Abstract: Two studies examined discussions of truth and lying during interviews with children. In Study 1, truth-lie discussions (TLDs) during 132 actual sexual abuse interviews were analyzed, focusing on the types of questions asked and their developmental appropriateness. TLDs, which were fairly common for all ages of children interviewed, typically involved asking children closed-ended questions and did not differ in quality or form by age of child interviewed. Study 2 compared the typical TLDs (found in Study 1) to either no discussion or a more elaborate discussion in their effects on preschoolers' (n = 67) reports of an interactive event. Children given the extended TLD were significantly more accurate than those questioned following a typical or no TLD. The results suggest that discussing truth and lying with young children is effective only if the discussion is more elaborate than those typically conducted in forensic interviews.

Abstract: In keeping with their historic role in promoting human, economic, and cultural development, American land-grant universities have unprecedented opportunities to respond to changes taking place in society. Penn State University is responding with a model that emphasizes integration of teaching, research and service, interdisciplinary initiatives, and active collaboration with communities to enhance the quality of life. The substantial challenges of children, youth, and families are one of the priorities of Penn State in advancing this model. The Children, Youth, and Families Consortium, recently established by the university, supports interdisciplinary and collaborative teaching, research, and service to develop and implement prevention and intervention models that promote positive outcomes for children, youth, and families.

Abstract: Researchers are increasingly recognizing the importance of disseminating the results of research to a wider audience than other researchers. Dissemination, or "giving child development knowledge away," is important to maintaining a national commitment to the support of research, and it is essential if we are to develop policies and programs that effectively promote the development of children and youth. In this article, I review several of the most innovative and timely efforts to give child development knowledge away. Some dissemination projects result directly from university community partnerships; others are separate undertakings. In both cases, however, partnerships are key; there is a clear role for partnerships in furthering dissemination.

Abstract: Colleges and universities should not only be accessible to students; they should be accessible to their communities as well. Colleges and universities can be constructive partners with their communities on issues such us economic development, elementary and secondary education, health and human services, investments in neighborhoods, and scholarship outreach. I discuss university–community partnerships already making contributions to the life of their communities, using examples from across Massachusetts. Universities should strengthen their involvement in community partnerships. Information about existing partnerships should be placed on Web sites to make them widely available. Universities should make their commitment firm--and then make it public.

Abstract: The adaptive capacity of American higher education is rooted in 2 related factors: the ability of institutions to understand and operate within a shared environment with the communities they serve and leadership that is appropriate to a changing, increasingly boundary-free context. As a philanthropic organization that has provided support to both communities and higher education institutions for more than 60 years, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation has had a unique vantage point in observing the interactions between institutions and communities. Based on experiences from a wide range of projects sponsored by the Foundation, we suggest that such institutional-community collaboration is increasingly being demonstrated in institutional settings around the country and that the leadership practiced in such settings is a unique synthesis of that practiced in the contributing cultures: traditional institutional hierarchies and grassroots community-based organizations. Successful leaders approach the tasks of creating...

Abstract: Can children's reports of a naturalistic event be influenced by inaccurate postevent information? This study investigated conditions under which misinformation may or may not alter 6- and 9-year-old children's reports of a naturalistic event. Two weeks after participating in interactive play, 72 children listened to a narrative that included neutral and inaccurate information. Using a yes-no recognition test, misinformation acceptance and interference were measured. A recall test followed. Misinformation effects were assessed for 3 types of information. On the yes-no test, children evidenced significantly poorer memory for misled event items than for control event items. On the free-recall task, misinformation effects (i.e., suppression of event information) were found only for older children. However, overall, misinformation effects were dependent on the type of information. Results demonstrate that misleading information can, but does not necessarily, impair children's memory reports, and that the impai...

Abstract: (1999). How Important are the First 3 Years of Life? Applied Developmental Science: Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 235-238.

Abstract: (1999). A Summary of an Affidavit Prepared for Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Cheryl Amirault LeFave. Applied Developmental Science: Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 110-127.

Abstract: In recent years, a strategy of partnership and collaboration between government and communities has started to emerge as policy makers and service providers call for a more responsive system to address the health and well-being of children, youth, and families. The trend toward a comprehensive, holistic strategy is driven in part by concern over the effectiveness of a patchwork system of categorical health and human services designed to solve one problem at a time. At issue also is the movement "devolving" more responsibility for child and family well-being from the state to local governments and the challenge this change represents to communities. This article proposes a comprehensive, community-based strategy for reform of health and human services and examines the approach of one state that may be useful for other states interested in reform.

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to examine the interactions of 56 medically fragile infants and their mothers and to determine the influence of infant age, neurological status, maternal education, ethnicity, and observation location on these interactions. The interactions were observed for about 1 hr every 2 months while in the hospital, 1 month after hospital discharge, and at 6 months corrected age. The age of the infants had the greatest effect on the interaction. As infants grew older, mothers spent less time feeding, involved, holding, in body contact, looking, rocking, gesturing, and touching. However, mothers talked more, and played more with older infants. Older medically fragile infants were alert more, vocalized more, and slept less. Only one variable was directly affected by neurological status: Mothers moved neurologically normal infants more often. The neurologically normal and compromised groups were also more similar at older ages than younger ages in the percentage of time the mother was inv...

Abstract: The quality of mother-infant interaction in a sample of 25 drug-addicted mothers and their infants was measured over the first 9 postnatal months. Interaction quality was assessed at 1, 4, 6, and 9 months in feeding and teaching contexts using the Nursing Child Assessment Feeding and Teaching Scales. At each month, maternal and infant totals in this sample were below the 10th percentile established for the normative population. Over time, infant interaction in both feeding and teaching contexts improved, whereas maternal interaction remained unchanged. Even with this improvement in interaction quality for the infants, the mean scores for the sample remained in the high-risk range. In general, the results of this study indicate that in drug-affected dyads, both mother and infant contribute to impaired interaction quality. These deficits appear early and persist through 9 postnatal months, appearing in feeding and teaching contexts.

Abstract: Discriminant function analyses were employed among adult offspring of alcoholics family history positive [FH+]; n = 85) and offspring of nonalcoholics (family history negative[FH-1; n = 68) to determine whether characteristics of the individual and the context predict substance abuse or dependence or affective diagnoses. As expected, sex was a significant predictor, with men being more likely to have received a diagnosis for substance problems and women being more likely to have received a diagnosis for anxiety or depression. In addition, low social support from friends significantly predicted alcohol and drug diagnoses for the FH+ subgroup but not for the FH- subgroup, whereas low social support from family members significantly predicted depression for both subgroups. Finally, having a negative life orientation, high harm avoidance, and low family cohesion significantly predicted depression for the FH- subgroup but not for the FH+ subgroup. Implications regarding prevention and intervention are discussed.

Abstract: Twenty-seven experienced interviewers attended a 10-day training institute designed to provide knowledge and skills for improving investigative interviews with young children. Participants completed pre- and posttraining surveys assessing their knowledge of the scientific evidence regarding memory, suggestibility, and other aspects of children's ability to provide accurate accounts of events during interviews. They also conducted pre- and posttraining interviews with preschool children about 2 previously experienced events. Participants' knowledge about children's abilities and the scientific basis of various interviewing protocols increased significantly after the training. However, training did not have a significant impact on interviewers' questioning styles or the amount of accurate information elicited from the children. Results indicate that successfully translating knowledge into practice requires multiple opportunities for skill practice and feedback.

Abstract: In investigative interviews concerned with allegations of sexual abuse, open-ended prompts by interviewers elicit more information than focused prompts. We attempted to explore these effects in investigations of physical abuse. Interviews with 50 children from 2 age groups (5–6-year-olds, 9–10-year-olds) who made subsequently substantiated allegations of physical abuse by their parents were subjected to detailed psycholinguistic analysis. The overall productivity (number of words spoken) and informativeness (number of details elicited) of these children were remarkably low. The children were also relatively unresponsive to the investigators' individual utterances, and many of the interviewers' utterances were nonsubstantive (15%). The interviewers were more likely than those included in studies of sexual abuse investigations to use open-ended as opposed to focused prompts. These open-ended utterances elicited significantly more words but not more details than focused prompts. Older children also provided ...

Abstract: This study tested the hypothesis that risk factors associated with the occurrence of adolescent fatherhood would predict the parental functioning of adolescent fathers and their partners as well as the quality of their co-parental relationship. Prior to the birth of their first child, we assessed the behavioral functioning of expectant adolescent fathers. Twelve to 18 months postbirth, the Quality of Relationships Inventory (Pierce, 1994) was used to assess relationships between teen fathers and their partners. The Parenting Stress Index (Abidin, 1990) and the Parenting Behavior Checklist (Fox, 1990) were used to assess parental functioning among teen fathers and their partners. Data were collected from two demographically distinct samples (Salt Lake City, Utah, and Chicago, Illinois) to assess the generalizability of hypothesized relations between risk factors and parental functioning. For both samples of young fathers, the occurrence of antisocial behavior problems during or prior to their partners' pre...

Abstract: Efforts to elicit reliable testimony from children are frustrated by developmental limitations on children's communicative competence. This study examines (a) how children cope when adults ask incomprehensible questions, and (b) whether interview perfonnance can be enhanced by facilitating children's comprehension monitoring and response strategies. One hundred and eighty children, half 6 and half 8-years-olds, were assigned randomly within age group to 1 of 3 treatment conditions (training, instructions, control) and I of 2 interviewer conditions (familiar, unfamiliar). Children's memories of a previously staged event were tested with interview questions varying in comprehensibility. Results suggest that when confronted with difficult-to-comprehend questions regarding easily recalled information, children in the control group tried to answer anyway but were as likely to respond incorrectly as correctly. In contrast, when children were instructed to verbalize their lack of comprehension, and given a ratio...

Abstract: Two studies examined 192 maltreated young children's competence to take the oath. Study 1 found that despite serious delays in receptive vocabulary, a majority of 5-year-olds correctly identified truthful statements and lies as such and recognized that lying is bad and would make authority figures mad. However, most participants up to 7 years of age could not define "truth" and "lie" or explain the difference between the terms. Four-year-olds were above chance in recognizing the immorality of lying but exhibited a tendency to identify all statements as the "truth." Study 2 found that 4- and 5-year-olds performed above chance in identifying which of 2 story characters was lying or telling the truth and in identifying whether the truth-teller or the liar said something bad or would get in trouble. Children exhibited better understanding of the immorality of lying than the meaning of lying. Maltreated children's oath-taking competence may be underestimated due to linguistic and motivational difficulties.

Abstract: Concern about the accuracy of children's responses to "yes-no" questions has created controversy regarding the appropriateness of these questions for forensic interviews. To evaluate response patterns, 56 children (3-7 years old) were twice asked a set of yes-no questions, either in standard or in a modified, forced-choice format, about a videotaped event. Younger children were less accurate and consistent than were older children. Unlike the older children, the younger children were less accurate on questions that adults rated as probing central information compared to those involving more peripheral details. Question format did not alter children's accuracy, their tendency to answer "I don't know," or their consistency across repeated questions. No clear response biases were observed for the majority of children regardless of question format, and accuracy was equivalent on "yes-correct" and "no-correct" questions. Consistency and answers to suggestibility check questions were notpredictive of performanc...

Abstract: Despite important advances in recent years in evidenced-based approaches to prevent and treat mental, behavioral, and emotional disturbances in children and adolescents, the long-standing difficulties of moving research findings from bench to bedside have persisted, even in the face of rising problems in youth. To address these continuing difficulties in translating research results into practice, we suggest that researchers move away from studies that ask what works under optimal, university-based, research conditions to investigations that examine what works that is also palatable, feasible, durable, affordable, and sustainable in real-world settings. We discuss the challenges entailed in moving university-based, "efficacy" research into more real-world community settings. We discuss principles for effective and meaningful collaborations between university investigators and community partners, including (a) an enhanced focus on external validity, (b) the incorporation of the values and needs of communit...

Abstract: The last decade has seen major developments in the legal arena concerning the evidential interviewing of children. Research evidence clarifying the ability of children to provide valid and reliable...

Abstract: Interviews of 12 children describing sexual abuse incidents that were deemed unlikely to have happened were matched with 12 interviews involving descriptions of events that appeared likely to have happened. Each interviewer utterance and each child response was categorized into several types. For each of the child's responses, coders also tabulated the number of words, informative details, and Criterion-Based Content Analysis (CBCA) criteria present. The distribution of the different interviewer's utterance types and child's response types was similar in the 2 groups, as was the number of words and details provided in the average response by the child. However, differences were evident in the children's responses to the specific types of interviewer utterance. The children provided more words, details, and contents that qualified as CBCA criteria in response to open-ended utterances than to focused utterances in plausible statements, but those effects were not apparent in implausible statements.

Abstract: A series of 4 experiments were conducted to (a) determine the willingness of children to lie in a realistic setting, (b) compare judgments of credibility from both lay evaluations and Criterion-Based Content Analysis (CBCA), and (c) examine the effects of expert testimony regarding Statement Validity Assessment on mock jurors who were asked to make evaluations of the children's statements. In Experiment 1, 81% of children who witnessed a research assistant steal a textbook made accusations against the thief (truthful), 69% of children who did not witness the theft accused the research assistant of the theft following prompting by significant others, and 56% of the children who witnessed a significant other steal the textbook incorrectly accused the research assistant following a request from their significant other. Using the statements obtained from the children in Experiment 1, Experiments 2 and 3 found that classification accuracy of lay evaluators was significantly poorer than expert application of CB...

Abstract: Effects of forensic interview techniques on the production of free-narrative and Criteria-Based Content Analysis (CBCA) criteria were assessed in police interviews with 48 children (ages 3 to 16) who alleged they had been sexually abused. These allegations were later categorized as confirmed (n = 35) or highly doubtful (n = 13) based on information obtained independent of the statements. Two raters independently coded all interviewer utterances and children's responses, and four other raters evaluated the transcripts for the presence of CBCA content criteria. As predicted, open questions yielded more free narrative and CBCA criteria than other types of questions. Confirmed statements of abuse contained more CBCA criteria than highly doubtful statements, and statements made by older children contained more CBCA criteria than those by younger children. The results support the use of open questions for eliciting free narrative and the use of CBCA to assess the validity of children's allegations of sexual abuse.