Citation

Lamb ME, Hershkowitz I, Sternberg KJ, Boat B, Everson MD. Child Abuse Negl. 1996; 20(12): 1251-1259.

Affiliation

Section on Social and Emotional Development, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Bethesda, MD 20814, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1996, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

8985616

Abstract

Verbal and nonverbal responses by alleged victims of child sexual abuse were coded for length, amount of information, and the manner in which they were elicited by the interviewer. In 16 of the interviews, anatomical dolls were employed for the purposes of demonstration, whereas they were not used in another eight cases matched with respect to other characteristics of the children and the alleged events. Children interviewed with dolls provided an equivalent number of details and spoke as many words in the substantive portion of the interview as did children interviewed without dolls, and interviewers in the two groups used similar probes to elicit information. However, the average responses by the children were significantly longer and more detailed when dolls were not used. Children gave longer and more detailed responses to open-ended invitations when dolls were not used. Caution is necessary when interpreting these findings.

Language: en