Purpose: Previous research has established that lie-detection accuracy decreases with age; however, various mechanisms for this effect have yet to be explored, particularly when examining the detection of children’s lies. The present study investigated if younger and older adults detect...

The verbs ask and tell can be used both epistemically, referring to the flow of information, or deontically, referring to obligations through polite requests or commands. Some researchers suggest that children’s understanding of deontic modals emerges earlier than their understanding of...

Children’s ability to adequately describe clothing placement is essential to evaluating their allegations of sexual abuse. Intermediate clothing placement (partially removed clothing) may be difficult for young children to describe, requiring more detailed explanations to indicate the location...

Adults often fail to recognize the ambiguity of children’s unelaborated responses to ‘Do you know/remember (DYK/R) if/whether’ questions. Two studies examined whether sample questions and/or an explicit instruction would improve adults’ ability to recognize referential ambiguity in...

Previous research has examined young and middle-aged adults’ perceptions of child witnesses; however, no research to date has examined how potential older adult jurors may perceive a child witness. The present investigation examined younger (18–30 years, N = 100) and older adults’ (66–89...

“Do you know” and “Do you remember” (DYK/R) questions explicitly ask whether one knows or remembers some information while implicitly asking for that information. This study examined how 104 4- to 9-year-old children testifying in child sexual abuse cases responded to DYK/R wh- and...

This is a critical review of several of the most extensively researched issues regarding children's suggestibility. I discuss the research on suggestive questions, repeated questions, and repeated interviews. For each topic I isolate the factors that make children more or less suggestible, in...

There is a trend among American courts toward admitting defense expert testimony on the suggestibility of children in sexual abuse cases. This paper argues that there are good reasons to limit or exclude such testimony in a large proportion of cases. I emphasize the issue of "fit": review of...

In this study, we examined why and how preschoolers are able to reason about the moral aspects of illness and treatment with a simple interview that was designed to be sensitive to the abilities of this age group. A total of ninety-six 3- and 4-year-olds were asked to make moral judgments about...