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41 Law & Hum. Behav. 1 (2017)

handle is hein.journals/lwhmbv41 and id is 1 raw text is: Law and Human Behavior 2017. Vol. 41. No. 1. 1-12 © 2016 American Psychological Association 0147-7307/17/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000208 The Influence of Disclosure History and Body Diagrams on Children's Reports of Inappropriate Touching: Evidence From a New Analog Paradigm Jason J. Dickinson Montclair State University Debra Ann Poole Central Michigan University We tested a new paradigm for child eyewitness research that incorporates children's disclosure histories into analog study designs. Mr. Science Germ Detective creates meaningful touching experiences and varied patterns of preinterview disclosures by convincing children that touching in the laboratory is potentially contaminating (germy). Children (N = 287, 4 to 8 years) heard that Mr. Science could no longer touch children's skin and then participated in an educational program involving 2 attempted touches. A week later, their disclosure histories were determined by a phone call that occurred a day before a forensic-style interview in the laboratory. This interview was delivered in 1 of 2 conditions: with early open-ended and more focused prompts delivered without a diagram (conventional-first condition) or with an initial diagram-assisted phase (diagram-first condition). Results confirmed that the new paradigm produces salient touches and performance patterns across open-ended and more focused questions that mirror well-known findings in eyewitness studies. A diagram made it easier for research assistants to elicit detailed reports of touching, but only among children 5 years and older who had not previously disclosed. Accuracy rates were comparable across interview conditions for early substantive phases but declined among older children when interviewers used diagrams to elicit additional reports late in interviews. These findings demonstrate that disclosure history is an important variable to include in analog study designs and confirm that Germ Detective is a promising paradigm for initial tests of new interviewing strategies. Keywords: analog research, children, eyewitness research, body diagrams The mainstay of child eyewitness research is the analog study, a type of study in which researchers ask children about docu- mented (often staged) events. Analog studies have identified nu- merous interviewing practices that improve children's testimony, including a supportive (but not suggestive) demeanor, verbal en- couragement to continue talking, narrative practice, ground rules instruction, and the use of open-ended prompts (for reviews, see Lamb, La Rooy, Malloy, & Katz, 2011; Poole, Brubacher, & Dickinson, 2015). The international effort to incorporate findings from these studies into protocols for investigating abuse allega- tions represents a broader social movement for evidence-based practice in medicine, mental health, education, and business. Yet despite the widespread influence of analog research, critics have long argued that results from these studies have little rele- vance for the type of case that motivated this research: sexual This article was published Online First July 21, 2016. Jason J. Dickinson, Robert D. McCormick Center For Child Advocacy and Policy, Montclair State University; Debra Ann Poole, Department of Psychology, Central Michigan University. This research was supported by Grants SES-1121890 (Jason J. Dickin- son) and SES-1121873 (Debra Ann Poole) from the National Science Foundation. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jason J. Dickinson, 301 Dickson Hall, Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ 07043. E-mail: dickinsonj@mail.montclair.edu abuse investigations. The majority of complaints center around two issues. First, analog paradigms mimic the dynamics of day care cases in which investigators interviewed numerous children who had not previously reported abuse (Wood, Nathan, Nezwor- ski, & Uhl, 2009). In contrast, sexual abuse investigations include a sizable percentage of children who have already disclosed (Lamb, Hershkowitz, Orbach, & Esplin, 2008), and this group may be less suggestible in the face of questions about unfounded allegations. If this is true, then interviewing techniques that prompt an alarming number of false reports in laboratory studies may not have similar effects in the field, where many children are not reporting events for the first time. The second criticism is the most frequently vented: because the innocuous touches in analog studies are not emotionally salient or memorable, results from these stud- ies cannot inform us about the pros and cons of the interview methods tested (Lyon, 2012; Maples, 2012). To ameliorate these concerns, an analog paradigm would need to produce a variety of disclosure histories for inappro- priate, memorable touching. Here we report preliminary find- ings from a candidate paradigm that accomplishes these goals: Mr. Science Germ Detective (hereafter just Germ Detective). After explaining the conceptual bases for the paradigm, we describe a study that documented children's reactions to the paradigm, explored whether performance differences across conventional and diagram-assisted questioning were compara- ble for children who had and had not previously disclosed, and

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