Narrative elaboration: test of a new procedure for interviewing children

Because young children provide incomplete accounts of the past and tend to acquiesce to leading questions, procedures are needed to help them describe past events fully, without contaminating memory. This study tests the efficacy of "narrative elaboration," an innovative procedure designed to expand children's spontaneous reports of past events, reducing the need for leading questions. One hundred thirty-two children from 2 age groups (7-8 years and 10-11 years) were assigned randomly to 1 of 3 preparation conditions: (a) narrative elaboration intervention, (b) instruction-based intervention, and (c) control group. After participating in a staged activity and subsequent preparation sessions, children were interviewed about the activity. Children in the narrative elaboration condition demonstrated a 53% improvement in spontaneous recall over the control group, without compromising accuracy. Younger children using the narrative elaboration procedure performed at the level of older children in the control group. Discussion centers on implications for interviewing child witnesses and preparing them for courtroom examination.