Idiosyncratic effects of interviewer behavior on the accuracy of children's responses
Interviewer warmth changes accuracy for only about half of preschoolers, so always double-check with a second adult or altered prompt.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Five preschool kids answered questions while the adult interviewer changed her style. Sometimes she smiled and praised every answer. Other times she stayed quiet and kept a straight face.
The team tracked how many answers were correct under each style. They wanted to see if kids tried harder when the interviewer acted friendly.
What they found
Only two kids got more answers right when the adult was warm and praising. Three kids scored the same no matter how the adult acted.
The praise worked for some, but not for all. Child-to-child differences were bigger than the effect of the adult’s style.
How this fits with other research
Older lab work saw the same split result. Iwata (1988) showed that an adult’s prompt controlled toy play for some preschoolers, yet the paper calls the effect “mixed.” Clark et al. (1977) also found that extra adult talk did not help kids follow rules any better.
Evers et al. (2020) adds a warning from the clinic: two parent interviews agreed only 75 % of the time on ASD symptoms. Together these studies say the same thing — adult cues help some kids, miss others, so one-size-fits-all questioning is risky.
Why it matters
When you test language, social skills, or stereotypy, treat the first answers as a draft. Swap in a second adult, or change your tone, and see if the score moves. If it does, you just saved a kid from the wrong label or the wrong program.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Children are interviewed to provide information about past events in various contexts (e.g., police interviews, court proceedings, therapeutic interviews). During an interview, various factors may influence the accuracy of children's responses to questions about recent events. However, behavioral research in this area is limited. Sparling et al. (2011) showed that children frequently provided inaccurate responses to questions about video clips they just watched depending on the antecedents (i.e., the way a question was asked) and consequences (i.e., the response of the interviewer to their answers). In the current study, we replicated and extended the procedures reported by Sparling et al. and found that two of five children were sensitive to the various antecedents and consequences that we manipulated. Our findings indicate a need for more research in this area to determine the relevant environmental variables that affect children's response accuracy.
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 2024 · doi:10.1002/jaba.1065