Questions to Children about Time May Skew Forensic Interviews

A recent study indicates that asking children to talk about “the first time” or “the last time” that something happened may confuse them. According to the study, children ages 6-9 tend to think that questions about the first/last/most recent “time” makes them think that adults are asking about the specific date or time rather than other details about the event.

The researchers noted that using the word “time” when questioning children may lead to inaccurate information. Children who are unable to give a specific date or time may answer “I don‘t know,” leading the interviewers to think that the children don’t know general details. They described a court transcript in which an attorney asked a child, “Do you recall a time that you went to the hospital?“ The child answered, “No,” and then added “my daddy took me there.” Obviously, the child did remember the incident, but the word “time” in the question confused him.

In this study, researchers interviewed 191 children ages 6-9 who were in the care of protective services because of substantiated abuse. The questions concerned benign activities, such as going to the park or class trips. The researchers found two very interesting patterns. First, children who were asked “tell me about the time” that something happened were much more likely to try to give specific temporal information (i.e., dates and times) than children asked “tell me what happened the first/last time” behavior occurred. The latter type of question elicited more details from children than the first format.

Second, the interviewers measured the effect of starting with questions about specific times, such as “when do you brush your teeth” or “when do you put on your pajamas?” Children who heard these questions first were more likely to respond to even the “tell me what happened” questions with attempts at specific dates and times than the children who heard them at the end of the interview. The questions about specific times seemed to serve a priming function and train the children to focus on timing issues.

This is a small study and it’s too soon to draw any definitive conclusions. It is intriguing, however, and offers some guidance that anyone interviewing children should keep in mind. If we want general details, we should ask more questions about “tell me what happened.” If, on the other hand, we need details about specific dates and times, we should consider priming questions that get children thinking about such responses.