Children’s response accuracy: examining the effect of activity engagement, age, language proficiency, and time elapse

ABSTRACT

The present study aimed to examine the effect of activity engagement, age, language proficiency, and time elapse on children’s response accuracy to adult’s questions. A total of 70, 3- to 6-year-old children participated in the study, engaging in a story-telling activity, a proficiency test, and two interviews. Additionally, 57 of these children participated in a delayed interview about the same event one week later. The findings indicated that children’s language proficiency has a significant impact on the accuracy of their answers. Moreover, age appeared to contribute to children’s response accuracy. However, children’s activity engagement and the one-week time elapse did not significantly influence the accuracy of their recall. Results suggest that interviewers should consider children’s age and linguistic proficiency levels while conducting interviews. This research contributes to the existing literature on factors affecting children’s response accuracy.

KEYWORDS:

• Activity engagement
• age
• language proficiency
• response accuracy
• suggestibility
• time elapse

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics approval

All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments.

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

Consent to participate

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in this study.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mehdi Mehranirad

Dr. Mehdi Mehranirad’s research interests lie in the field of language development, with a focus on psycholinguistic aspects of monolingual and bilingual children’s language learning. His research attempts to understand how language works as an efficient communication system for young children within their cognitive and information processing constraints.

Nahid Basafa

Nahid Basafa has received her Master’s in language teaching and learning. She has conducted a number of research studies on children’s language processing, and is currently teaching in the English Department at the University of Neyshabur.

Reza Zabihi

Dr. Reza Zabihi’s research centers around instructed second language acquisition and task-based language teaching as well as psychology of language learning and teaching. He studies how cognitive, affective and personality factors along with different task conditions influence learners’ performance as well as their cognitive, behavioural, social and emotional engagement.