Physiological stress reactivity and health symptoms in children and adolescents: The value of a multi-system approach

The current study examined the influence of the putative confession (in which children are told that the suspect told them “everything that happened” and “wants [the child] to tell the truth”) and evidence presentation on 9- to 12-year-old maltreated and non-maltreated children’s disclosure (N = 321). Half of the children played a forbidden game with an adult confederate that resulted in a laptop computer breaking (no transgression occurred for the other half of the children), followed by coaching to conceal the forbidden game and to falsely disclose the sanctioned game. Children were then interviewed about the interaction with the confederate. Among the 9- and 10-year-olds, the putative confession led to a higher rate of breakage disclosure (62%) than the control condition (13%) and to a higher rate of leakage of incriminating details during recall (47% vs. 9%). Older children were more likely to disclose than younger children and to be uninfluenced by the putative confession. Among all ages, evidence presentation elicited disclosures from 63% of children who had not previously disclosed without eliciting any false disclosures.