Children screened for sexual abuse are typically asked about touch, but their understanding of the meaning of touch has received little direct study. We asked 4- to 9-year-old children (N = 122; M = 6.00, SD = 1.49; 43% male) Yes-No questions (“Is the boy/girl touching the girl/boy?”/“Are the...

Children's memories for their conversations are commonly explored in child abuse cases. In two studies, we examined conversational recall in 154 4- to 9-year-old children's reports of an interaction with a stranger, some of whom were complicit in a transgression and were admonished to keep it a...

This study examined whether maltreated children are capable of judging the location and order of significant events with respect to a recurring landmark event. 167 6- to 10-year-old maltreated children were asked whether the current day, their last court visit, and their last change in placement...

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...

Two studies examined 4-7-year-old maltreated children’s “I don’t know” (IDK) responses to wh- questions after receiving various interview instructions. We predicted (H1) children would be less inclined to give IDK responses and more inclined to guess to color/number questions compared to...