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“INVITING SPECULATION” FROM CHILD
WITNESSES LEADS TO FALSE TESTIMONY
By Jan Mills Spaeth, Ph.D.,
Advanced Jury Research
This article was published in THE WRIT, the official publication of the Pima County Bar
Association, in August, 2001. This is a brief synopsis of a research study.
Young children are increasingly becoming important witnesses in incidents involving sexual
abuse, custody battles, parental abuse and neglect, and eyewitness to crimes. As a result, there has
also been an increased focus on questionable interviewing techniques that have encouraged false
responses from children.
In a recent study, additional concerns with certain common interviewing techniques surfaced.
The authors in this study focused on three publicized cases involving allegations of sexual
abuse and/or Satanic rituals in day-care centers. These involved the McMartin preschool case in
Manhattan Beach, California, the Kelly Michaels case in New Jersey, and the Montessori trial in
Munster, Germany. (See "What else could he have done; Creating false answers in child witnesses
by inviting speculation," by Schreiber, Wentura, and Bilsky, Applied Psychology, June, 2001.)
In all three of these cases, several dozen preschoolers accused one or more of their
kindergarten teachers of having sexually abused them over a period of months or years. The
accused were finally acquitted after years of trial proceedings, and sometimes prison, mainly
because of two reasons; lack of corrobative evidence, and repeated suggestive interviewing of child
witnesses which was found to be problematic in regard to truthfulness.
Interviewers in the McMartin case used bribing and reinforcement techniques such as
positive reinforcement (“You’re such a smart boy "), peer pressure (“All of the other kids told us
what happened"), and inviting speculation by asking a child to think or guess about a specific event.
_________________________________________________________________________
American Society of Trial Consultants American Psychological Association American College of Forensic Examiners
P.O. Box 91410, Tucson, AZ 85752-1410
(520) 297-4131
Fax (520) 797-4213,
jms@adjuryresearch.com
Inviting Speculation From Child Witnesses, Jan Mills Spaeth, Page 2
The Kelly Michaels case used aversive techniques, such as negative consequences and repeated
questioning until children gave the "right" responses.
Like the McMartin case, the Munster case employed a good deal of “inviting speculation”
with the child witnesses, along with the other techniques. Because there has been relatively little
research on the effects of "inviting speculation" in children, the authors of this article conducted a
study to determine its effects on truthfulness.
The technique of "inviting speculation" consists of three different aspects, (a) asking
children to pretend or imagine events, (b) asking children to think really hard, ("What do you think
happened?) and (c) using the conditional tense in a question ("What could he have done with that
spoon?"). This technique is typically used when children have not provided answers on their own,
either because of social or emotional barriers or because there is no memory of the event.
These researchers found that the technique of "inviting speculation" consistently resulted in
more false responses by children, especially in those without strong memories of an event. Weeks to
months down the road, these speculative responses would often be misinterpreted by the children as
actual memories.
In addition to the concern that the technique of "invited speculation" can create false memories
in children, it was found that this technique gave children "permission" in their minds to be
creative, to play games, and to guess. Because children do not usually realize the consequences
of their allegations, this speculation technique can have serious repercussions. It is important to
insure that this technique is not been used to elicit testimony from child witnesses in your cases.
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