School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Arizona State University.
Gould School of Law, and Department of Psychology, University of Southern California.
Law Hum Behav. 2017 Aug;41(4):398-409. doi: 10.1037/lhb0000237. Epub 2017 Feb 2.
Children's descriptions of clothing placement and touching with respect to clothing are central to assessing child sexual abuse allegations. This study examined children's ability to answer the types of questions attorneys and interviewers typically ask about clothing, using the most common spatial terms (on/off, outside/inside, over/under). Ninety-seven 3- to 6-year-olds were asked yes/no (e.g., "Is the shirt on?"), forced-choice (e.g., "Is the shirt on or off?"), open-choice (e.g., "Is the shirt on or off or something else?"), or where questions (e.g., "Where is the shirt?") about clothing using a human figurine, clothing, and stickers. Across question types, children generally did well with simple clothing or sticker placement (e.g., pants completely on), except for yes/no questions about "over," suggesting children had an underinclusive understanding of the word. When clothing or sticker placement was intermediate (e.g., pants around ankles, and therefore neither completely on nor off), children performed poorly except when asked where questions. A similar task using only stickers and boxes, analogous to forensic interviewers' assessments of children's understanding, was only weakly predictive of children's ability to describe clothing. The results suggest that common methods of questioning young children about clothing may lead to substantial misinterpretation. (PsycINFO Database Record
儿童对衣物放置和触摸的描述是评估儿童性虐待指控的核心。本研究通过使用最常见的空间术语（上/下、内/外、上/下），考察了儿童回答律师和访谈者通常就衣物提出的各种问题的能力。97 名 3 至 6 岁的儿童被要求回答是/否（例如，“衬衫在身上吗？”）、强制选择（例如，“衬衫是在身上还是在身上？”）、开放选择（例如，“衬衫在身上还是在身上还是别的什么地方？”）或关于衣物的位置（例如，“衬衫在哪里？”）的问题，使用的是人体模型、衣物和贴纸。在各种问题类型中，儿童通常在简单的衣物或贴纸放置（例如，裤子完全在身上）方面表现良好，除了关于“在……之上”的是/否问题，这表明儿童对这个词的理解是不全面的。当衣物或贴纸的放置是中间的（例如，裤子在脚踝周围，因此既不完全在身上也不完全在身上），儿童表现不佳，除了当被问到位置问题时。一个只使用贴纸和盒子的类似任务，类似于法医访谈者对儿童理解的评估，仅能微弱地预测儿童描述衣物的能力。结果表明，常见的询问儿童有关衣物的问题方法可能会导致严重的误解。
