L’influence des habiletés cognitives, de l’âge et des caractéristiques de l’agression sexuelle sur la déclaration des présumées victimes

OBJECTIVE: The goal of the present study was to examine the effects of children's age, cognitive abilities and the characteristics of their sexual abuse experience on the quantity of details revealed about the sexual abuse in an investigative interview as a function of the type of questions asked. METHOD VERSION: Transcripts of 37 investigative interviews conducted with children between 6 and 12 years of age were analyzed according to the type of interviewer questions used and the quantity of details given by the child. The children's cognitive abilities were measured using the vocabulary, information and block design subtests of the WISC-III. RESULTS: Results of multiple regression analyses indicate that children's age and verbal abilities as well as their relationship with the perpetrator explain 50% of the variance of the mean number of details obtained from the child following open-ended interviewer questions. CONCLUSION: The results of this study suggest that the quantity of details obtained during an investigative interview is influenced not only by children's age but also by their verbal skills and the child-perpetrator relationship. Language: fr