TY - JOUR
T1 - Young children's difficulty with indirect speech acts
T2 - Implications for questioning child witnesses
AU - Evans, Angela D.
AU - Stolzenberg, Stacia N.
AU - Lee, Kang
AU - Lyon, Thomas D.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
PY - 2014/11/1
Y1 - 2014/11/1
N2 - Prior research suggests that infelicitous choice of questions can significantly underestimate children's actual abilities, independently of suggestiveness. One possibly difficult question type is indirect speech acts such as "Do you know." questions (DYK, e.g., "Do you know where it happened?"). These questions directly ask if respondents know, while indirectly asking what respondents know. If respondents answer "yes," but fail to elaborate, they are either ignoring or failing to recognize the indirect question (known as pragmatic failure). Two studies examined the effect of indirect speech acts on maltreated and non-maltreated 2-to 7-year-olds' post-event interview responses. Children were read a story and later interviewed using DYK and Wh- questions. Additionally, children completed a series of executive functioning tasks. Both studies revealed that using DYK questions increased the chances of pragmatic failure, particularly for younger children and those with lower inhibitory control skills.
AB - Prior research suggests that infelicitous choice of questions can significantly underestimate children's actual abilities, independently of suggestiveness. One possibly difficult question type is indirect speech acts such as "Do you know." questions (DYK, e.g., "Do you know where it happened?"). These questions directly ask if respondents know, while indirectly asking what respondents know. If respondents answer "yes," but fail to elaborate, they are either ignoring or failing to recognize the indirect question (known as pragmatic failure). Two studies examined the effect of indirect speech acts on maltreated and non-maltreated 2-to 7-year-olds' post-event interview responses. Children were read a story and later interviewed using DYK and Wh- questions. Additionally, children completed a series of executive functioning tasks. Both studies revealed that using DYK questions increased the chances of pragmatic failure, particularly for younger children and those with lower inhibitory control skills.
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U2 - 10.1002/bsl.2142
DO - 10.1002/bsl.2142
M3 - Article
C2 - 25393547
AN - SCOPUS:84925340974
SN - 0735-3936
VL - 32
SP - 775
EP - 788
JO - Behavioral Sciences and the Law
JF - Behavioral Sciences and the Law
IS - 6
ER -