The role of rapport in eliciting children’s truthful reports

Abstract

Children (N = 114, ages 7–13) witnessed a transgressor steal money from a wallet and then asked them to lie about the theft when interviewed by a novel interviewer. During the interview, children were asked to either describe various experienced events (Narrative Practice Rapport-building condition) or participate in an interactive activity designed to focus on the relational aspects of rapport-building including mutual attentiveness, positivity, and coordination between child and interviewer (Interactional Rapport-building condition). Children also completed a measure of rapport to indicate their subjective level of rapport with the interviewer. Older children in the Interactional Rapport-building condition were significantly more likely to be truthful, disclose the transgression earlier, and give more details. Findings provide an initial, exploratory understanding of how the rapport-building phase in eyewitness interviews may play an important role in children’s disclosure decision-making and may be another area to study to promote more truthful disclosures.

Over the past 50 years in North America, children have increasingly been asked to testify and serve as witnesses in civil, criminal, and family courts (Hardy & van Leeuwen, 2004; Pantell et al., 2017; Sas, 2002). Key concerns with child witnesses are that they may not disclose wrongdoing by others (London et al., 2008) and, when they do, there may be inaccuracies in their reports (Ceci & Bruck, 1993). Children can be reluctant to disclose the crimes of others and are sometimes willing to keep others’ behaviors secret (e.g., Rush et al., 2014). They may feel pressure to not disclose and/or to protect the wrongdoer from criminal consequences (Lyon et al., 2014; Talwar et al., 2016). Therefore, despite some children’s reluctance, an ongoing challenge for interviewers is to elicit true event disclosures without increasing false reports.

Research has shown that children are more likely to lie to an unfamiliar adult compared to someone they know (Williams et al., 2013). Supportive interviewers, however, may make children feel more safe and cared for (Brubacher et al., 2019), which could help to reduce lying, and increase accuracy and resistance to suggestion (e.g., Davis & Bottoms, 2002; Goodman et al., 1991; Quas & Lench, 2007). Although there has been much research on how to question children to elicit their accurate recall and reduce the impact of interviewer suggestions (e.g., Brown et al., 2013; Hardy & van Leeuwen, 2004; Lamb et al., 2018; Yi & Lamb, 2018), less is known about possible social-emotional factors that could influence an interviewer’s ability to obtain reliable, truthful disclosures from children. To date, there has been little systematic research to investigate an “optimal psychosocial atmosphere” (Saywitz et al., 2019, p. 23) whereby individual children will give truthful, detailed disclosures despite anxiety, fears, and pressure to keep secrets (Saywitz et al., 2015).

The importance of rapport in child witness interviews

Rapport-building may help establish a psychosocial context in which children can overcome their reluctance to disclose to previously unknown interviewers (e.g., Saywitz et al., 2011) and feel comfortable enough to tell the truth when interviewed about their experiences. Thus, it is important for interviewers to build rapport with children, establishing a sense of commonality, trust, and cooperation (Hershkowitz, 2011; Saywitz et al., 2015), while countering possible feelings of pressure to lie or conceal negative transgressions when children have been witnesses or victims (Foster et al., 2019).

Building rapport begins with the interviewer’s first interaction with the child (Ruddock, 2006). Rapport-building often refers to a specific stage at the beginning of an interview where the interviewer uses techniques to establish a connection (i.e., rapport) between themselves and the child to facilitate children’s reporting (Saywitz et al., 2015, 2019). Forensic interview guidelines such as the NICHD protocol (Lamb et al., 2018), the Cognitive Interview (Fisher & Geiselman, 1992), and the Stepwise Interview (Yuille et al., 1993) suggest that interviewers establish rapport at the beginning of the interview before asking questions about the suspected transgression (Crossman et al., 2002; Poole & Lamb, 1998). The primary function of rapport-building is to create a supportive environment and increase children’s comfort and competence to recall and disclose past events (Collins et al., 2014; Lamb et al., 2018). The stronger the rapport between the child and interviewer, the more comfortable and detailed the child may be in their disclosures (Powell & Lancaster, 2003).

While there is general consensus that rapport-building is vital (e.g., Crossman et al., 2002; Goodman et al., 2017; Poole & Lamb, 1998; Turoy-Smith & Powell, 2017), few studies have examined the effectiveness of this stage in actually building rapport with children and whether it influences their testimonies (Lavoie et al., 2021; Saywitz et al., 2015). Moreover, field research suggests that interviewers often fail to establish rapport during the rapport-building phase (e.g., Lewy et al., 2015; Teoh & Lamb, 2013). For example, some interviewers merely attempt “simple rapport-building”, such as asking a few personal questions about the child (e.g., “What grade are you in?”; Ahern et al., 2015; Saywitz et al., 2015), which may be insufficient to establish rapport. Therefore, just because a rapport phase is included in questioning does not necessarily mean that rapport has been formed (Collins et al., 2014).

Additionally, an important issue in forensic research is establishing a definition of rapport that distinguishes “rapport” from “supportiveness”. Interviewer support has been defined as “various content-neutral strategies that help children feel safe and cared for during interviews, including smiling, nodding, making frequent eye contact, using the child’s name, and adopting a relaxed and open posture” (Brubacher et al., 2019, p. 509). However, it is often unclear whether researchers consider supportiveness to be an element of good rapport-building, or whether effective rapport-building is reflective of a supportive interviewer (see Saywitz et al., 2015, for a discussion). Studies often fail to differentiate between the two constructs of “rapport” and “support”. Moreover, some researchers refer to “supportiveness” as the interviewer’s demeanor throughout the interview, and “rapport” as the rapport-building stage at the beginning of the interview, which further adds to the confusion. In the current study, the term “rapport” will be used and will be specifically examined and is considered to be the subjective experience between the interviewer and the interviewee (Saywitz et al., 2015).

Only a handful of studies have experimentally examined the independent effects of rapport on interview outcomes (e.g., Brown et al., 2013; Hardy & van Leeuwen, 2004; Lyon et al., 2014; Magnusson et al., 2020; Roberts et al., 2004; Sauerland et al., 2018; Sternberg et al., 1997; Yi & Lamb, 2018; see Lavoie et al., 2021; Saywitz et al., 2015 for reviews) and most have not included a measure of whether children actually felt rapport with the interviewer. These studies have focused primarily on varying the types of questions used (e.g., closed, open-ended) and varying the type of narrative practice children experience (i.e., the opportunity to practice describing neutral experienced events in detail via open-ended questions prior to the actual interview; Collins et al., 2014; Lyon et al., 2014) as a manipulation of the rapport-building stage. For instance, Roberts et al. (2004) used open- and closed-ended questions as two different types of rapport-building styles and reported that while children in the open-ended rapport-building condition gave more accurate reports and were better able to resist misleading suggestions, children did not produce more detailed reports. Importantly, Roberts et al. suggested that time may have been a confound, with children spending significantly more time building rapport with the interviewer in the open- compared to closed-ended question condition (on average 16 minutes versus 6 minutes, respectively) and controlling for time in rapport-building would be important in future studies. Similarly, Brown et al. (2013) examined the effects of different rapport-building methods by varying question type (i.e., open-ended compared to closed-ended questions) and whether or not children practiced recalling a recent past event. All children engaged in a rapport-building conversation that involved questions pertaining to their families, things they liked to do, and their schools. Consistent with Roberts et al., the authors found that rapport-building with open-ended invitations and the practice recall of a recent past event was associated with more detailed responses in the substantive interview. Similarly, Yi and Lamb (2018) found that children aged 3 to 6 years who were trained to respond to open-ended questions regarding either episodic or semantic memory narrative-practice topics were more informative later in the interview. However, narrative practice did not increase the likelihood of disclosing another’s secret, nor did the type of memory practice have an impact on children’s accuracy or informativeness. Conversely, Sauerland et al. (2018) varied the amount of rapport-building with no rapport-building, minimal rapport-building that consisted of a few personal questions, and extensive rapport-building that used open-ended questions about the children allowing narrative recall practice. They found limited evidence of the effects of the rapport-building, with no effect on length of reports. However, they did report that adolescents who had extensive rapport were more likely to be accurate than younger children or adults.

Importantly, when examining children’s disclosures of sexual abuse, Sternberg et al. (1997) reported that children who developed rapport through open-ended questions provided 2.5 times as many details about target events compared to children who were asked closed-ended questions. More recently, Lyon et al. (2014) found that although narrative practice rapport-building with 4- to 9-year-old children did not increase the likelihood that maltreated and nonmaltreated children would disclose another’s transgression, it did increase the productivity of their disclosures. Indeed, research has shown that there are benefits of narrative practice on children’s disclosure productivity in both maltreated children (e.g., field studies; Anderson et al., 2014; Hershkowitz, 2009; Price et al., 2013, 2016) and nonmaltreated children (e.g., experimental studies; Whiting & Price, 2017). Narrative practice gives children exactly that – the opportunity to practice giving a narrative by answering open-ended questions with the goal of encouraging more detailed reports in the substantive part of questioning. Overall, these mixed results suggest the use of open-ended questions with narrative practice rapport-building may improve children’s detailed reports, but it might not increase their willingness to disclose in the first place (Lavoie et al., 2021), and might not create actual feelings of rapport among children.

Relational aspects of rapport

While a few studies have examined the impact of narrative practice rapport-building on children’s reports, there remains a lack of research into the likely mechanisms for its impact, including the relational aspects of rapport-building, such as trust (Saywitz et al., 2015, 2019). Trust is based on reliability (keeping one’s promise), emotion (being supportive, avoiding criticism) and honesty (being neutral/genuine rather than manipulative/malicious; Rotenberg et al., 2005). Additionally, Tickle-Degnen and Rosenthal’s (1987, 1990) widely accepted model of rapport suggests that there are three key, interrelated behavioral components of rapport – mutual attentiveness, positivity, and coordination (Abbe & Brandon, 2013; Saywitz et al., 2015). Mutual attentiveness creates a focused and cohesive interaction by having participants express mutual interest and engagement. This can include eye contact, open body posture, and spatial configurations that signal communication, accessibility, and interest. Positivity refers to mutual friendliness and caring, and coordination can be considered as having harmony or being “in sync” with the other person in a form of interactional synchrony (Tickle-Degnen & Rosenthal, 1987, 1990). All three components should be present at some level for proper rapport to be achieved.

Given the importance of ensuring accurate and truthful reports, unfamiliar interviewers need to gain the trust and cooperation of children by establishing rapport and commonality between the child and interviewer (Hershkowitz, 2011; Saywitz et al., 2015). Indeed, the goal of the rapport phase of forensic interviewing is to make the child feel comfortable (Collins et al., 2014) and the relationship between the child and interviewer is believed to be an important factor in children’s ability to communicate competently and self-disclose (Saywitz et al., 2015). Once children feel respected, accepted, and safe, they are more likely to respond to questions honestly (Hughes & Baker, 1990). In a study by Collins et al. (2014), Scottish interviewers noted that younger children tended to be reluctant to communicate at first, but that rapport-building provided them with reassurance and made them feel comfortable with the interviewer, and that generally, children’s anxieties about the interview situation decreased over time. More recently, Foster et al. (2022) found that children were more likely to disclose a transgression to an unfamiliar interviewer when they expressed stronger feelings of comfort with and likeability of that interviewer. Thus, effective rapport-building at the start of an interview may require attention to relational, emotional aspects of an interview. Yet, “emotional,” trust-building rapport techniques on children’s disclosures have not been examined. To date, no research has examined the role of interactional rapport that focuses on building trust and connection with the child prior to the substantive portion of the interview.

Age

Previous research on rapport-building has focused primarily on children aged 3 to 9 years, so little is known about whether the same rapport-building techniques are equally effective with older children and adolescents (Saywitz et al., 2019). Sauerland et al. (2018) recently examined the effects of different levels of rapport (none, minimal, or extensive) on children’s, adolescents’, and adults’ memory. Although they found that rapport-building had limited effects on statement quantity and accuracy, adolescents did profit from extensive rapport-building. Hence, research with older children and adolescents is important, given that not all types of rapport-building are likely to be equally effective for children of varying ages (Rotenberg et al., 2003; Saywitz et al., 2019). Indeed, field investigators reported uniquely negative experiences developing rapport with older children and adolescents (Collins et al., 2014). Therefore, although it is important to attempt to build rapport with all children regardless of age, their developmental levels need to be considered and adaptations may be necessary, depending on their presentation at the beginning of the rapport-building stage (Collins et al., 2014).

Age can have an important influence not only on rapport-building effectiveness, but also on children’s ability to give accurate and detailed testimony. Generally, children give increasingly accurate, detailed reports, while becoming less susceptible to suggestive, misleading interviewer questions with age (Eisen et al., 2002; Goodman & Reed, 1986). In contrast, in terms of children’s disclosures, much research has examined children’s willingness to lie and give false reports in experimental studies (e.g., Evans & Lee, 2011, 2013; Foster et al., 2019; Wyman et al., 2019; see Talwar & Crossman, 2011, 2012). Increasingly from school age, children will conceal information to avoid negative consequences for themselves (e.g., Evans & Lee, 2013; Talwar & Lee, 2002, 2008) or to protect others (e.g., Bottoms et al., 2002; Gordon et al., 2014; Lavoie et al., 2017; Talwar et al., 2004, 2016). With regard to question types, Wyman et al. (2019) found that while children 10 to 11 years of age were more likely to disclose another’s transgression in free-recall open-ended questions, younger children were more likely to only disclose when asked closed-ended questions about the event.

In the child maltreatment literature, while some studies report that children’s willingness to disclose tends to increase with age (e.g., Hershkowitz et al., 2005; London et al., 2005; Pipe et al., 2007; Smith et al., 2000), others report that older children may be more reluctant to disclose transgressions (e.g., Hershkowitz et al., 2007) and still others have found no relationship between age and disclosures (e.g., Gries et al., 1996; Rush et al., 2014). More recently, Leach et al. (2017) found that children’s disclosure rates tend to increase during childhood through early adolescence, at which point disclosures tended to decline. Overall, despite the belief that developmental sensitivity is a crucial rapport-building principle, questions remain regarding how developmental differences influence rapport development and effectiveness (Saywitz et al., 2015) in both maltreated and nonmaltreated populations.

Current study

The primary goal of the current study was to examine whether an interactional rapport-building phase would influence the likelihood children would disclose another’s transgression and the accuracy of their testimonies compared to narrative practice rapport-building. Therefore, the current study aimed to examine the effect of two rapport-building techniques with children 7 to 13 years of age. Potential developmental differences of the rapport-building techniques between younger (7 to 9) and older (10 to 13) children were examined as well.

To examine children’s willingness to disclose a crime, children witnessed an ecologically valid theft paradigm. In this realistic theft-paradigm, the children witnessed an alleged crime with serious consequences to the transgressor, who asked the children to lie and falsely deny the transgression. This high-cost situation was used to provoke emotions and behaviors similar to those children may experience witnessing a comparable real-life theft. Asking children to lie by an experimenter-transgressor is analogous to a situation in which a child eyewitness is coached or asked by someone to lie to conceal a wrongdoing.

Children were then interviewed about the event by a novel interviewer. Children either engaged in a Narrative Practice Rapport-building phase or an Interactional Rapport-building phase with that interviewer. Narrative Practice Rapport-building involved asking the child to describe various experienced events. The Interactional Rapport-building phase included an interactive activity designed to focus on the relational aspects of rapport-building including mutual attentiveness, positivity, and coordination between child and interviewer. The activity was designed based on research on play therapy, which suggests that engaging in an interactive activity with children allows the adult to show interest in the child’s world, alters the typical power imbalance present in these interactions, reduces the child’s anxiety. and encourages communication (Carter et al., 1996; Hudak, 2000; Springer et al., 2012). In the current study, we employed a magictrick activity where the interviewer and child worked together to learn and perform the trick. After the rapport-building phase, children were interviewed about their interactions with the transgressor using open-ended questions (free recall question, reverse order, and retell questions) and closed-ended questions. We examined whether children truthfully disclosed the theft or concealed the crime, the length of their reports, and accuracy of details. As the relationship between the child and interviewer is key to establishing rapport, a measure of rapport was included to assess children’s actual feelings of rapport with the interviewer as well.

Based upon Tickle-Degnen and Rosenthal’s (1987, 1990) theory of rapport, it was expected that children in the Interactional Rapport-building condition would report feeling stronger rapport with the interviewer compared to children in the Narrative Practice Rapport-building condition. Moreover, it was posited that children in the Interactional Rapport-building condition would be more likely to disclose during the interview and less likely to conceal the theft. Based upon research with narrative practice rapport-building, it was expected that children in the Narrative Practice Rapport-building condition would give longer and more accurate reports. Based upon previous research, it was expected that the older children would disclose the theft earlier in the interview, during free recall, and that their disclosures would be longer and more detailed than the younger children. Finally, it was posited that older children in the Interactional Rapport-building condition would give more truthful disclosures in free recall and that they would disclose the theft when directly asked more than younger children.

Method

Participants

Participants included 114 children (n males = 58, n females = 56) between the ages of 7 and 13 years (M = 10.11 years, SD = 1.68) from a large metropolitan area (i.e., population approximately 3,800,000). There were 57 children in the younger age group, between 7-9 years of age (M = 8.75 years, SD =.80; 29 females), and 57 children in the older age group between 10-13 years of age (M = 11.47 years, SD = 1.13; 27 females). There were 57 children in the Narrative Practice Rapport-building condition (27 younger children and 30 older children; M = 9.96 years, SD = 1.72) and 57 children in the Interactional Rapport-building condition (30 younger children and 27 older children; M = 10.26 years, SD = 1.65). The children were predominately English or bilingual speakers from middle-income families. When parents were asked the open-ended question “to which ethnic or cultural group does your child belong?”, they reported a variety of answers: 28.1% identified their child as Caucasian, 20.2% as culturally or racially mixed, 15.8% provided their child’s culture or nationality (e.g., Canadian; Italian), 8.7% identified their child as of Asian, African, or Indian descent, and 7.0% identified as Jewish. 20.2% did not answer the question. Parental consent was obtained for all children prior to participation. The study passed the McGill University Research Ethics Board (REB # 284-0115).

Materials

Child/Adult Rapport Measure-Child Report (CHARM-C)

Directly following the interview, children completed the CHARM-C as a measure of perceived rapport with the interviewer (Gurland & Grolnick, 2003). The questionnaire included 20 items rated on a 4-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (Not True at All) to 4 (Very True). Sample items include “The interviewer gave me a relaxed feeling; made me feel important; seemed to like children). Responses were reverse-scored when necessary (e.g., The interviewer only pretended to be my friend; didn’t want to get to know me better). The scores on the 20 items were totaled to create summary scores with higher scores indicating greater rapport.

Additionally, children were asked a follow-up question about their subjective impression of the interview. Depending on their condition, the children were asked a final closed-ended question at the end of the questionnaire: “Did the magic trick (or practice questions) make you feel more comfortable with the interviewer?”

Procedure

Transgression event

Following parental completion of the consent form, the child and the primary experimenter (E1) went to a testing room to perform a series of activities (e.g., memory games; reading short stories), which were primarily an opportunity for the child and interviewer to get to know each other. After the activities, a confederate came into the room to look for a notebook. In doing so, they found a wallet on a nearby table. The confederate asked E1 and the child if the wallet was theirs, to which both participants replied no. The confederate then left the wallet on the table, took their book, and left the room. E1 then told the child that they had to retrieve their jacket, which happened to be located near the wallet. E1 gave the wallet to the children and asked them to open it to see to whom it belonged. When the children provided the answer, the examiner feigned surprise and responded that the person did not work at the lab and took the wallet back. Then E1 looked in the wallet, saw that there was a $20 bill inside, took it out, showed it to the child, and then stole the money by putting it in their pocket and saying, “I’m going to take it”.

The children were then brought into an interview room to be interviewed by the interviewer (E2). Just before meeting E2, E1 asked the children to lie to E2 if they were asked about the theft. E1 asked the children to say that E1 did not take the money from the wallet, even though they did. E1 informed the children that they were in financial hardship by telling them “The money did not belong to me, but I took it because I really needed it”. E2, an adult the children had never met before, then entered the interview room and E1 left. E2 informed the children that they would be asking them questions about their experiences with E1.

Rapport conditions

The interview with E2 started with either the Narrative Practice Rapport-building stage or the Interactional Rapport-building stage to make the child feel comfortable with the new interviewing adult. In the Narrative Practice Rapport-building condition (M_duration = 7.39 minutes, SD = 1.60), interviewers asked the children open-ended questions to get to know them, based on questions used in the Revised NICHD protocol and in previous studies (Brown et al., 2013; Orbach et al., 2000; Sternberg et al., 2001). Children were asked to tell the interviewer about themselves: to describe an event that made them angry or sad, to describe everything they could remember about their last birthday, and to describe everything that happened from the time they woke up that morning. They were asked the angry or sad question in order to practice describing a previous event that elicited negative emotion. Children were asked to describe the events of their last birthday to give them practice with a sequential narrative in the past, and about the morning so that they would provide a sequential narrative of a more recent set of events. Interviewers were trained by the first author, a doctoral candidate in a clinical child psychology program at the time, to engage the children with follow-up questions, find similarities in interests, and maintain an overall supportive and open tone through non-verbal behaviors (e.g., nodding), and general conversational overtures (e.g., “ok”, “I see, tell me more about ….”).

In the Interactional Rapport-building condition (M_duration = 7.33 minutes, SD = 1.33), interviewers engaged the children in an interactive activity to build comfort and rapport. This was done because developmentally appropriate play activities have been found by psychotherapists to be a useful way to establish rapport between children and therapists in clinical settings (Hudak, 2000; Springer et al., 2012). Given that this is the first known study to use this technique to establish rapport, preliminary pilot data (n = 5) indicated that this activity was effective with younger and older children. Specifically, the child and interviewer engaged in learning a magic trick using playing cards, an activity specifically chosen for its developmental appropriateness for the age range of 7-13 years of age, as well as for the interactive component between the interviewer and child. Based upon similar clinical techniques (e.g., Carter et al., 1996; Hudak, 2000; Springer et al., 2012) to help build trust between the child and interviewer, children were asked to help the interviewer practice the magic trick because they were learning how to do it. In order to do so, the interviewer said they needed to demonstrate the magic trick and teach it to the children. The interviewer explained that if they can teach the trick, then they know it.

The magic trick included the three essential components of rapport detailed in Tickle-Degnen and Rosenthal’s theory (1987, 1990). It was constructed to include mutual attentiveness so that the child and interviewer would experience a feeling of mutual interest in what the other person was saying or doing throughout the rapport-building and interview stages (Tickle-Degnen & Rosenthal, 1990). Throughout the magic trick, the interviewer focused on directing their attention to the child while maintaining the child’s attention and engaged in an open and inviting body posture (e.g., forward leaning, eye contact). Interviewers maintained positivity by displaying mutual friendliness and caring including smiling and head nodding. They also engaged in behavioral coordination and interactional synchrony with the children by not only showing them the magic trick but also teaching them how to do it and then having both the child and the interviewer practice the magic trick together. In this way, children and the interviewer engaged in a form of mimicry, reciprocity, and shared understanding (Abbe & Brandon, 2013), ideally to establish trust and rapport in this condition. Children were also provided with a copy of the magic trick instructions at the end of the study so they could practice at home.

To control for length of time when comparing conditions of rapport (Roberts et al., 2004), time spent in the rapport phase was kept to approximately 7.5 minutes in both conditions. This is consistent with Davies et al.’s (2000) study that indicated that shorter rapport-building (less than 8 minutes) was associated with longer testimonies. Rapport longer than 8 minutes was thought to reduce children’s attention and/or the interviewer’s progress during the substantive questioning stage. Additionally, interviewers in both conditions were instructed to maintain a consistent tone of voice and to use similar supportive verbal and non-verbal behaviors during rapport-building and throughout the interview (i.e., during the substantive part of the interview detailed below), in order to control for the amount of supportiveness offered.

Interview questions

After the rapport-building phase, all children received the same standardized interview. First children were asked an open-ended free recall question (“Please describe in as much detail as possible, everything that happened with E1” [the transgressor]) and received a follow-up prompt (“Anything else?”) to allow for a detailed explanation of everything they remembered with E1. Children were then asked two follow-up open-ended questions. They were asked a reverse order question (“Describe everything you remember from upstairs with E1, but backwards”) and retell question (“One last time, please describe everything you remember from upstairs with E1”). After these open-ended questions, children were then asked a series of closed-ended questions (e.g., “Did anything happen that was unexpected?”, “Did you see a wallet?”, “Did you see money in the wallet?”, “Did someone take the money from the wallet?”, “Did E1 take the money from the wallet?”) with the goal of providing ample opportunities for children to disclose the theft.

Following the interview, a third experimenter entered the room and explained the CHARM-C questionnaire to the children. The experimenter explained that the questions pertained to how they felt interacting with E2 (the interviewer). Children were asked to assent to complete the questionnaire either on their own, or in the case of younger children, the questions were read to them. Children indicated their answers by pointing to a sheet with the answers written and 4 smiley faces that corresponded to the 4-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (Not True at All) to 4 (Very True).

Once the children finished the questionnaire, they were fully debriefed with their parent(s). Children learned that the theft was not real, that they had helped the researchers learn more about what makes children comfortable in interviews, and that they should always tell a trusted adult if they are ever asked to lie for someone. Both experimenters answered any questions the parents or children had and ensured that the children understood the true nature of the study and the need for deception. Parents received compensation for their time ($20) and the children were provided with a prize.

Coding procedures

Children’s interviews were video-taped and then transcribed into written manuscripts. Children who disclosed the theft in the open-ended questions (free recall, reverse order, retell) were coded as truth-tellers (i.e., disclosers) while children who did not disclose were coded as attempting to conceal (i.e., concealers). The last closed-ended, Yes/No question was a direct question about the guilt of E1 (“Did E1 take the money from the wallet?”). Children who disclosed that E1 had taken the money were scored as truth-tellers (i.e., disclosers), even if they did not disclose in prior questions. Children who said “no” and had not previously disclosed E1 taking the money were coded as concealers. Transcripts were coded separately by two interviewers with 100% inter-coder agreement.

Children’s replies to the open-ended questions were also examined for the length of their responses and the number of accurate transgression details reported regarding the theft situation. The length of testimony for the open-ended questions included the total number of words disclosed as measured by a word processing program. The number of accurate transgression details was calculated by counting each unique (new) detail disclosed about the theft of the money and E1 asking the child to lie. This metric was modeled after Statement Validity Analysis (SVA) coding procedures that have been used in previous studies to analyze testimony content and credibility in true and false witness statements ( Wyman et al., 2020; see Colwell et al., 2013, for a review). For example, the statement “She took twenty dollars from the wallet. She told me not to tell anyone.” includes 14 words and 10 transgression details (see Wyman et al., 2020). The first author was the main coder of the transcripts and a second individual coded 25% of the transcripts to establish reliability. There was substantial agreement between the two raters who coded the number of accurate transgression details (Kappa = .77, p <.001).

Results

Preliminary analyses revealed no significant gender effects on children’s responses. Thus, the results for both genders were combined for subsequent analyses.

Children’s feelings of rapport

First, to examine whether children’s feelings of rapport with the interviewer differed based on rapport condition (Narrative Practice Rapport-building vs Interactional Rapport-building) and age (younger vs older), a two-way ANOVA was conducted on CHARM-C scores. The main effect of condition was statistically significant, F(1, 113) = 6.89, p = .010, partial η² = .06. Children in the Interactional Rapport-building condition felt significantly more rapport with the interviewer as measured by the CHARM-C (M = 68.11, SD = 8.37) compared to the children in the Narrative Practice Rapport-building condition (M = 63.16, SD = 10.29). Additionally, there was a significant main effect of age, F(1, 113) = 4.61, p = .034, partial η² = .04. The younger children felt significantly more rapport with the interviewer (M = 67.76, SD = 7.92) compared to the older children (M = 63.64, SD = 10.73). The interaction between the two variables was not significant (p = .292).

Following the CHARM-C, children were also asked if the interaction at the beginning of the interview (magic trick or narrative questions) made them feel more comfortable with the interviewer (yes/no). A logistic regression with condition and age as predictors was conducted on children’s responses. For this and subsequent logistic regressions, the independent variables were entered first as predictors (see Menard, 2002) and additional predictors (i.e., interactions) were added on the second step to determine whether they contributed significantly to the model. Significance was assessed by a block χ² test (or χ² difference test). The model was significant, χ²(2) = 10.99, p = .004. The model explained 14.9% (Nagelkerke R²) of the variance and correctly classified 74.3% of the cases. Condition was a significant predictor of children feeling comfortable with the interviewer, b = −.79, SE = .26, Wald(1) = 9.37, p = .002, OR = .46, 95% CI [.28, .75]. In the Interactional Rapport-building condition, 46 (88.5%) children said that the use of the magic trick made them feel more comfortable with the interviewer, whereas only 35 (61.4%) children in the Narrative Practice Rapport-building condition reported that the interaction made them feel more comfortable with the interviewer. Age was not a significant predictor (p = .960). The interaction entered on the second step was not significant (p = .290).

Of note, children’s feelings of rapport and comfort with the interviewer were not significantly correlated with any of the outcome measures reported below (see Table 1). Therefore, these variables were not included in the following analyses.

Table 1. Correlations between rapport and testimony variables.

Variable	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
1. Total Charm C Score	–
2. Condition	-.257**	–
3. Age (Continuous)	-.201*	.093	–
4. Attempt to Conceal	.062	.174	-.296**	–
5. Concealment	-.018	.159	-.276**	.709**	–
6. Free Recall Length	-.049	-.079	.155	.114	-.109	–
7. Free Recall Accuracy	.048	-.128	.248**	-.396**	-.251**	.232*	–
8. More Comfortable	.065	-.309**	.038	-.138	-.183	.118	.169	–

* p < .05. ^** p < .01.

Children’s concealment

Children’s attempts to conceal in response to open-ended questions

Overall, 80 (70.2%) children attempted to conceal the theft throughout the interview’s open-ended questions. In contrast, in the first free-recall open-ended question, 24 (21.1%) children disclosed the crime. In the follow-up, open-ended questions (reverse order [4 children] and retell [6 children]), 10 (8.8%) more children disclosed the crime. In total at the end of the open-ended questions, 34 children (29.8%) had told the truth and disclosed the theft. A logistic regression with age and condition on the first step, and the interaction between the two variables on the second step was conducted with children’s truthful disclosures (0) versus attempts to conceal (1) in the open-ended questions as the predicted variable. The first model was significant, χ² (2, 114) = 9.48, Nagelkerke R² = 0.11, p =.009, correctly classifying 74.6% of the cases. There was a main effect of age group (b = −1.11, SE = .44, Wald(1) = 6.38, p = .012, OR = .33, 95% CI [.14, .78]), which significantly predicted children’s attempts to conceal the theft in open-ended questions. Fewer older children (59.6%) attempted to conceal compared to younger children (80.7%). Rapport condition was not significant (p = .072). However, the second step was significant, χ² (1, 114) = 4.73, Nagelkerke R² = 0.17, p = .030, as was the interaction between age and condition, b = .96, SE = .45, Wald(1) = 4.65, p = .031, OR = 2.61, 95% CI [1.09, 6.25]. As seen in Figure 1, more older children in the Interactional Rapport-building condition told the truth and disclosed (n = 16) than younger children (n = 5), or children in the Narrative Practice Rapport-building condition (younger: n = 6; older: n = 7).

Figure 1. Percentage of children who disclosed in open-ended questions by age and rapport condition.

Children’s concealment by the end of the interview

Following the open-ended questions, children were asked a series of closed-ended questions. While all the children who disclosed in the open-ended questions continued to maintain their true disclosures, 17 more children disclosed during the closed-ended questions (14.9%). Overall, 51 (44.7%) children disclosed the transgression by the end of the interview. Of those children who disclosed, only 13 alluded to the theft and mentioned that they were asked by E1 to “keep a secret and not tell” in the interview. Specifically, 9 children (15.8%) in the Interactional Rapport-building condition and 4 children (7%) in the Narrative Practice Rapport-building condition mentioned E1 asking them to keep the secret. Overall, 63 children (55.3%) maintained their concealment throughout the interview until the end and made no disclosure of the theft.

A logistic regression with age and condition on the first step, and the interaction between the two variables on the second step was conducted on children’s concealment through the end of the interview. The first model was not significant, χ² (2, 114) = 4.94, p = .085. The second step was significant, χ² (1, 114) = 4.92, Nagelkerke R² = 0.11, p =.027, along with the interaction between age x condition, b = .87, SE = .40, Wald(1) = 4.79, p = .029, OR = 2.38, 95% CI [1.09, 5.15]). As seen in Figure 2, more older children in the Interactional Rapport-building condition told the truth and disclosed (n = 19) than younger children (n = 11), or children in the Narrative Practice Rapport-building condition (younger: n = 11; older: n = 10).

Figure 2. Percentage of children who disclosed at the end of the interview by age and rapport condition.

Quality of children’s free-recall disclosures

Effect of rapport and age

To investigate the quality of children’s disclosures in response to open-ended questions as a function of age group, rapport conditions, and children’s attempting to conceal, univariate ANOVAs were conducted. Separate analyses were computed for length of testimony and for the number of unique accurate transgression details pertaining to the theft situation including whether children reported being asked to lie by E1. Similar to the attempt to conceal section above, children were classified as giving a true report if they disclosed in any of the open-ended questions, and as attempting to conceal (lying by omission) if they did not disclose the theft through all open-ended questions.

Children tended to offer more lengthy testimony in response to the free recall (M = 127.21; SD = 101.45), compared to the reverse order (M = 66.64; SD = 41.33) or retell questions (M = 84.46, SD = 76.30). For overall length of testimony in the open-ended questions (M = 216.16, SD = 157.27), there was a main effect of age group, F(1, 112) = 4.67, p = .033, partial η² = .04. Older children (M = 260.05, SD = 22.50) had longer overall testimony length in the open-ended questions than the younger children (M = 185.66; SD = 26.07). There were no significant main effects of rapport condition (p = .560), or whether they disclosed or attempted to conceal (p = .260). None of the interactions among these variables were significant (ps > .05).

In the open-ended questions, overall, children reported on average 15.79 (SD = 16.40) accurate transgression details, with most elicited in the free recall (M = 7.67, SD = 11.95), and some added in response to the reverse order (M = 2.61, SD = 4.16) and retell questions (M = 4.76, SD = 6.72). In terms of number of accurate transgression details reported in open-ended questions, there was a significant main effect of age group, F(1, 112) = 7.47, p = .007, partial η² = .07. Older children gave significantly more accurate transgression details in response to free recall questions (M = 20.00, SD = 15.05) compared to the younger children (M = 9.09, SD = 13.82). There was also a significant main effect of attempting to conceal, F(1, 112) = 14.43, p <.001, partial η² = .12. Children who told the truth gave significantly more accurate transgression details (M = 24.79, SD = 16.92) compared to children who concealed the theft and lied by omission (M = 9.98, SD = 12.98). There was no main effect of condition (p = .560). There was an age x condition interaction, F(1, 112) = 4.07, p =.046, partial η² = .04. As seen in Table 2, older children in the Interactional Rapport-building condition gave more accurate transgression details than other children.

Table 2. Mean number of accurate transgression details (SD) children gave in open-ended questions by age and rapport condition.

Age	Rapport Condition
	Interactional Rapport-building	Narrative Practice Rapport-building
7 − 9 years	6.72 (14.31)	11.63 (13.07)
10 − 13 years	26.70 (16.09)	13.97 (11.24)

Discussion

The present study examined how children’s age and the type of rapport used during the rapport-building stage of an eyewitness interview influenced their willingness to conceal or disclose a witnessed theft. The main finding of the current study was that, in the Interactional Rapport-building condition, older children were significantly more likely to be truthful and disclose the transgression and to give more details. The current results provide an initial, exploratory understanding of how the rapport-building phase in eyewitness interviews may play an important role in children’s disclosure decision-making and may be another area for researchers and practitioners to study in order to promote more truthful disclosures.

Children’s disclosures

Overall, the majority of children attempted to conceal the theft in the open-ended questions. Only 21.1% of children spontaneously disclosed the theft in the free-recall questions. This is similar to previous research which has found children who are motivated to conceal information from an interviewer are likely to do so on free-recall questions (e.g., Pipe & Wilson, 1994; Saykaly et al., 2016). However, free recall questions also elicited the most details and those that truthfully disclosed gave more detailed reports than children who attempted to conceal. This is consistent with research and recommendations to use free recall to obtain children’s accurate and detailed reports (e.g., Cronch et al., 2006; Goodman & Melinder, 2007; Orbach et al., 2000). Although previous research has suggested cognitive load questions may help elicit children’s disclosures (e.g., Wyman et al., 2019), in the current study, asking children to give reverse order and retell questions led to only a modest increase (8.8%) in children’s disclosures and a small number of added details. These findings are similar to Saykaly et al. (2016) which also found that such questions did not much improve the quality or quantity of children’s truthful reports. In contrast, closed-ended questions did lead to more children disclosing the truth. This is congruent with previous studies which suggest that when children have been coached to conceal a wrongdoing by a transgressor, they may be reluctant to disclose the truth until directly questioned about it (e.g., Bottoms et al., 2002; Pipe & Wilson, 1994; Talwar et al., 2004).

Rapport-building

While previous research has examined the effectiveness of narrative rapport-building on children’s accuracy and disclosures, no research had examined rapport-building that was focused on establishing trust between the child and the interviewer. Furthermore, previous studies that have examined the effects of narrative rapport have been with young children aged 3 to 9 years. In the current study, we examined a novel method of building rapport via a trust-building interactive activity based upon Tickle-Degnen and Rosenthal’s (1987, 1990) theory of rapport. Specifically, the Interactional Rapport-building condition was designed to build feelings of rapport and trust in children between 7 and 13 years of age. By using an interactive activity such as the demonstration, teaching, and practice of a magic trick, children were able to actively participate in an activity to build rapport and trust. It was believed that this interactive activity would increase children’s feelings of rapport and engagement with the interviewer and lead children to be more forthcoming in their disclosures during an interview. While previous studies have not measured whether children felt rapport with the interviewer in the rapport-building stage, in the current study, we confirmed that children did feel rapport by administering to them a measure of rapport and asking them about whether they felt comfortable with the interviewers. The Interactional Rapport-building condition led to significantly higher feelings of rapport than felt by children in the Narrative Practice Rapport-building condition.

Notably, the current study found that older children in the Interactional Rapport-building condition were significantly more likely to be forthcoming about the theft and to disclose it either in the open-ended questions or later when directly questioned. The findings that fewer older children attempted to conceal in open-ended questions is somewhat consistent with previous research that older children are less willing to lie overall and less willing to lie to protect someone else (e.g., Evans & Lee, 2011; Foster et al., 2019; Lavoie et al., 2017; Lyon et al., 2014; Pipe & Wilson, 1994), but this was only true in the Interactional condition. Hence, the approach was particularly effective with older children. The children in the Narrative Practice Rapport-building condition were overall more likely to conceal and lie by omission, even when asked directly about the theft. This is in line with Lyon et al.’s (2014) study of children 4 to 9 years old whereby narrative practice rapport-building did not increase children’s disclosures. Although there is much support for the use of narrative practice in increasing the productivity of children’s reports in both field (e.g., Anderson et al., 2014; Hershkowitz, 2009; Price et al., 2013; Sternberg et al., 1997) and experimental research (e.g., Lyon et al., 2014; Yi & Lamb, 2018), experimental research has yet to support that narrative practice elicits more disclosures compared to other forms of rapport building (Lyon et al., 2014; Magnusson et al., 2020; Yi & Lamb, 2018). Therefore, the current findings suggest that an interactional trust-building rapport activity may be an effective tool for increasing older children’s willingness to disclose about another’s transgression.

Quality of children’s testimonies

Overall, older children gave longer reports than younger children. This is consistent with previous research findings that as children grow older their reports increase in length, regardless of veracity (e.g., Craig et al., 1999; Goodman & Reed, 1986; Talwar et al., 2007). However, there was no difference between the conditions. Thus, while Interactional Rapport-building did not increase the length of children’s reports, it also did not lead to shorter responses than Narrative Practice. Children in the Narrative Practice Rapport-building also did not produce longer testimonies as hypothesized. While there have been mixed results, some research has reported that children who practiced answering open-ended questions in narrative practice provided longer descriptions compared to children who did not practice (e.g., Sternberg et al., 1997). This benefit may accrue with interactional rapport activities as well.

In terms of the number of accurate details, children who told the truth gave more accurate details. This is not surprising given the fact that the children were asked by the transgressor to lie and conceal the theft. By omitting the theft, children who concealed consequently did not disclose many details related to the theft and omitted pertinent details about the incident in general (e.g., presence of the wallet) to avoid detection.

There was an effect of age in that older children gave significantly more details in open-ended questions compared to younger children. While there was no main effect of condition, there was an age by condition interaction in relation to the number of accurate details. Older children in the Interactional Rapport-building condition gave more details. No age effect was found amongst children who were in the Narrative Practice Rapport-building condition. Similarly, Sauerland et al. (2018) found that adolescents who had extensive rapport were more accurate than younger children. Thus, taken together, it suggests that older children and adolescents may benefit from an interactional rapport-building phase.

Feelings of rapport and comfort with the interviewer

Children completed a measure of rapport, the CHARM-C questionnaire, in order to indicate their subjective level of rapport with the interviewer in both the Narrative Practice Rapport-building and Interactional Rapport-building conditions. Given that the purpose of the Interactional Rapport-building condition was to create more trust and rapport than in the traditional verbal, narrative practice method of rapport, it was hypothesized that children in the Interactional Rapport-building condition would feel the most rapport with the interviewer. This hypothesis was supported in that children in this condition reported higher CHARM-C scores and they reported feeling more comfortable with the interviewer. However, while younger children reported higher CHARM-C scores, they did not explicitly state that they felt more comfortable with the interviewer. Regardless of age, almost 90% of children in the Interactional Rapport-building condition confirmed that the magic trick made them feel comfortable compared to just over 60% of the children in the Narrative Practice Rapport-building condition. This suggests that, across ages, the trust-building interactive activity did make children feel more comfortable with the interviewer. Of note, the current findings that children’s subjective feelings of rapport were not strongly linked with the outcome variables under investigation may be due to the timing of the questionnaire as it was given right after the interview, or it may be that children’s disclosures influenced their feelings of rapport as measured by the CHARM-C. Despite this, the CHARM-C questionnaire served as a manipulation check and indicated that the Interactional Rapport-building condition did have a significant effect on children’s feelings of rapport. These beginning, exploratory results suggest that future studies should continue to examine children’s subjective feelings of rapport and their impact on children’s testimonies.

Additionally, as mentioned earlier, a major issue in forensic research is establishing a definition of rapport that distinguishes “rapport” from “supportiveness”. Although some suggest that establishing good rapport is an element of supportiveness, others consider supportiveness to be a component of good rapport (Saywitz et al., 2015). Few studies differentiate between the two terms. In the current study, we did differentiate between the two concepts, and specified that in terms of “supportiveness”, interviewers were advised to maintain general, supportive behaviors as defined by Brubacher et al. (2019) consistent across conditions. Thus, the present study’s findings contribute to the limited research on the independent effects of rapport-building on children’s feelings of rapport, on children’s disclosures and on the quality of those disclosures.

Limitations and future directions

There are a few caveats to the present study. Ethically, it was not possible to recreate in a laboratory setting a more serious situation with a higher emotional impact similar to those children report upon in court cases (e.g., abuse). Nevertheless, given the ethical constraints, the theft-paradigm used did provide an ecologically-valid situation in that children believed they had witnessed a real “crime” with expected negative consequences to the transgressor. This study also replicated the theft paradigm used in other studies to realistically study children’s lie-telling and disclosures (e.g., Foster et al., 2019, Wyman et al., 2019). Additionally, in order to further increase ecological validity, future studies could examine whether a delay in interview influences children’s disclosures. Moreover, future studies that examine the effects of rapport-building are encouraged to use a more ecologically-valid interview protocol such as the NICHD protocol that provides interviewers the opportunity to ask an exhaustive number of open-ended questions, invitations, and prompts in the substantive portion of the interview in order to get the most amount of detail and to maximize productivity. Given the relatively few open-ended questions asked in the current study, compared to other standardized interview protocols, productivity and length of testimony differences between the two conditions may be more likely to emerge when children’s recall is exhaustively probed with more invitations and follow-up questions. If such a semi-structured interview protocol is used, caution should be taken not to include potential confounds. Moreover, the use of the NICHD or other semi-structured protocol may allow future researchers to more closely examine potential effects of rapport on the quantity and quality of responses to open- and closed-ended questions. In the current study, there was very little change in length of testimony or number of details in response to the closed-ended questions, by virtue of the fact that one-word responses were expected and received, which might change with use of a different protocol.

The current findings provide support for expanding the traditional concept of verbal, narrative practice based rapport by considering the implementation of a new, interactive method of building rapport based on Tickle-Degnen and Rosenthal’s (1987, 1990) theory of rapport and trust. Although the authors chose to use a magic trick as their method of building trust through an interactive, reciprocal activity, other activities may also be just as or even more effective. Future research should examine what elements are most important for establishing rapport and building trust with the interviewer.

Future research should also examine the impact of child characteristics on rapport. For instance, Yi and Lamb (2018) found that children with low social desirability scores tended to disclose a secret more often than those with high social desirability scores. In the current study, children may have wanted to behave in socially desirable ways and please either the transgressor or the interviewer. In a recent study by Foster et al. (2022), children who preferred a transgressor were more likely to lie for them, and those that preferred the interviewer were more likely to disclose a transgression. Other individual differences such as intellectual ability, verbal intelligence, and personality characteristics could also be examined (Yi & Lamb, 2018). Therefore, more research into children’s individual differences may shed more light on how rapport with adults involved in transgressions and interviews may influence their testimonies. Future studies may wish to include such measures to control for their possible effects on children’s willingness to disclose and the quality of their testimonies. It would also be beneficial for future rapport-building studies to examine the influence of child ethnicity and child maltreatment and how these variables interact with their feelings of rapport and their willingness to disclose in interview settings.

The current study’s strong age effect highlights the need to continue to examine children’s developmental differences when examining the effects of rapport-building. Not all types of rapport-building are likely to be equally effective for children of varying ages (Rotenberg et al., 2003). Given that this is one of the first studies to examine rapport-building on children’s disclosures, more research to examine developmental differences with a wider age range, from preschoolers to adolescents, is needed. Furthermore, given that this was the first study to examine the effects of a trust-building, interactive rapport-building activity, more research is needed to further extend the theory that this may be another way to effectively build rapport in addition to standard narrative practice. While there is evidence that narrative practice increases the productivity of children’s reports, other techniques may be needed to increase actual disclosures. The current study’s findings suggest that more attention may be warranted to focus on developing ways of increasing rapport to increase children’s disclosures. A future study could include a combined narrative and interactional rapport-building phase to establish whether a combined method is most effective. Finally, as Saywitz et al. (2015, 2019) note, successful rapport is dependent on an accord between the child’s and the interviewer’s subjective experiences in the interview; yet no studies to date have examined this dynamic using measures of perceived rapport like the CHARM.

Conclusion

This was the first known study to manipulate rapport to include an interactive activity instead of the standard narrative practice. The current findings suggest that a rapport-building activity based on mutual attention, positivity and coordination of behavior may increase the likelihood that older children truthfully disclose another’s transgression. These findings suggest future investigation is needed to examine additional techniques for operationalizing rapport-building at the beginning of interviews to increase children’s disclosures and accurate, detailed reports.

Declaration of interest statement

The authors report no potential competing interest.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the second author, [V.T.]. The data are not publicly available due to their containing information that could compromise the privacy of research participants.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by at a doctoral fellowship for the first author from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), and a SSHRC Insight grant (# 435-2019-0245) for the second author.