Work

Human figure drawings and children’s recall of touching.

Year: 2009

Type: article

Abstract: In 2 studies, children ages 3 to 7 years were asked to recall a series of touches that occurred during a previous staged event. The recall interview took place 1 week after the event in Study 1 and immediately after the event in Study 2. Each recall interview had 2 sections: In 1 section, children were given human figure drawings (HFDs) and were asked to show where the touching took place; in the other section, the same questions were asked without the HFDs (verbal condition). Children were randomly assigned to 2 different conditions: HFD 1st/verbal 2nd or verbal 1st/HFD 2nd. There were 2 major findings. First, HFDs elicited more errors than the verbal condition when used to probe for information that the child had already been asked. Second, regardless of interview method, children had poor recall of the touches even when these occurred minutes before the interview. It is suggested that cognitive mechanisms involving memory and semantics underlie children's poor recall of touching in both verbal and HFD conditions.

Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology Applied

DOI: 10.1037/a0017120

Author: Maggie Bruck

Institution: Johns Hopkins University

Language: English

Topic: Deception detection and forensic psychology

Subfield: Social Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funders: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

Awards: G3820975226, Do Human Line Drawings Promote Children's Accurate Reporting of Touching?, G8624881684