Interviewing children about real and fictitious events: revisiting the narrative elaboration procedure

Elementary school children participated in a staged event. Two weeks later they were randomly assigned to three interview conditions: (a) a streamlined version of the Narrative Elaboration (NE) procedure involving training in the use of reminder cue cards, (b) exposure to reminder cue cards without training in their use (cue card control group), and (c) a standard interview including no NE training or exposure to reminder cue cards (standard-interview control group). Children in each interview condition were questioned about the staged event and a fictitious event to determine whether children trained in the streamlined NE procedure would provide more information about a staged event than would children in the two control groups and whether the NE interview would result in increased reporting of false information when questioned about a fictitious event. Results indicated that children questioned with the NE interview reported a greater amount of accurate, but not a greater amount of inaccurate, information during cue-card presentation for the staged event than did the cue-card control group. Analyses further indicated that the NE-interview group did not report significantly more false information about the fictitious event than did children in the two control groups. Large standard deviations for the NE-interview children's cue-card recall indicate that the streamlined NE procedure was useful for many children in reporting the staged event, but may have contributed to a small number of children providing false information for the fictitious event. Further research is being conducted to determine which children may be more likely to be helped and which children may be more likely to provide false information regarding a fictitious event.