NCJ Number
153632
Journal
Consciousness and Cognition Volume: 3 Dated: (1994) Pages: 408-425
Date Published
1994
Length
18 pages
Annotation
Children participated in two experiments designed to test the efficacy of an intervention designed to increase juvenile witnesses' awareness of task demands, appropriate response options, and probable response consequences.
Abstract
The basic objective of the intervention was to teach children how to resist acquiescing to misleading questions that might be posed in a courtroom. A sample of 100 7-year-old children participated in a staged activity and were assigned to either the intervention or control condition. After 2 weeks, the children's memory for the staged activity was tested in an interview with an unfamiliar authority figure. The results indicated that children who participated in the innovative procedure, which addressed sociolinguistic and socioemotional factors that may promote acquiescence, made significantly fewer errors in response to misleading questions than children in the control groups. These results were attained without generating additional errors on other question types. 2 tables, 4 notes, and 45 references