Background: Forensic interviewers are taught to ask children invitations using the word “time” to refer to a specific episode (e.g., “Tell me about the last time he touched you.”). However, children may interpret the word “time” as requesting conventional temporal information rather...

Adolescents tend to be neglected in research examining child sexual abuse (CSA) interviews yet are often said to be particularly reluctant. This study examined reluctance among 119 10- to 17-year-old females questioned about suspected CSA (n = 25,942 responses), utilizing a scheme identifying...

Forensic interviewers ask children broad input-free recall questions about individual episodes in order to elicit complete narratives, often asking about “the first time,” “the last time,” and “one time.” An overlooked problem is that the word “time” is potentially ambiguous,...

An ongoing challenge for forensic interviewers is to maximize their use of invitations, such as requests that the child “tell me more about” details mentioned by the child. Examining 434 interviews with 4- to 12-year-old children questioned about abuse, this study analyzed (1) faux...

Research has largely overlooked expressions of reluctance in commercially sexually exploited adolescent (“CSEA”) victims. This is problematic because gaining information from known victims is of the utmost importance in order to better serve the needs of current and potential future victims....

A consensus has emerged among forensic interviewers that narrative practice rapport building, introducing the allegation with a “why” question about the reason for the interview, and eliciting allegation details with invitations (broad free recall questions) constitute best practice. These...

Little is known about the relation between law enforcement interviewing behaviors and commercially sexually exploited children’s (CSEC) reluctance. This study examined the relation between officers’ use of maximization, (references to) expertise, minimization, and support and adolescent CSEC...

Forensic interviewers are encouraged to elicit a practice narrative from children in order to train them to answer free recall questions with narrative information. Although asking children about their last birthday has been recommended, concerns have been raised that many children will have...

Forensic interviewers are taught to pair yes-no questions with open-ended requests for recall in order to reduce the likelihood that they will be misled by false “yes” responses. However, yes-no questions may elicit false “no” responses. Questioning 112 6- to 11-year-old maltreated...

We propose that young children exhibit an order of encoding bias, such that they are inclined to report or act out events in the order in which they were originally encoded. This bias helps to explain why children assume that events they first hear described are in chronological order and why...