Supportive or Suggestive: Do Human Figure Drawings Help 5- to 7-Year-Old Children to Report Touch?

The authors examined the accuracy of information elicited from seventy-nine 5- to 7-year-old children about a staged event that included physical contact-touching. Four to six weeks later, children's recall for the event was assessed using an interview protocol analogous to those used in forens...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of consulting and clinical psychology Vol. 75; no. 1; pp. 33 - 42
Main Authors Brown, Deirdre A, Pipe, Margaret-Ellen, Lewis, Charlie, Lamb, Michael E, Orbach, Yael
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States American Psychological Association 01.02.2007
Subjects
Child
Child, Preschool
Cognitive Objectives
Elementary School Students
Female
Forensic Psychiatry - methods
Freehand Drawing
Humans
Interviews
Investigations
Male
Matched Groups
Mental Recall
Performance Based Assessment
Projective Techniques
Prompting
Psychological Studies
Recall (Psychology)
Reliability
Suggestion
Surveys and Questionnaires
Tactual Perception
Touch
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Summary:The authors examined the accuracy of information elicited from seventy-nine 5- to 7-year-old children about a staged event that included physical contact-touching. Four to six weeks later, children's recall for the event was assessed using an interview protocol analogous to those used in forensic investigations with children. Following the verbal interview, children were asked about touch when provided with human figure drawings (drawings only), following practice using the human figure drawings (drawings with instruction), or without drawings (verbal questions only). In this touch-inquiry phase of the interview, most children provided new information. Children in the drawings conditions reported more incorrect information than those in the verbal questions condition. Forensically relevant errors were infrequent and were rarely elaborated on. Although asking children to talk about innocuous touch may lead them to report unreliable information, especially when human figure drawings are used as aids, errors are reduced when open-ended prompts are used to elicit further information about reported touches.
ISSN:0022-006X
DOI:10.1037/0022-006X.75.1.33