Improving the Quality of Evidence Elicited from Children Using CUED Recall

Recent amendments to the law allow video recordings of initial interviews with children to be used as evidence in court. In order that children may benefit fully from this change it is crucial that these interviews are of as high a quality as possible and are conducted in a way that is acceptable to the courts. Recently published recommendations for interviewing advocate the use of general, open-ended questions wherever possible (Home Office, 1992) as this technique tends to result in accurate statements. However, recent research has shown that young children questioned in this way are unlikely to report all the relevant information they have. The present recommendations as they stand may in fact discriminate against the very children they are designed to help. This paper demonstrates that the present recommendations are not optimal for interviewing five to six-year-old children and suggests that the use of non-suggestive visual cues may be a way of increasing the overall quality of children's reports.