Can Children Learn How to Resist Repeated Leading Questions and Social Pressures?

Abstract

In forensic contexts, children who are victims or witnesses of crimes are repeatedly questioned using stressful leading questions and social pressure. The main aims of the present study are to verify the effects of repeated suggestive interviews on children’s level of suggestibility and resistant responses and to study how age and intelligence quotient may reduce the vulnerability of children. The study involved 110 children aged 10–15 years who were administered the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale 2, and 6 months later, the parallel form GSS1. Older children showed a significant reduction in levels of yielding leading questions in the second administration, while the levels of a shift in answers related to negative criticism remained unchanged. In older children, the age and intelligence quotients may reduce the effect of leading questions and improve resistant responses. The results showed that younger children maintain a stable suggestive vulnerability and constant use of the same strategies to cope with cognitive and social risk factors of interrogative suggestibility, while older children could reduce their levels of yield and use more resistant responses that defer to greater source monitoring and less adherence to external expectations. Children, when exposed to repeated suggestive interviews, may learn to cope with more cognitive aspects of misleading questions while being less able to handle social–emotional pressures. In forensic practice, these results may indicate how children, depending on their age, manage the factors of suggestibility during a testimony hearing and which resistance capacities they can actually use.

Keywords

• suggestibility
• misleading information
• criticism
• resistant behavioural responses