Study on “REPEATED QUESTIONS, DECEPTION, AND CHILDREN’S TRUE AND FALSE REPORTS OF BODY TOUCH” Finds Inconsistency Not Related to Veracity
There is a large body of literature on children’s suggestibility and false memory research. However, even though claims are often made of children’s intentional false allegations of sexual abuse, especially in situations such as custody disputes, little research has been done in this particular area. In a recent study published in Child Maltreatment, Vol. 12, Feb. 2007, research by Quas, Davis, Goodman, and Myers looked at children’s intentional false reports of touching. The researchers focused on girls and boys ages 4-7, because much of the previous suggestibility research focused on this age group.
The children were brought to a research facility and spent time playing with an adult confederate. Some were touched on places such as their neck, nose, and stomach. One to three weeks later, each child was paired with an interviewer blind to the previous play sessions. Each child was questioned in a simulated forensic interview with the use of two free recall questions followed by 22 direct questions (9 short answer and 13 yes or no questions). The direct questions also included false touch questions about being touched on their ears and toes, which none of them experienced. In addition, the children were randomly assigned into three groups: 1. children who had not been touched but coached to lie (Lying, 11 children), 2. those who were touched and told to be truthful (Truth Touched, 13 children), and 3. children who had not been touched and also told to be truthful (Truth Not Touched, 11 children).
The results showed a few statistically significant distinctions. First, the children who were lying and the Truth Not Touched children were more accurate in their stories than the Truth Touched children. However, children told to lie were less accurate when answering the false touch questions (ears and toes) compared to both truth telling groups. On an even more interesting note, the children who were lying and the Truth Not Touched groups were also significantly more consistent than the Truth Touched group. To sum it up, the children who were touched and told the truth were the most inconsistent and less accurate in response to actual touch-related questions. The preliminary analysis showed gender was unrelated to performance and age was comparable across the three groups.
The results revealed that repeated questions are not always detrimental to children’s accuracy and do not uniformly lead to false allegations. In addition, the truth tellers who were touched were most inconsistent, leading the researchers to conclude that consistency should not necessarily be taken as an indicator of truthfulness. Essentially, these results challenge the common assumption that consistency, and even accuracy, are useful indicators of veracity in young children’s eyewitness accounts.
This study supports the position that corroborating a child’s report is of the utmost importance in a case. In addition, this research can be used to show that a child victim can still be telling the truth about abuse despite inconsistent statements. For information on improving investigations, widening the definition of corroborating evidence, and working with children in court, please contact us here at NCPCA.
