent years which have demonstrated that reports of children and adults about a real event can be suggestivly influenced to such an extent that the statements are no longer reliable. It also has been shown that it is possible to evoke false memories about entire events that never occurred. Other relevant forensic issues - especially when judging statements of child witnesses about sexual abuse - are how statements develop over a course of various interviews, if there are quality differences between true and suggested accounts und to what extent experts of statement psychology are able to distinguish reliably between true and suggested statements.
To answer these issues a study was designed taking into account relevant forensic factors. Sixty-seven children (aged between six and eight years) were interviewed individually six times about one real and one fictitious event. The events, individually selected for each child, were negative participant activities, wich involved the own body of the children and contained a loss of control (such as being bitten by an animal, falling off of a bicycle, cutting oneself etc.). The first four interviews served to evoke coherent statements about the fictitious event, applying various suggestive techniques. The fifth interview was conducted by different interviewers who did not know which of the events were true and which were fictitious. They questioned the children about both events in a non-suggestive manner. The sixth interview, conducted by a new informed interviewer, served to partially debrief the children, and to find out to what extent false memories had been created. Five blind experts were asked to jugde the quality and the credibility of the reports on the basis of different amounts of information (personal impression by interviewing the child, videotape of the interview, transcripts of the interview).
Results show that over the course of the interviews there was a considerable increase of assents to the fictitious events. Moreover, the quality of suggested reports had increased substantially, so hardly any quality differences between true and suggested statements could be demonstrated in the fifth interview. Accordingly, experts had difficulties in discriminating between true and suggested reports, especially in identifying suggested statements. This was especially the case when they only used transcripts of the interviews. Furthermore, several children apparently were convinced of the truth of their reports and had developed false memories of the fictitious event.
Results are discussed with regard to relevance to the practice of statement psychology and credibility assessment. |
