Leading questions are generally defined as those that raise details not provided by the witness. Leading questions can raise content details (eg, actions, objects, persons) or can refer to the time when details occurred. The latter questions are referred to as temporally leading. Study 1 compared the incidence of content and temporally leading questions in field interviews conducted by police officers when eliciting accounts from children about repeated, or a single episode of, abuse. Study 2 extended the analysis to use standardised mock rather than field interviews, where there was a precise record of what events occurred. In both studies, temporally leading questions were more frequent than content-leading questions, but only in situations in which multiple occurrences of the event were being discussed. The implications of these results are discussed.
BrubacherS. P.EarhartR.RobertsK. P.PowellM. B. (2013). What should we call that time?: Training children with repeated-event experience to use unique details when labelling individual occurrences. Manuscript submitted for publication.
2.
BrubacherS. P.GlisicU.RobertsK. P.PowellM. B. (2011). Children's ability to recall unique aspects of one occurrence of a repeated event. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 25, 351–358.
3.
BrubacherS. P.RobertsK. P.PowellM. B. (2012). Retrieval of episodic versus generic information: Does the order of recall affect the amount and accuracy of details reported by children about repeated events?Developmental Psychology, 48, 111–122.
4.
CederborgA. C.OrbachY.SternbergK. J.LambM. E. (2000). Investigative interviews of child witnesses in Sweden. Child Abuse and Neglect, 24, 1355–1361.
5.
ConnollyD. A.LindsayD. S. (2001). The influence of suggestions on children's reports of a unique experience versus an instance of a repeated experience. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 15, 205–223.
6.
CyrM.DionJ.McDuffP.Trotier-SylvainK. (2012). Transfer of skills in the context of non-suggestive investigative interviews: Impact of structured interview protocol and feedback. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 26, 516–524.
7.
DaviesG. M.WestcottH. L.HoranN. (2000). The impact of questioning style on the content of investigative interviews with suspected child sexual abuse victims. Psychology, Crime and Law, 6, 81–97.
8.
Drohan-JenningsD. M.RobertsK. P.PowellM. B. (2010). Mental context reinstatement increases resistance to misleading suggestions. Psychiatry, Psychology & Law, 17, 594–606.
9.
FriedmanW. J. (1991). The development of children's memory for the time of past events. Child Development, 62, 139–155.
10.
GuadagnoB. L.PowellM. B. (2009). A qualitative examination of police officers' questioning of children about repeated events. Police Practice and Research: An International Journal, 10, 61–73.
11.
HoyanoL.KeenanC. (2007), Child abuse: Law and policy across boundaries. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
12.
HudsonJ. A. (1990). Constructive processing in children's event memory. Developmental Psychology, 26, 180–187.
13.
Hughes-ScholesC. H.PowellM. B. (2008). An examination of the types of leading questions used by investigative interviewers of children. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management, 31, 210–223.
14.
KorkmanJ.SanttilaP.WesteråkerM.SandnabbaN. K. (2008). Interviewing techniques and follow-up questions in child sexual abuse interviews. European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 5, 108–128.
15.
OrbachY.HershkowitzI.LambM. E.SternbergK. J.EsplinP. W.HorowitzD. (2000). Assessing the value of structured protocols for forensic interviews of alleged child abuse victims. Child Abuse & Neglect, 24, 733–752.
16.
OrbachY.LambM. E. (2007). Young children's references to temporal attributes of allegedly experienced events in the course of forensic interviews. Child Development, 78, 1100–1120.
17.
PowellM. B. (2008). Guide to designing effective training programs in the area of investigative interviewing of children. Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 20, 189–208.
18.
PowellM. B.RobertsK. P.CeciS. J.HembrookeH. (1999). The effects of repeated experience on children's suggestibility. Developmental Psychology, 35, 1462–1477.
19.
PowellM. B.SnowP. C. (2007). Guide to questioning children during the free-narrative phase of an investigative interview. Australian Psychologist, 42, 57–65.
20.
PowellM. B.ThomsonD. M. (1996). Children's memory of an occurrence of a repeated event: Effects of age, repetition, and retention interval across three question types. Child Development, 67, 1988–2004.
21.
PowellM. B.ThomsonD. M. (1997). Contrasting memory for temporal-source and memory for content in children's discrimination of repeated events. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 11, 339–360.
22.
PowellM. B.ThomsonD. M. (2003). Improving children's recall of an occurrence of a repeated event: Is it a matter of helping them to generate options?Law and Human Behavior, 27, 365–384.
23.
S v R (1989). 168 CLR 266.
24.
SharmanS. J.PowellM. B. (2012). A comparison of adult witnesses' suggestibility across various types of leading questions. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 26, 48–53.
25.
SternbergK. J.LambM. E.HershkowitzI.EsplinP. W.RedlichA.SunshineN. (1996). The relation between investigative utterance types and the informativeness of child witnesses. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 17, 439–451.
26.
WarrenA. R.WoodallC. E.ThomasM.NunnoM.KeeneyJ. M.LarsonS. M.StadfeldJ. A. (1999). Assessing the effectiveness of a training program for interviewing child witnesses. Applied Developmental Science, 3, 128–135.
