Effects of adversarial questioning on response accuracy in analog forensic interviews

Abstract

Few behavior-analytic studies have examined the effects of interviewer behavior on interviewee responding in the context of forensic interviews, and these were all conducted with child participants. Insufficient research in this area limits our understanding of underlying behavioral processes and precludes the development of effective methods for studying these processes. In the current study, we examined the effects of interviewer behavior on response accuracy for seven adult interviewees. Participants viewed brief videos depicting a crime and answered, “yes” or “no” questions presented in a neutral (i.e., unbiased and direct) or adversarial interview (i.e., the interviewer asked leading questions, provided statements of disapproval and repeated questions for accurate responses, and delivered praise for inaccurate responses). Most participants showed substantial reductions in response accuracy during the adversarial interview condition. Quantitative analysis indicated that most inaccurate responding occurred when participants changed their answers from accurate to inaccurate following interviewer feedback and requestioning.