TY - JOUR
T1 - Children’s Underextended Understanding of Touch
AU - Sullivan, Colleen E.
AU - Stolzenberg, Stacia N.
AU - Williams, Shanna
AU - Lyon, Thomas D.
N1 - Funding Information:
This project was supported by Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Grant HD087685 to Thomas D. Lyon
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 American Psychological Association
PY - 2022/10/31
Y1 - 2022/10/31
N2 - Children screened for sexual abuse are typically asked about touch, but their understanding of the meaning of touch has received little direct study. We asked 4 to 9-year-old children (N = 122; M = 6.00, SD = 1.49; 43% male) Yes-No questions (“Is the boy/girl touching the girl/boy?”/“Are the boy and girl touching?”) or Invitations (“What’s happening in this picture?”) when shown drawings depicting different types of touch: Manual (i.e., with the hand), Nonmanual (i.e., with other body part), Object, and No Touch. In addition to eliciting a greater number of false alarms, Yes-No questions elicited elevated rates of false “no” responses to Object Touch and Nonmanual Touch, without eliciting more true reports of touch than Invitations. Although children’s definitions of touch became less restrictive with age, even 9-year-old children’s understanding of touch often excluded Object Touch, especially when queried through Yes-No questions.
AB - Children screened for sexual abuse are typically asked about touch, but their understanding of the meaning of touch has received little direct study. We asked 4 to 9-year-old children (N = 122; M = 6.00, SD = 1.49; 43% male) Yes-No questions (“Is the boy/girl touching the girl/boy?”/“Are the boy and girl touching?”) or Invitations (“What’s happening in this picture?”) when shown drawings depicting different types of touch: Manual (i.e., with the hand), Nonmanual (i.e., with other body part), Object, and No Touch. In addition to eliciting a greater number of false alarms, Yes-No questions elicited elevated rates of false “no” responses to Object Touch and Nonmanual Touch, without eliciting more true reports of touch than Invitations. Although children’s definitions of touch became less restrictive with age, even 9-year-old children’s understanding of touch often excluded Object Touch, especially when queried through Yes-No questions.
KW - Child sexual abuse
KW - Children’s underextension
KW - Children’s understanding of touch
KW - Object touch
KW - Question type
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U2 - 10.1037/law0000374
DO - 10.1037/law0000374
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85142287747
VL - 28
SP - 505
EP - 514
JO - Psychology, Public Policy, and Law
JF - Psychology, Public Policy, and Law
SN - 1076-8971
IS - 4
ER -