Meyer, K.R. orcid.org/0000-0003-3250-0539, Blades, M. and Krähenbühl, S. (2023) The gestural misinformation effect in child interviews in Switzerland. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 47. pp. 99-114. ISSN 0191-5886
Abstract
Gestures embody concepts in the form of universal representations. Researchers have highlighted that social communication often embodies nonverbal behavior. A forensic interviewer’s nonverbal behavior, such as gesturing during an interview, could communicate misleading information and may cause inaccuracies in the interviewees’ testimonies. The current study was conducted in Switzerland and included 108 child participants, in three age groups (a younger sample aged 6–9 years, n = 32) (a middle sample aged 10–11 years, n = 40) and an older sample aged 12–13 years, n = 36). Participants viewed a video and completed an interview about the video, individually, immediately after. During the questioning, the interviewer deliberately misled the interviewees with nonverbal gestures. The results showed that 95 children were misled by at least one gesture and that gestures led to a significant decrease in accuracy. Children also incorporated misleading gestures and reported false information; adding to existing evidence that misinformation can also be communicated through nonverbal gestures. Our findings demonstrate the negative influence of misleading gestures in child eyewitness interviews and provide more evidence for the robustness of the gestural misinformation effect, reported in previous research.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2023. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Keywords: | Child interviewing; Gestural misinformation effect; Gestures; Child eyewitness interviews |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > Department of Psychology (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 06 Mar 2023 14:29 |
Last Modified: | 04 Jul 2024 14:41 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10919-022-00419-0 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Science and Business Media LLC |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s10919-022-00419-0 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:197040 |