Pictures as communication support in child forensic interviews

The Convention of the Rights of the Child stipulates that children have the right to freely express their views in legal matters affecting their lives. However, young children and children with cognitive disabilities may not be able to provide detailed verbal statements when interviewed with the current interviewing methods but would need communication support to effectively make themselves understood. The project seeks to explore whether using pictures in child forensic interviews could be beneficial for child victims and witnesses with limited verbal abilities. It is important to study the effects pictures on children’s testimonies as pictures may be suggestive and could increase the risk of contaminating the child’s report or memory.

We will first study how children of different ages interpret and understand pictures used in graphic systems of symbols. In follow-up experiments, we will investigate how using picture affects the length and accuracy of accounts provided by young preschoolers and children with cognitive disabilities. In the final part of the project, we will study prosecutors’ and child forensic interviewers’ views on using pictures in child forensic interviews. To ensure that the project includes children’s perspective, we will consult with a child advisory board regarding the planning of the study, methods used, interpretation of the results, and distribution of the findings.