CHECKLIST FOR INTERVIEW/QUESTIONING CHILDREN

1. Framing the Event
1. Did I tell the child my name and what my job is - in non-technical words?
2. Did I help the child become familiar with the surroundings of the interview?
3. Did I tell the child the purpose of our talk, and why it is important, and what will happen afterward?
4. Did I give the child a chance to ask me questions about this talk? Did I try to establish a common vocabulary for the things we talk about? Was I listening to the kind of words and sentences that the child used?
2. Using Clear Language
5. Did I use easy words instead of hard ones? (Do I know what a "hard" word is?)
6. Did I avoid legal words and phrases?
7. Did I use words that mean one thing in everyday life, but another thing in law (like "court"?)
8. Did I assume that because a child uses a word, he or she understands the concept it represents?
9. Was I as redundant as possible? That is, did I use specific names and places Instead of pronouns (like "he" and "we") and vague referents (like "it", "that", and "there")?
3. Asking the Questions
10. Did I keep my questions and sentences simple? Did I try for one main (new) Thought per utterance?
11. Did I avoid asking "DUR-X" questions? [Questions that begin, "Do you Remember", followed by one or more full propositions. Ex. With propositions Underlined: Do you remember telling me that somebody hurt you?]
12. When I shifted topics, and when I moved from the present to the past or vice Versa, did I alert the child that I was going to do so?
13. Did I give the child the necessary help in organizing his or her story?
14. Did I avoid asking the child about abstract concepts, like, "What is the difference between truth and lies?" Did I choose instead to give the child everyday, concrete examples and let him or her demonstrate, rather than articulate knowledge or truth and lies, right and wrong?
15. Did I use as few negatives as possible in the questions I asked?
4. Listening to the Answers
16. Were the child's RESPONSES to my questions, ANSWERS to my questions? Am I sure?
17. If the child's answers were inconsistent, did I ask myself if:
1. I, or someone else, had asked the same question repeatedly?
2. I had changed the wording of a question I had asked before?
3. I was forgetting that children can be very literal in their interpretation of language?
4. The child's processing of language might not be as mature as mine?
5. Global Checks
18. Did I stay in the child's world by framing my questions in terms of the child's experience?
19. Did I take the child's understanding of language for granted?
20. Was I listening to my OWN language, my OWN questions:
21. Did I ask myself before I began: Am I gathering information, or doing therapy?

In general:

By the age of 3, most children of normal development can string words together in generally correct order, and can use language in a conversationally appropriate way. Their vocabulary can range from about 500 to 3,000 words. They can identify over five parts of their own bodies.

By age 5-6, the basic language structures of most children are well established, although far from fully mature. They can define SOME simple words. They can accurately name 3-4 colors. With a receptive vocabulary generally estimated at around 14,000 words, their language sounds on the surface much like an adult's.

This misleading surface similarity of language does not mean, however, that these children have achieved mastery of their language. Later acquisitions include (but are not limited to) the ability to handle 1) complex sentences containing relative (e.g., who, which, that) or adverbial (e.g., when, before, after, while) clauses; 2) some critical verb structures like many passives; 3) complex negation, and 4) complex structural distinctions such as those between ask and tell, know and think, easy to (see/please/etc) and eager to (see, etc) and some syntactic aspects of the verb "promise" - that is, the way we use the word (not the concept of) "promise" in a sentence.

Nor does the apparent similarity mean that children this age have mastered all those concepts expressed in language, such as age, time, speed, size duration and number: (How old is she? When did it happen?, How fast was the car going?, How big was the knife?, How long did it last? How many times did it happen?) They do not fully understand the family relationships expressed by kinship terms such as parents, aunt, grandfather, cousin. While recent empirical research with abused children indicates an understanding of the concepts of truth/lie by at least age 5, the ability to express or define that knowledge (What is truth?) develops much later.

By age 10-11, most children of normal development have acquired the ability to use most of these relational words in an adult fashion.

What follows is a list of a few features of language that children acquire from about the age of 2 to 10. Keep in mind that all of these data are for native speakers of English, Children (and adults too) who have English as a second language may lag far behind the acquisition ranges given here, so special care must be taken in talking with, and listening to them. There is one other caveat to add; not all studies of children's acquisition are comparable. Some follow only a few children over a long period of time, others observe larger groups of children in shorter bursts of time. Most studies to date are of white, middle-class children. The result is that scholars often disagree as to actual acquisition ages. There is, however, a middle ground, and that is what is represented on the next two pages.

Specific lexical skills:

Feature	Age*
Adjectives
Comparatives (e.g., more, bigger, but not deeper, wider, earlier, later)	4 - 5
Superlatives (e.g., most, biggest)	3 - 6
Ability to make complex comparisons in response to Q's (e.g., Which box is taller than it is fat?)	6 - 8
Articles
Full mastery of contrast between 'the' and 'a'	about 8
Adverbs
Reliable distinction between 'before'/'after' (which are also prepositions/conjunctions)	7 +
'Frontwards','sidewards', 'backwards'	about 7
Prepositions
In, on (generally the first two acquired)	1-1/2 to 2-1/2
Off, out (of), away (from)	2 to 3
Toward, up	3 to 2-1/2
In front of, next to, around	3-1/2 to 4
Beside	4 to 4-1/2
Down	4-/12 to 5
Ahead of, behind	4-/12 to 5-1/2
Pronouns
Possessives: My, your, mine, his	by age 3-1/2
Possessives: Their, her(s), his, it, our(s)	3 -5
Deictic ("Pointing") pronouns "this" v. "that" (when no fixed referent is available)	7 +
Reliable matching of a pronoun to a following noun (e.g., he…John)	about 10
Verb contrast between come-go; bring-take (come/bring acquired first)	6 - 8 +
between tell-ask	7 - 8
WH questions (WHat, WHere, WHo, WHy, How, When)
Appear in child's speech (in approximately above order)	from 2-1/2 to 4-1/2
Appropriate grammatical response to WH Q's acquired	by age 5-1/2
Appropriate cognitive response to WHY, How, When	by about age 10
Syntactic Skills:
Passives:
with action verbs (e.g., hit, punch: Were you hit)	5 +
with all verbs, including non-action (e.g., Were you liked by)	7 - 13 +
(earliest form of passive is the agentless "Get" passives (e.g., I got hit)
"Tag" questions (e.g., Xxx, isn't it? Tag underlined), produced at about age	4 +
Combined with negatives in the assertion, (e.g., That's not what she said; isn't that So?/ is that not so?) is confusing on into adulthood.
Conversational skills:
Turn-taking: from first use to mastery	before age 2 to 6+
Asking contingent questions	by age 3
(Contingent questions relate to the immediately prior utterance; e.g., questions which indicate that something just said is not fully understood, such as "What did you say?")
Ability to report the basic elements of typical events (such as what happens at a birthday party)	3
Ability to describe, narrate, and inform in adult-satisfactory way	May still be developing In Jr and Sr High School years

*The ages given here represent approximations only of the time when each feature is fully and reliably acquired - meaning that the child can both comprehend and produce the feature accurately. Children reach different stages, of course, at individual times that can vary widely. Some research indicates that acquisition of these features is also apparently retarded by as much as 12-18 months if child has been abused.

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Brown, Rr. 1973. A first language: The early stages. Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press.

Clark, E.V. 1998-9. Personal communications. Clark, E.V. & O.K. Garnica. 1974. Is he coming or going? On the acquisition of deictic verbs. Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior, 13:559-572.

Clark, H.H. & E.V. Clark, 1977. Psychology and Language. NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

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Horgan, D. 1978. The development of the full passive. Journal of Child Language, 5:65-80.

Leonard, L.B. 1984. Normal language acquisition: Some recent findings and clinical implications. In Holland, A. (Ed.), Language Disorders in Children: Recent Advances, PP.1-36. San Diego: College-Hill Press.

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Lyon, T.D. & K.J. Saywitz. To appear in 1999. Young maltreated children's competence to take the oath:Applied Developmental Science.

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Reich, P.A. 1986. Language development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Romaine, S. 1984. The language of children and adolescents. NY: Basil Blackwell.

Taylor, M.G. & P.B. Purfall. 1987. A developmental analysis of directional terms frontwards, backwards, and sidewards. Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Baltimore, MD.

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General precepts:

1. Reduce the processing load that children must carry: aim for simplicity and clarity in your questions. If the child uses simple words and short sentences, so should you.

2. Be alert for possible miscommunication. If a child's answer seems inconsistent with prior answers, or doesn't make sense to you, check out the possibility that there is some problem 1) with the way the question was phrased or ordered, 2) with a literal interpretation on the part of the child, or 3) with assumptions the question makes about the child's linguistic/cognitive development or knowledge of the adult world.

Some specifics:

1. Break long sentences/questions into shorter ones that have one main idea each.

2. Choose easy words over hard ones: use Anglo-Saxon expressions like "show," tell me about," or "said" instead of the Latinate words "depict," "describe," or "indicated."

3. Avoid legal jargon, and "frozels" (my term for frozen legalisms) like "What if anything," "Did there come a time."

4. It is important that you and the children use words to mean the same thing, so run a check now and then on what a word means to each child. Although children generally are not good at definitions, you can still ask something like, "Tell me what you think a _____is," or "What do you do with a ____/What does a ____do?" don't expect an adult-like answer, however, even if the word is well-known. The inability to define, for example, "Wind" does not mean that the person does not know what the wind is. Definitions require a linguistic< skill.

5. Avoid asking children directly about abstract concepts like what constitutes truth or what the difference is between the truth and a lie. In seeking to judge a young (under 9 or 10) child's knowledge of truth and lies, ask simple, concrete questions that make use of a child's experience. Ex: I forgot: how old are you? (Pause) So if someone said you are _____, is that the truth, or a lie? [Young children equate truth with fact, lies with non-fact.]

6. Avoid the question of belief entirely (Do you believe that to be true?).

7. Avoid using the word "story." (Tell me your story in your own words.) "Story" means both "narrative account of a happening" and "fiction." Adults listening to adults take both meanings into consideration. Adults listening to children, however, might well hear "story" as only the latter. "Story" is not only an ambiguous concept, it can be prejudicial.

8. With children, redundancy in questions is a useful thing. Repeat names and places often instead of using strings of (often ambiguous) pronouns. Avoid unanchored "that" 's, and "there" 's. Give verbs all of their appropriate nouns (subjects and objects), as in "[I want you to] Promise me that you will tell me the truth," instead of "Promise me to tell the truth."

9. Watch your pronouns carefully (including "that"). Be sure they refer either to something you can physically point at, or to something in the very immediate (spoken) past, such as in the same sentence, or in the last few seconds.

10. In a related caution, be very careful about words whose meaning depend on their relation to the speaker and the immediate situation, such as personal pronouns (I, you, we), locatives (here, there), objects (this, that), and verbs of motion (come/go; bring/take).

11. Avoid tag questions (e.g., "You did it, didn't you?"). They are confusing to children. Avoid, too, Yes/No questions that are packed with lots of propositions. (Example of a bad simple- sounding question, with propositions numbered: "[1[Do you remember [2] when Mary asked you [3] if you knew [4] what color Mark's shirt was, and [5} you said, [6] 'Blue'?" What would a "Yes" or "No" answer tells you here?) It does not help the fact finder to rely on an answer if it's not clear what the question was.

12. See that the child stays firmly grounded in the appropriate questioning situation. If you are asking about the past, be sure the child understands that. If you shift to the present, make that clear too. If it's necessary to have the child recall a specific time/date/place in which an event occurred, keep reminding the child of the context of the questions. And don't use phrases like, "Let me direct your attention to." Try instead, "I want you to think back toÖ," or "Make a picture in your mind Ö," or "I'm going to ask you some questions aboutÖ."

13. Explain to children why they are being asked to same questions more than once by more than one person. Repeated questioning is often interpreted (by adults as well as by children) to mean that the first answer was regarded as a lie, or wasn't the answer that was desired.

14. Be alert to the tendency of young children to be very literal and concrete in their language. "Did you have your clothes on?" might get a "No" answer; "Did you have your p.j.'s on?" might get a "yes."

15. Don't expect children under about age 9 or 10 to give "reliable" estimates of time, speed, distance, size, height, weight, color, or to have mastered any relational concept, including kinship. (Adults' ability to give many of these estimates is vastly overrated.)

16. Do not tell a child, "Just answer my question(s) yes or no." With their literal view of language, children can interpret this to mean that only a Yes or a No answer (or even "Yes or No"!) is permitted - period, whether or not such answers are appropriate. Under such an interpretation, children might think that answers like "I don't know/remember," and lawfully permitted explanations would be forbidden.

"Concrete" Wh words

"Abstract" WH words

1. Q. What IS a "WH" question?
   A. It's a question that begins with a WH word, and it is often called an "open-ended question. The answer must supply the information left bland by the WH word.
2. Q. What ARE WH words?
   A. Mostly words that begin with WH, of course! Like: Who, What, Where, When, Why, Which - but then there's How also. (You could spell it WH0w, I guess, If this bothers you.)
3. Q. Are all WH questions created equal?
   A. No - Some of them allow for no freedom. They ask for a single, specific piece of information. Ex: "What is your name?" can only be satisfied by giving your name. - Some of them still restrict freedom, but give room for a broader response. "What do you think of Mac?" can be answered in a couple of words (Not much"), or by a long discussion of relationships and feelings. - Some wide open ones give a lot of freedom, but place more demands on your ability to remember, organize, and report coherently. Whether at home or in court, the most common broad WH question is probably, "What happened?" And because of the cognitive/linguistic demands it makes, it is difficult for most children under about age 9 to respond in an adult-satisfactory way.
4. Q. When do children start using WH words, and in what order?
   A. By age 3, children are driving parents crazy asking Why. (It's a way to keep you talking.) But WH words begin to show up in children's speech starting at about 2-1/2 years, and in the following general order.
   WHat
   WHere
   WHo
   WHy
   How
   WHen

   That's asking the WH questions.

   The ability to give appropriate, grammatical answers to WH questions is usually acquired by about age 5-1/2.

   The ability to give an appropriate cognitive response to questions that begin with WHy, How, and WHen comes later - at about age 10.

1. Vocabulary
   • Use words that are short (1-2 syllables) and common.
     Ex: "house" instead of "residence"
   • Translate difficult words into easy phrases.
     Ex: "what happened to you" instead of "what you experienced"
   • Use proper names and places instead of pronouns.
     Ex: "what did March" do? Instead of "what did she do?"; "in the house" instead of "in there"
   • Use concrete, visualizable nouns ("back yard") instead of abstract ones ("area").
   • Use verbs that are action-oriented.
     Ex: "point to," "tell me about," instead of "describe"
   • Substitute simple, short verb forms for multi-word phrases when possible.
     Ex: "if you went" instead of "if you were to have gone"
   • Use active voice for verbs instead of the passive.
     Ex: "Did you see a doctor?" instead of "Were you seen by a doctor?"
     [Note: One exception: the passive "get" ("Did you get hurt?"), which children acquire very early, and is easier to process than "Were you hurt?"]
2. Putting the words together
• Aim for one main idea per question/sentence.
• When combining ideas, introduce no more than one new idea at a time.
• Avoid interrupting an idea with a descriptive phrase. Put the phrase (Known as a relative clause) at the end of the idea instead.
  Ex: "please tell me about the man who had the red hat on." instead of "The man who had the red hat on is the one I'd like you to tell me about."
• Avoid difficult-to-process connectives like "while" and "during."
• Avoid negatives whenever possible.
• Avoid questions that give a child only 2 choices. Add an open-end choice at the end.
  Ex: "Was the hat red, or blue, or some other color?"

BOTTOM LINE: SHORT AND SIMPLE IS GOOD.

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1. Children, even very young children, can lie. Most parents know this already, but a number of studies confirm it. See Ceci & Bruck, Suggestibility of the Child Witness: A Historical Review and Synthesis, 113 PSYCHOLOGICAL BULLETIN 403, 425-427 (1993).
2. Younger children are more suggestible than older children. In general, once children reach the age of ten, they are no more suggestible than adults. John E. B. Myers, Gail S. Goodman, Karen Saywitz, Psychological Research on Children as Witnesses: Practical Implications for Forensic Interviewers and Courtroom Testimony, 27 PACIFIC LAW JOURNAL 1, 26 (1996).
3. Though relevant, the new wave research is less applicable to the majority of interviews of abused children. Consider this:
1. The average age of alleged victims in sexual assault cases is 10 years old, as opposed to the pre-schoolers in the new wave re- search. See Thomas D. Lyon, False Allegations and False Denials in Child Sexual Abuse, l PSYCHOLOGY, PUBLIC POLICY AND LAW 429 (1995)
2. Most investigative interviews occur shortly after the report of abuse and do not involve the long delays between the target events and suggestive questions used by new wave researchers. Lyon, supra, at 433.
3. Most real world victims are abused by close family members. Closeness between the victim and the offender increases the child's resistance to falsely reporting abuse. Lyon, supra, at 433.
4. Most real world cases involve one victim, not the multiple victims in cases such as Michaels.
5. Although many abused children are interviewed as many as 11 times, these interviews are of children who have revealed abuse. In contrast, the interviews in the new wave research involve multiple interviews of children who have denied an event. The new wave researchers then repeatedly interview the kids to get them to adopt the intentionally false statement of the interviewer. See Lyon, supra at 434.
6. Although coercive or misleading questioning may result in a false report, it does not necessarily produce a false memory. When researchers "gently challenge" a child's false report, such reports are reduced 50%. Lyon, supra, at 435.
7. Keep in mind that even though most real world interviews involve elements different from the new wave researchers, even the coercive practices employed in this research produced only a minority of false reports.

*Used by permission