communicative dynamic. This is related to the seminal work by Clark and Wilkes-Gibbs (1986). They found that during conversation individuals collaborate to determine the communicative structure of the interaction. The content of the communication is jointly constructed and carried on until individuals reach an agreement on an accepted version of communication. The children and interviewer in the present study therefore, may have scaffold and jointly constructed an interactional style that conveys to the children their role as valuable contributors. This may have increased the understanding of their children’s expected contribution which extended to the substantive phase of the interview. Future research should manipulate and measure contribution to the play task to validate children’s and investigate this idea further. Suggestibility and empowerment An interesting finding was that the children in the play rapport condition were more resistant to misleading questions than children in the open condition, but that neither rapport conditions produced suggestibility benefits over the control condition. This does not fit with the effects found for richness and accuracy of information. If social support improves cognitive processing, through reduced anxiety or communicative scaffolding, then why have the same pattern of results not been found for suggestibility? Perhaps the suggestibility effects in this study are affected by some other psychological mechanism. Suggestibility resistance is possibly more of a social task than a cognitive one. Correction of an adult authority figure requires confidence from a child (Doherty-Sneddon & McAuley, 2000). As mentioned in chapter 1, there exists a power asymmetry in interactions (Davies & Bottoms, 2002a, b). Perhaps play rapport reduced the power imbalance as the children and interviewer work together to complete the task. The contribution would perhaps change their perception of the adult as an authority children’s figure, and give them the confidence to correct the interviewer should they say something
communicative dynamic. This is related to the seminal work by Clark and Wilkes-Gibbs (1986). They found that during conversation individuals collaborate to determine the communicative structure of the interaction. The content of the communication is jointly constructed and carried on until individuals reach an agreement on an accepted version of communication. The children and interviewer in the present study therefore, may have scaffold and jointly constructed an interactional style that conveys to the children their role as valuable contributors. This may have increased the children’s understanding of their expected contribution which extended to the substantive phase of the interview. Future research should manipulate and measure children’s contribution to the play task to validate and investigate this idea further. Suggestibility and empowerment An interesting finding was that the children in the play rapport condition were more resistant to misleading questions than children in the open condition, but that neither rapport conditions produced suggestibility benefits over the control condition. This does not fit with the effects found for richness and accuracy of information. If social support improves cognitive processing, through reduced anxiety or communicative scaffolding, then why have the same pattern of results not been found for suggestibility? Perhaps the suggestibility effects in this study are affected by some other psychological mechanism. Suggestibility resistance is possibly more of a social task than a cognitive one. Correction of an adult authority figure requires confidence from a child (Doherty-Sneddon & McAuley, 2000). As mentioned in chapter 1, there exists a power asymmetry in interactions (Davies & Bottoms, 2002a, b). Perhaps play rapport reduced the power imbalance as the children and interviewer work together to complete the task. The children’s contribution would perhaps change their perception of the adult as an authority figure, and give them the confidence to correct the interviewer should they say something