Adults’ Ability to Detect the Pseudotemporal Problem when Children Give “I Don’t Know” Responses

Abstract

Past research has identified a source of miscommunication known as the “pseudotemporal” problem, whereby children mistakenly interpret invitations including the word ‘time’ (e.g., “tell me about the last time”) as requests for temporal information (Friend et al., 2022; McWilliams et al., 2023; Wylie et al., 2024). Miscommunication may be particularly difficult to detect if children respond to the invitations with unelaborated “I don’t know” (IDK) responses. The present study examined 352 adult participants’ ability to detect the pseudotemporal problem across 12 invitation/response pairs embedded within a mock forensic interview. Results revealed that the most common interpretation of invitations including the word ‘time’ was that it was a question about “what happened.” Additionally, participants rarely identified the pseudotemporal problem, especially in cases where the child’s IDK response was unelaborated. Lastly, their ability to detect the pseudotemporal problem was significantly related to their reasoning for why children provided IDK responses.

Keywords

child witnesses forensic interviews maltreatment interviewing children

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