The influence of multiple interviews on the verbal markers of children's deception.

This study investigated different verbal expressive markers of children recounting both true and false events. Seventy-eight children (M age = 7.58 years) interacted with a research assistant on 3 consecutive days. All children played a game that included a touching component in which the research assistant placed stickers on the child's body. Parents were then asked to coach their children to lie during subsequent interviews occurring 1 week later. Children were interviewed over 3 consecutive days. Results indicated that verbal expressive markers (e.g., cognitive operations, spontaneous corrections, admissions of lack of knowledge, temporal markers) of true and intentionally false reports were different in the first interview. However, these differences disappeared over subsequent interviews. Results of the current study highlight the importance of recording the first interview in which children disclose, particularly when using verbal markers as indicators of deception.