Investigative interviews of child witnesses in Sweden

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the structure and informativeness of interviews with 4- to 13-year-old alleged victims of sexual abuse in Sweden. METHOD: Seventy-two alleged victims of sexual abuse were interviewed by six experienced officers from one police district in Sweden. Our evaluation focused on the structure of the interviews, the distribution and timing of the investigators' utterance types, and the quantity and quality of the information provided by the children. RESULTS: Content analysis revealed that the interviewers relied primarily on option-posing and suggestive questions--together, these comprised 53% of their utterances--when interviewing the alleged victims. As a result, most of the details (57%) obtained from the children were elicited by option-posing and suggestive utterances. Only 6% of the interviewers' utterances were open-ended invitations, and these elicited only 8% of the information obtained. CONCLUSION: The reliance on option-posing and suggestive prompts may have reduced the accuracy of the information obtained, thereby interfering with the investigations, and reducing the forensic admissibility of the children's statements. This suggests a continuing need in Sweden, as in other countries, for interview practices that enhance the quality of information provided by young victims.     

The effect of being a victim or witness of family violence on the retrieval of autobiographical memories.

OBJECTIVE: This study was designed to determine whether greater reliance on general memory retrieval in children was related to depression, and whether family violence affected the specificity of children's memory retrieval. METHOD: We compared children who had experienced some form of family violence with children who had never experienced any form of family violence, based on their responses to questions concerning child-parent and interparental disagreements. RESULTS: As expected, there was a positive correlation between the extent of "generic-categoric" memory retrieval and depression level. There was no evidence, however, that autobiographical memory was affected by family violence. CONCLUSIONS: This study is the first to report significant associations between depression and autobiographical memory style in children. The results suggest that the effect of family violence on children's memory retrieval may be mediated by depression.     

Assessing the value of structured protocols for forensic interviews of alleged child abuse victims

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effectiveness of a structured interview protocol (NICHD Investigative Interview Protocol) operationalizing universally recommended guidelines for forensic interviews. METHOD: The NICHD Investigative Protocol was designed to maximize the amount of information obtained using recall memory probes, which are likely to elicit more accurate information than recognition memory probes. Forensic investigators were trained to use the NICHD protocol while conducting feedback-monitored simulation interviews. The utility of the protocol was then evaluated by comparing 55 protocol interviews with 50 prior interviews by the same investigators, matched with respect to characteristics likely to affect the richness of the children's accounts. The comparison was based on an analysis of the investigators' utterance types, distribution, and timing, as well as quantitative and qualitative characteristics of the information produced. RESULTS: As predicted, protocol interviews contained more open-ended prompts overall as well as before the first option-posing utterance than non-protocol interviews did. More details were obtained using open-ended invitations and fewer were obtained using focused questions in protocol interviews than in non-protocol interviews, although the total number of details elicited did not differ significantly. In both conditions, older children provided more details than younger children did. CONCLUSION: The findings confirmed that implementation of professionally recommended practices affected the behavior of interviewers in both the pre-substantive and substantive phases of their interviews and enhanced the quality (i.e., likely accuracy) of information elicited from alleged victims.     

Young children's references to temporal attributes of allegedly experienced events in the course of forensic interviews

Developmental differences in references to temporal attributes of allegedly experienced events were examined in 250 forensic interviews of 4- to 10-year-old alleged victims of sexual abuse. Children's ages, the specific temporal attributes referenced, and the types of memory tapped by the interviewers' questions significantly affected the quantity and quality of temporal references produced. The findings documented age-related increases in 4- to 10-year-olds' references to temporal attributes, using the appropriate relational terminology, both spontaneously and in response to temporal requests. More references to temporal attributes were elicited from recall than from recognition memory, highlighting spontaneous reporting capabilities. Implications for theories concerning the developing understanding of temporal concepts and for the design of effective, age-appropriate, forensic interview techniques are discussed.