Background This article describes the origins and development of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Investigative Interview Protocol. The author's original interest in exploring the reliability of children's accounts of their behaviour and experiences morphed into the assessment of various techniques that increased the ability and willingness of young children to provide richly detailed and accurate descriptions of their experiences. Conclusions These techniques and strategies were then compiled into a tool, the NICHD Protocol, which was shown to improve the quality of forensic interviewing. Subsequently, the Revised NICHD Protocol incorporated an additional suite of practices addressing the emotional and motivational factors that made some children reluctant to cooperate with interviewers.

Witness intermediaries facilitate communication between legal actors and children or other vulnerable populations, and sometimes intermediaries assist in investigative interviews. This research explored the skills of investigative interviewers and intermediaries (who either had experience acting in that role or were eligible to do so) in identifying problematic questions during interviews. Forty-one participants (18 interviewers, 23 eligible or experienced intermediaries) listened to excerpts from interviews with three alleged victims of sexual or physical abuse which contained a mix of appropriate and inappropriate questions. Participants paused the audio whenever they wished to make a comment and also completed a knowledge test on questioning best practices. Interviewers identified more problematic questions and scored higher on the knowledge test than intermediaries. Whereas interviewers were primarily concerned with the extent to which the interview involved open-ended questioning, intermediaries focused on the extent to which questioning involved supports and clear scaffolding. The findings suggest that well-trained interviewers are equipped to handle most questioning issues with children independently; however, intermediaries’ attentiveness to question scaffolding suggests they might aid communication with interviewees facing more pronounced communication challenges (e.g., developmental delay).

This study examined all three phases of 233 interviews with children aged 4-14 years (M +/- SD = 9.12 +/- 2.56) who disclosed physical abuse by a parent. Of these, 79 were conducted using the Standard NICHD Protocol (SP) and 154 using the Revised NICHD Protocol (RP), which guides interviewers to build rapport, manage emotions, and ask appropriate questions. Use of the RP was linked to increased abuse-related informativeness which was evident when interviewers provided more support in the presubstantive and transitional phases and used invitations in the substantive phase, while children expressed more emotions, provided more nonabuse-related information in the presubstantive phase, and were less reluctant in the transitional phase. Associations between informativeness and (1) support in the transitional phase, (2) emotional expressiveness, and (3) reluctance were mediated by other factors. Findings highlight the cumulative benefits of supportive interviewing.

The McMartin Preschool case in the 1980s was one of several alleged day care sex abuse cases that highlighted the need to establish best practices in forensic child interviews. As a result of that case, tens of millions of dollars were allocated to study and develop child interviewing techniques that were most likely to preserve the integrity of the accounts of children identified as possible victims and survivors of child abuse. That research led to the identification and standardization of the child forensic interviewing techniques widely used today. Despite the creation of best practices for child forensic interviews, courts sometimes accept as expert witnesses professionals who promote practices that should not be used when interviewing children who may have been victimized. A recent case in Canada underscores the critical need for awareness of best practices in child forensic interviews. This discussion article examines the dangers of viewing the lack of active hypothesis testing as a sign of poor interviewing.

The Strange Situation Procedure (SSP) has long been central to attachment research but has rarely been applied to diverse family forms, such as same-sex parent families and families formed through assisted reproductive technologies (ART). This study was the first to use the SSP to compare attachment classifications across same-sex male parent families, same-sex female parent families, and different-sex parent families formed through ART. Data came from the New Parents Study, including 229 parent-child dyads (115 families, including 16 twin families) from the Netherlands, France, and the United Kingdom, with children assessed around 12 months of age. Multinominal regression analyses showed no associaton between family type and attachment classification. However, children from the Netherlands were more likely to be classified as securely attached. These findings suggest that infant-parent attachment secruity does not differ by family type, expanding the understanding of attachment beyond the traditional mother-father paradigm.

PurposeThis study explored the narrative coherence of the accounts of an experienced event produced by autistic and neurotypical children (ages 6-15 years) after delays of two weeks and two months.MethodsThe sample comprised 27 autistic children and 32 neurotypical peers, who were interviewed about the event using the Revised National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Investigative Interview Protocol. The study focused on assessing the narrative coherence of children's reports, emphasizing key story grammar elements and temporal features in their narratives.ResultsResults revealed that, over time, both autistic and neurotypical children showed a decrease in narrative coherence. Autistic children, particularly those who were cognitively and verbally able, demonstrated the ability to convey their experiences coherently, with performances comparable to those of their neurotypical peers. Interviewer prompts differentially influenced the narrative coherence of autistic and non-autistic children's accounts.ConclusionThis research showed that, when questioned appropriately, cognitively and verbally able autistic children can effectively communicate their personal experiences, even after significant delays.

Positive and negative parental affect influence developing parent-child attachment relationships, especially during infancy as well as children's social-emotional, academic, and behavioral functioning later in life. Increasingly, because both mothers and fathers can play central caregiving roles, the parenting qualities of both parents demand consideration. Therefore, this study investigated whether parental gender and caregiving role were associated with mothers' and fathers' positive affect and negative affect during interactions with their 4-month-old firstborn infant, while determining whether parenting stress, infant temperament, having a singleton/twin, and living in the Netherlands, France, or the United Kingdom were related to parental positive affect and negative affect. In all, 135 different-sex, same-sex male, and same-sex female couples (113 fathers and 157 mothers, comprising 147 primary, and 123 secondary caregivers) who conceived through artificial reproductive techniques were studied. The couples were videorecorded at home while in feeding, cleaning, and playing contexts to assess the levels of positive and negative parental affect. In addition, the couples completed questionnaires about their caregiving role, parenting stress, and the infants' temperament. Mixed linear models indicated that the levels of positive and negative parental affect toward the infant in all contexts were not related to parental gender, caregiving role, the interaction between parental gender and caregiving role, parenting stress, infant temperament, or singleton/twin status. However, the target parental behaviors were related to the country of origin, suggesting differences among Dutch, French, and British parents. Overall, we found no evidence that gender or caregiving roles were associated with the levels of positive and negative affect shown by the parents.

AbstractWhile there has been considerable research on investigative interviews with children over the last three decades, there remains much to learn. The aim of this paper was to identify some of the issues and prospects for future scientific study that most urgently need to be addressed. Across 10 commentaries, leading scholars and practitioners highlight areas where additional research is needed on investigative interview practices with youths. Overarching themes include the need for better understanding of rapport‐building and its impact, as well as greater focus on social‐cultural and developmental factors and the needs of adolescents. There are calls to examine how interviews are occurring in real‐world contexts to better inform best practice recommendations in the field, to find means for ensuring better adherence to best practices among various groups of practitioners, and to understand their importance and impact when not followed, including by those testifying in courts. All reflect the need to better address that recurring challenge of reliably and consistently eliciting accurate and credible information from potentially reluctant young witnesses.

This study compared two versions of the NICHD Protocol for interviewing young suspected sexual offenders: the Revised Suspect Protocol (RSP) and the Standard Suspect Protocol (SSP). The RSP incorporated relevant evidence-based practices informed by research on the value of (a) effectively explaining the suspects' rights, (b) rapport building and support, and (c) appropriate questioning strategies. Interviewers using the RSP communicated the children's rights more effectively (reading them more often, checking, verifying, and correcting understanding) and provided more support. In the substantive phase, they remained supportive while recall prompts dominated the questioning. Compared to children in the SSP group, children in the RSP condition understood their rights better, were more responsive during rapport-building, and reacted to interviewer support in the substantive phase with increased responsiveness, which in turn, predicted reduced reluctance, increased emotional expression, and greater informativeness. They were also more likely to make full rather than partial confessions than children in the SSP group. Full confessions were positively predicted by the appropriate communication of legal rights, interviewer support, and reliance on open-ended prompts, thereby confirming the superiority of the RSP relative to the SSP.

This proof-of- concept study focused on interviewers’ behaviors and perceptions when interacting with a dynamic AI child avatar alleging abuse. Professionals ( N = 68) took part in a virtual reality (VR) study in which they questioned an avatar presented as a child victim of sexual or physical abuse. Of interest was how interviewers questioned the avatar, how productive the child avatar was in response, and how interviewers perceived the VR interaction. Findings suggested alignment between interviewers’ virtual questioning approaches and interviewers’ typical questioning behavior in real-world investigative interviews, with a diverse range of questions used to elicit disclosures from the child avatar. The avatar responded to most question types as children typically do, though more nuanced programming of the avatar’s productivity in response to complex question types is needed. Participants rated the avatar positively and felt comfortable with the VR experience. Results underscored the potential of AI-based interview training as a scalable, standardized alternative to traditional methods.

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.

 Biologically based source of individual differences  Emerges early in life  Expressed behaviorally  Not genetically fixed  influenced by heredity, maturation and experience over time  Early foundation for personality Features of temperament  Temporal:  Latencybehavior onset after stim  Rise timebehavior escalation  Durationlength of behavior  Recoveryhow slowly behavior fades  Intensive:  Amplitudestrength of expressed behavior  Thresholdsensitivity to stim

Abstract Children come into contact with the legal system for myriad reasons, including as suspected victims of maltreatment, in divorce cases when custody is at issue, as unaccompanied minors in immigration hearings, or as suspected offenders of crime. Considerable scientific research has been devoted to identifying how this involvement may adversely affect children and how the system might be altered to reduce those effects. In order to maximize the value of this research, it is imperative that scientists recognize both the value judgments that sometimes underlie their work and how their work’s focus on outcomes often clashes with a legal focus on rights. This recognition, along with a clear articulation of the limitations of the direct policy implications of the work, will lead to stronger legal-oriented research with children.

BackgroundThe aim of this study was to determine whether stimulation and support in early childhood and best friendship quality in adolescence predict adult personality.Participants and procedureWe used data from 123 individuals from an ongoing longitudinal study, with multiple assessment phases and modalities (observation, parental rating, self-report) to investigate prospective associations between stimulation and support in the home in early childhood (age 1-2), best friendship quality in adolescence (age 15), and the Big Five personality traits in adulthood (age 29) controlling for temperament, socioeconomic status (SES), and gender.ResultsAfter controlling for temperament, SES, and gender, we found that early childhood stimulation and support was related to adult openness to experiences, but not the other four traits, and that best friendship quality in adolescence was related to adult extraversion and agreeableness, but not conscientiousness, neuroticism, or openness to experiences.ConclusionsThe study contributes to research indicating that while personalities are relatively stable, they are not fixed at an early age and may be related to experiences and salient relationships throughout development. There is a dearth of research investi-gating such associations and the available findings are inconsistent. Conclusions about the relations between experiences such as stimulation and support in the home in early childhood or best friendship quality in adolescence and adult personal-ity should thus be viewed skeptically until replicated.

Statements by alleged victims are important when child abuse is prosecuted; triers-of-fact often attend to nonverbal emotional expressions when evaluating those statements. This study examined the associations among interviewer supportiveness, children's nonverbal emotions, and informativeness during 100 forensic interviews with alleged victims of child abuse. Raters coded the silent videotapes for children's nonverbal emotional expressions while other raters coded the transcripts for interviewer support, children's verbal emotions, and informativeness. Results showed that children's nonverbal signals were more common than and preceded the verbal signs. Interviewer support was associated with children's expressivity. When children expressed more nonverbal emotions, they were more responsive during the pre-substantive phases and more informative about the abuse. Nonverbal emotions partially mediated the association between support and informativeness. The findings underline the value of nonverbal emotional expression during forensic interviews and demonstrate how the interviewers' supportive demeanor can facilitate children's emotional displays and increase informativeness.