Enhancing children's narratives in investigative interviews

OBJECTIVE: To illustrate the amount of detail that can be elicited from alleged abuse victims using open-ended prompts by closely examining forensic interviews of a 5-year-old and a 15-year-old. METHOD: Interview prompts in the substantive sections of two forensic interviews were characterized as invitations, cued invitations. directive or option-posing, and the number of details they each elicited was tabulated. RESULTS: In both interviews, open-ended prompts predominated and were distributed throughout the substantive phases of the interviews. Most of the information obtained was elicited using open-ended prompts, which remained equivalently effective throughout the interviews. Reconstruction of the children's accounts illustrated how successive prompts continued to elicit information. CONCLUSION: Well-framed open-ended prompts, including those that use details provided by the child as cues, elicit narrative accounts from children of all ages. Because such information is more likely to be accurate, investigators are urged to rely more extensively on open-ended prompts.     

Comfort drawing during investigative interviews: Evidence of the safety of a popular practice

Objective

This study evaluated the impact of comfort drawing (allowing children to draw during interviews) on the quality of children's eyewitness reports.

Methods

Children (N = 219, 5 to 12 years) who had participated in an earlier memory study returned 1 or 2 years later, experienced a new event, and described these events during phased, investigative-style interviews. Interviewers delivered the same prompts to children in the no drawing and drawing conditions but provided paper and markers in the drawing condition, invited these children to draw, and periodically asked if they would like to make another picture.

Results

Most children in the drawing condition were interested in using the materials, and measures of eyewitness performance were sensitive to differences in cognitive ability (i.e., age) and task difficulty (i.e., delay between the remote event and interview). Comfort drawing had no overall impact as evidenced by nonsignificant main effects of condition across 20 performance measures, although more of the younger children reported experienced touching in the drawing than no drawing condition.

Conclusions

The children successfully divided attention between voluntary drawing and conversations about past events. Importantly, comfort drawing did not impair the amount of information recalled, the accuracy of children's answers, or even the extent to which interviewers needed to prompt for answers. Due to the large number of analyses, the benefit of drawing for younger, touched children requires replication.

Practice Implications

Comfort drawing poses no documented risks for typically-developing school-aged children, but the practice remains untested for younger children and those with cognitive impairments.     

Parents’ and teachers’ beliefs about children’s school readiness in a high-need community

This study compared the beliefs of preschool teachers, kindergarten teachers, and parents in one mostly Hispanic and Black high-need urban school district to learn their views of what children should know and be able to do at kindergarten entry. Beliefs regarding the importance of 12 school readiness “resources” were assessed with the CARES survey designed for this study. Parents held remarkably similar beliefs, regardless of ethnicity or education. Parents and teachers also agreed that children must be healthy and socially competent, and be able to comply with teacher authority, although parents rated this latter resource higher. However, parents rated all classroom-related readiness resources as more important than teachers did. They believed it was necessary for a child to be able to communicate in English and to have basic knowledge and skills, which was more important than a child’s approach to learning. Preschool teachers also believed that knowledge was more important than kindergarten teachers did. Directions for further research and implications for policy and practice are discussed.     

Representations of sibling relationships in young children’s literature

Children’s conceptions of what sibling relationships can be like may be influenced, in part, by the literature they read. This study examined the degree to which positive and negative dimensions of sibling relationships were portrayed in a sample of children’s books (n = 261). We also investigated how mothers and fathers were depicted when responding to sibling conflict. Results indicated that although children’s books often represent warmth and involvement between siblings, they rarely described children engaging in conflict management or relational maintenance activities. Parents were predominantly portrayed as responding to children’s conflict using controlling methods rather than techniques that might foster negotiation and problem solving. Characters who were middle children are under-represented in children’s literature. Results are discussed in terms of how educators can select, use, and adapt books in their efforts to help strengthen children’s sibling relationships.     

Impact of online support for teachers’ open-ended questioning in pre-k science activities

We examined the effects of teacher supports in enhancing teachers’ open-ended questioning in pre-k activities. The blended teacher supports included online video demonstrations of questioning techniques and companion workshop activities. Twenty-five teachers received the blended supports while the control group did not. The data consisted of classroom video observations, teacher surveys, and teachers’ access time to teacher supports. Our quantitative analyses revealed that the treatment group teachers used more open-ended questions than the control group teachers. The students in the treatment group used a greater number of different words and complex sentences than those in the control group.     

Seeing with the camera: analysing children’s photographs of literacy in the home

This article examines the issues raised by photographs children took of reading in the home as part of a funded research project exploring the gendering of reading in the 7–9 age group. The main focus is on the dilemmas the images pose for analysis, and what the images, considered in themselves, can be taken as evidence for. This discussion is linked to current concerns about the nature of the support that homes could and should offer to the process of learning to read.     

The impact of a prejudice-prevention television program on young children’s ideas about race

Two studies investigated whether children’s television programs that were produced to decrease racial prejudice had the intended positive effect on young children. Study 1 measured 60 White 5- and 6-year-old children’s attitudes toward Asian, Black, and White stimuli prior to, and immediately following, a brief, one-time anti-prejudice television program. No significant change was observed. Study 2 assessed the attitudes of 30 White 3–6-year-old children toward Asian, Black, Hispanic, and White stimuli at the beginning and end of a 3-week intervention period. During the intervention period children watched a pro-diversity television program four times. Plot and anti-prejudice message comprehension was assessed at three time-points during the testing period. Participants improved on plot and message comprehension over time, but no change in ideas about race was evidenced (children indicated a strong pro-White bias at both pre- and post-test). Possible reasons for, and implications of, this lack of change are discussed.     

Predicting children’s academic achievement from early assessment scores: a validity generalization study

Although there have been numerous studies investigating the predictive validity of early assessment, observed predictive validity coefficients across studies are not stable. A validity generalization study was conducted in order to answer the question of whether the relationship between early assessment of children and later achievement is generalizable or situation-specific. This study examined 716 predictive correlation coefficients from 44 studies using Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM). The findings of this study revealed that predictive validity of early assessment is not generalizable. Additional analyses indicated that predictive validity differ across assessments as a function of test type, specific construct being assessed, length of prediction, and administration procedures. The most impressive finding in this study was the variability of effect sizes across different test administration types. In particular, tests that were scored through ratings were found to be most effective. These findings suggest that instead of addressing a broad predictive validity between a test and a criterion measure, it is necessary to understand early assessment procedures as a whole system by including considerations of various variables related to testing conditions.     

Typography in children’s reading schemes may be suboptimal: Evidence from measures of reading rate

We investigated whether the layout of type in two popular children’s reading schemes was suitable for the intended reading age. 120 children read four passages of text that adopted the typography of four reading stages in each of the two schemes. The size and spacing of the texts decreased with successive stages as the intended reading age increased. The reading speed of children aged 5 to 7 years decreased as the text size decreased: in particular, these children read fastest the text designed for 5 and 6 year olds. Older children aged 8 to 11 years were neither assisted nor disadvantaged by text size. Children of all ages, particularly those susceptible to visual stress, were found to make more errors on the smaller than on the larger text. We conclude that the reading development of some children might benefit from a larger text size and spacing than is currently the norm, and that no children would be disadvantaged by such a change.     

Spanish-speaking children’s spelling errors with English vowel sounds that are represented by different graphemes in English and Spanish words

Vowels in Spanish have direct one-to-one letter-sound correspondences, whereas vowels in English usually have multiple spellings. For native Spanish-speaking children learning to spell in English, this transition from a shallow to a deep orthography could potentially cause difficulties. We examined whether the spelling of English vowel sounds was particularly difficult for native Spanish-speaking children, and whether the errors are consistent with Spanish orthographic rules. Twenty-six native Spanish-speaking and 53 native English-speaking children in grades 2 and 3 were given real-word and pseudoword spelling tasks in English that included words containing four vowels that have different spellings between Spanish and English. Results supported our hypothesis—native Spanish-speaking children committed significantly more vowel spelling errors that were consistent with Spanish orthography. The number of vowel spelling errors not consistent with Spanish orthography did not differ between the two language groups. These findings suggest that orthographic properties of the children’s native language influence their learning to spell in a second language. Educational implications address how knowledge of this cross language influence can aide teachers in improving spelling instruction.     

A social learning explanation for age-related changes in children's conceptual behavior

A social learning explanation for children's conceptual development is proposed. Recent training research on conservation is discussed, and it is concluded that it fails to support three key assumptions underlying Piaget's theory (a) Children are able to learn to conserve without being “in transition,” (b) nonconservation experiences are successful in promoting developmentally immature cognitive functioning, and (c) there is evidence of inconsistencies in children's cognitive functioning across tasks assessing the same cognitive stage. Two aspects of children's conservation responding are explained according to a social learning position: decalages and the shift from perceptual cues to quantitative cues. This explanation involves consideration of cognitive factors such as prior rule learning as well as impinging social experience.     

The role of stimulus salience in young children's ability to discriminate two-dimensional rotations: Reflections on a paradigm

Children's ability to discriminate reflections and rotations of visual stimuli was examined within the confines of a mental rotation task. It was hypothesized that success would be affected by both characteristics of the stimulus and by the subtlety of the discrimination required. Forty 3- to 4-year-old children were directed to mentally rotate a stimulus a given number of degrees and to discriminate the appearance of the rotated stimulus from among a set of alternatives. Four stimuli differing in the number of visual orientation cues were utilized across 24 trials. A significant effect was found for number of orientation cues, and data indicated the difficulty children experienced detecting reflections, a task which bears close resemblance to the yes/no option in prototypic rotation studies. Children were only successful with a limited range of stimuli when discrimination of a reflected foil was not required. Results are discussed in light of discrepant findings about children's kinetic imagery ability and the advisability of using this particular paradigm with young Children.     

A small-scale randomized efficacy trial of Carescapes: Enhancing children’s social development in child care homes

The quality of the child care environment and caregiver practices can potentially have significant, lasting impact on children’s social development. This study involves the development and a small-scale efficacy trial of the Carescapes program, a video-based training program that focuses on promoting positive social development in young children attending family child care. Fifty-seven caregivers who provided child care in their homes were randomly assigned to immediate intervention or waitlist control groups. Random coefficients analyses showed significant increased use of effective behavior management practices and decreased overall children’s problem behavior for the intervention group. A mediation model demonstrated that increases in effective behavior management practices were associated with decreases in problem behavior. A medium intervention effect was found for caregiver’s monitoring and a small effect for use of positive attention. These effects declined 5 months following the intervention. Implications for future efficacy and effectiveness studies in family child care settings that involve strategies to facilitate maintenance are discussed.     

‘Building brighter futures for all our children’– a new focus on families as partners and change agents in the care and development of children with disabilities or special educational needs

This paper looks at recent trends in Government policy and practice around supporting and involving parents of children with disabilities and special educational needs (SEN) in their care, development and education. In particular, the paper examines the opportunities offered in the Children's Plan ( DCSF, 2007 ) and Aiming High ( HM Treasury/DfES, 2007 ), and the strong emphasis on earlier intervention and a range of new services to facilitate better partnership with parents (including those from socially disadvantaged backgrounds). Note: In using the term ‘disabled children’, the author is using the broad definition of disability within the Disability Discrimination Acts (DDA) 1995 and 2005. The DDA definition includes the majority of children with identified and significant levels of SEN.