Laura Benedan - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Laura Benedan

Children and Youth Services Review, 2020

Preschool children are particularly prone to suggestion. Here, we examined the extent to which te... more Preschool children are particularly prone to suggestion. Here, we examined the extent to which temperament variables and internalising and externalising problems influenced preschoolers' suggestibility. Children aged between 3 and 5 years (N = 140) completed the Video Suggestibility Scale for Children (Scullin & Ceci, 2001), and their kindergarten teachers completed two questionnaires: the EAS Temperament Survey for Children, and the Child Behaviour Checklist. As expected, age and free recall performance were both negatively related to susceptibility to misleading questions. Attentional difficulty was the only individual difference variable that added predictive value to this model. None of our individual difference variables were related to the extent to which children changed their responses in the face of negative feedback. We propose that attentional difficulties might be a particularly strong correlate of suggestibility when children are very young, and we outline the implications of this finding for forensic interviewers who solicit preschoolers' accounts. How can we account for preschoolers' increased suggestibility? Some aspects of suggestibility are likely to be linked to cognitive factors, despite mixed findings in previous research (see Klemfuss & Olaguez, 2018, for a review). In most eyewitness situations, limited cognitive capacity can be expected to decrease performance (but see the developmental reversal literature, for an exception; e.g., Brainerd, Reyna, & Ceci, 2008). A less developed theory of mind, for example, makes it harder for children to understand what the interviewer knows and doesn't know about the event in question (e.g., Melinder, Endestad, & Magnussen, 2006). Less advanced language skills might prevent children from grasping a question's meaning in the first place, making it difficult for them to refute incorrect information (e.g., Imhoff & Baker-Ward, 1999). As children grow older, they become increasingly cognitively sophisticated, with improvements in memory, language, metacognition, and reasoning-all of which are likely to assist them in resisting false suggestions (Ceci, 1990). Suggestibility also has an important social dimension. That is, factors relating to the social interaction between the interviewer and the interviewee can exert an influence on children's responses to interview questions. Associations between children's social skills and

Children and Youth Services Review, 2020

Preschool children are particularly prone to suggestion. Here, we examined the extent to which te... more Preschool children are particularly prone to suggestion. Here, we examined the extent to which temperament variables and internalising and externalising problems influenced preschoolers' suggestibility. Children aged between 3 and 5 years (N = 140) completed the Video Suggestibility Scale for Children (Scullin & Ceci, 2001), and their kindergarten teachers completed two questionnaires: the EAS Temperament Survey for Children, and the Child Behaviour Checklist. As expected, age and free recall performance were both negatively related to susceptibility to misleading questions. Attentional difficulty was the only individual difference variable that added predictive value to this model. None of our individual difference variables were related to the extent to which children changed their responses in the face of negative feedback. We propose that attentional difficulties might be a particularly strong correlate of suggestibility when children are very young, and we outline the implications of this finding for forensic interviewers who solicit preschoolers' accounts. How can we account for preschoolers' increased suggestibility? Some aspects of suggestibility are likely to be linked to cognitive factors, despite mixed findings in previous research (see Klemfuss & Olaguez, 2018, for a review). In most eyewitness situations, limited cognitive capacity can be expected to decrease performance (but see the developmental reversal literature, for an exception; e.g., Brainerd, Reyna, & Ceci, 2008). A less developed theory of mind, for example, makes it harder for children to understand what the interviewer knows and doesn't know about the event in question (e.g., Melinder, Endestad, & Magnussen, 2006). Less advanced language skills might prevent children from grasping a question's meaning in the first place, making it difficult for them to refute incorrect information (e.g., Imhoff & Baker-Ward, 1999). As children grow older, they become increasingly cognitively sophisticated, with improvements in memory, language, metacognition, and reasoning-all of which are likely to assist them in resisting false suggestions (Ceci, 1990). Suggestibility also has an important social dimension. That is, factors relating to the social interaction between the interviewer and the interviewee can exert an influence on children's responses to interview questions. Associations between children's social skills and