Development of interview techniques for abused children.

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The aim of the present paper is to investigate what kind of interview is best for use with children victims of it 1-treatment for the purpose of obtaining accurate information from children. In the part one of this paper, former studies were reviewed. In the part two, an experimental study was reported that examined whether children as participants could avoid being misled by misleading questions presented after some training. Concretely, children aged 4-5 years were presented with a short story and were asked ten questions concerning the story in eluding five misleading and five not misleading questions. Before the procedure of questions, one fourth of the children were misled by one misleading question and were corrected (One-question condition), another fourth were misled by four questions and were corrected (Four-question condition), another fourth were asked to draw pictures of the story (Drawing condition), and the other fourth did not experience such procedures (Control condition). Comparing the results of the conditions, children in the four-question condition and the drawing condition were not misled significantly compared with control condition. In addition, children in the four-question condition were less misled than children in the drawing condition. Finally, on the basis of the results of the experiment, some issues were argued concerning the desirable methods of interviews to children victims of criminals.