We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
The Gestural Misinformation Effect in Child Interviews in Switzerland.
- Authors
Meyer, Kendra Rita; Blades, Mark; Krähenbühl, Sarah
- 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.
- Subjects
SWITZERLAND; PILOT projects; INTELLIGIBILITY of speech; INTERVIEWING; COMMUNICATION; DESCRIPTIVE statistics; RESEARCH funding; NONVERBAL communication in children; MISINFORMATION
- Publication
Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 2023, Vol 47, Issue 1, p99
- ISSN
0191-5886
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s10919-022-00419-0