In this brief review, we reflect upon the key contributions of research examining children's eyewitness testimony. Children's testimonial ability became a focus of interest for researchers about 40 years ago in the wake of several high-profile child abuse cases that prompted questions about children's reliability in the face of problematic…

This study examined the quality of forensic interviews conducted by specially trained police officers in the Norwegian Barnahus between 2015 and 2017, using the sequential interview (SI) model, a Norwegian version of the extended interview model that has not previously been studied. Two hundred and seven interviews of alleged abused preschool…

Children must describe maltreatment coherently for their testimony to be influential in court. We know little about how well children with intellectual disabilities (CWID) describe their experiences relative to typically developing (TD) children, despite CWID's vulnerability to maltreatment. We investigated children's reports of an experienced…

This study examined age differences in 299 preschoolers' responses to investigative interviewers' questions exploring the suspected occurrence of child abuse. Analyses focused on the children's tendencies to respond (a) at all, (b) appropriately to the issue raised by the investigator, and (c) informatively, providing previously undisclosed…

Objective: The study focused on children's nonverbal behavior in investigative interviews exploring suspicions of child abuse. The key aims were to determine whether non-verbal behavior in the pre-substantive phases of the interview predicted whether or not children would disclose the alleged abuse later in the interview and to identify…

The current study explored the expected consequences of disclosure discussed by 204 5- to 13-year-old suspected victims of child sexual abuse during the course of investigative interviews conducted using the NICHD Investigative Interview Protocol. Expected consequences were mentioned in nearly half of all interviews, with older children and those…

Because child abuse victims are often the only available sources of information about their experiences, extensive efforts have been made to understand how to maximize their informativeness. There is now broad international consensus regarding optimal interview practices, and broad awareness that children's informativeness increases when…

Objectives: The study was designed to assess the effectiveness of the flexibly structured NICHD Investigative Interview Protocol for child sexual abuse (CSA) investigative interviews by police officers and mental health workers in Quebec. The NICHD Protocol was designed to operationalize "best practice" guidelines and to help forensic…

Objectives: The study was designed to explore whether the credibility of children's statements regarding their alleged experiences of child sexual abuse could be assessed in a more valid and reliable way when investigative interviews were conducted using the NICHD protocol rather than in an unstructured manner. Methods: Forty-two experienced…

Alleged victims of child abuse are often the only sources of information about the crimes, and this places them in the role of experts when conversing about their experiences. Despite developmental deficiencies in memory, cognition, communication skills, and social style, researchers have shown that children's informativeness in such conversations…

Objective: The goal of the present study was to examine how children disclosed sexual abuse by alleged perpetrators who were not family members. Methodology: Thirty alleged victims of sexual abuse and their parents were interviewed. The children were interviewed using the NICHD Investigative Interview Protocol by six experienced youth…

Fourteen interviewers conducted 51 investigations of child sexual abuse with children (ages 4.5 to 12.9 years). Interviewers used a script including either open-ended questions or direct questions. Both rapport-building scripts took about seven minutes. Children who had received the open-ended training provided twice as many details and words…

Objectives: The present study was designed to explore structural differences between forensic interviews in which children made allegations and those in which children did not make allegations. Methodology: Fifty forensic interviews of 4- to 13-year-old suspected victims of abuse who did not disclose abuse during the interview were compared with…

Compares the responses of 14 child abusers and a matched group of nonabusers to videotapes of crying and smiling infants. Psychophysiological and subjective self-report measures were taken. (SS)

Ninety 4- to 13-year-old alleged victims of sexual abuse were interviewed by police officers using the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) investigative interview protocol, following which they were shown a human figure drawing and asked a series of questions. The drawing and associated questions elicited an average of…