Suggestion and suggestibility are two very old topics in cognitive psychology and suggestibility is often involved in a forensic context when children need to testify in front of judges or policemen. Indeed, testimonies of children are regularly questioned because of their suggestibility. This notion can be influenced by different cognitive factors as theory of mind, executive functions, attachment, IQ, … In our study, we’ll be interested by the link between interrogative suggestibility, a form of suggestibility, and cognitive inhibition.
Theoretical introduction:
- Interrogative Suggestibility
In the field of suggestibility, interrogative suggestibility represents only one form among another in this huge domain. Moreover, interrogative suggestibility is defined by Gudjonsson and Clark (1986) as “the extent to which, within a closed social interaction, people come to accept messages communicated during formal questioning, as the result of which their subsequent behavioral response is affected”. In other words, interrogative suggestibility is a very interesting notion where someone is leaded to change his answers through misleading questions.
The measure of interrogative suggestibility regroups relatively recent works, where Gudjonsson, an Icelandic professor of psychology, took a major place by creating the first suggestibility scale known as the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale (GSS; Gudjonsson, 1984). In our study, we used the Book Suggestibility Scale for Children (BSSC), developed by Warren, Scullin and Ceci (1999) and we aim here, to adapt this new tool in French.
Furthermore, young children are very affected by suggestibility and this notion is influenced by some elements and inhibition seems to be one of them by their both links with memory.
- Cognitive Inhibition
To begin, cognitive inhibition is a type of inhibition which itself is part of the executive functions, highly necessary in human daily functioning. Overall, inhibition can be defined as “being able to control one’s attention, behaviour, thoughts, and/or emotions to override a strong internal predisposition or external lure, and instead do what’s more appropriate or needed” (Diamond, 2013). In other words, inhibition is a function which allows everyone to suppress answers which don’t fit with what is expected. Are usually distinguished behavioural inhibition which concerns the suppression of motor responses while cognitive inhibition is related to attentional and mnemonic processes. Inhibition seems to develop from the first months of life to the beginning of adulthood (Er-Rafiqi, Roukoz, Le Gall, & Roy, 2017).
Today, several studies found a significant correlation between interrogative suggestibility and inhibition. For example, Weede Alexander and colleagues (2002) conducted an experiment where they found that poor inhibiting capacities are responsible of more inaccuracies in free recall and for misleading questions.
Research question and hypothesis
This study aimed to answer to the following question: Do age and cognitive inhibition development are implicated in children interrogative suggestibility?
Through a literature review, we brought out some hypothesis. First, we thought that when cognitive inhibition is increasing, interrogative suggestibility is decreasing. Secondly, we saw that age is an important factor of inhibition development, so we highlighted that when our participants are growing up, then inhibition tests results should be better. Thirdly, some authors showed that interrogative suggestibility and age are linked, thus, we proposed the hypothesis that interrogative suggestibility should lessen with the augmentation of age.
Method
After having the permission of the parents, thirty children (thirteen girls and seventeen boys) took part in our experimentation. The youngest was 75 months old and the oldest was 100 months old.
As said before, to measure interrogative suggestibility, we used the BSSC. The first day, the story of “Martin et les Extraterrestres” was read to children by group of two. This little book relates the story of two aliens arriving on Earth and meeting Martin, a little boy who has just lost his dog.
Concerning cognitive inhibition, the subtest Inhibition of the NEPSY-II (Korkman, Kirk & Kemp, 2012) is administered to our participants. This test can be used from five years old to 16 years old and 11 months and contains 3 modalities: Denomination (the child has to read what he sees), Inhibition (he has to say the opposite of what he sees) and Change (to say the color of the forms or the arrows).
Between 24 hours and 72 hours later, the questionnaire of the BSSC including 18 questions whose 14 were misleading questions and the inhibition test are presented to our participants.
Results and discussion
Concerning our results, they are relatively mixed. Actually, some positive and negative correlations are shown by the study of our data.
Our first hypothesis as the level of suggestibility should decrease when cognitive inhibition increases seems to be confirmed by making few calculations of correlation between the different measures of inhibition and suggestibility. This result agrees with the conceptions highlighted by some researchers in the field of suggestibility. For example, in their studies, Melinder, Endestad and Magnussen (2006) or Karpinski and Scullin (2009) found significant positive correlations between our two variables no matter the type of inhibition (verbal, motor or cognitive) they chose.
Furthermore, age seems to not be a good indicator of the increase or the decrease of interrogative suggestibility. Indeed, even if data are relatively conflicting, we could believe, by logic, that interrogative suggestibility decrease when age increase but it’s not that simple.
Lastly, we did not validate totally our hypothesis that a better cognitive inhibition will be related to the increase of age in our population. In fact, only one indicator of inhibition shows a significant correlation with age and as a consequence, our hypothesis.
Keywords : Interrogative suggestibility, cognitive inhibition, children, measuring tools
Words I have learned :
- A forensic context : un contexte médico-légal
- Misleading questions : des questions trompeuses
- To override : dépasser, rejeter
- An inaccuracy : une inexactitude, une erreur
- To lessen : diminuer, s’atténuer
Bibliography:
Diamond, A. (2013). Executive Functions. Annual Review of Psychology, 64(1), 135‑168. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-113011-143750
Er-Rafiqi, M., Roukoz, C., Le Gall, D., & Roy, A. (2017). Les fonctions exécutives chez l’enfant: développement, influences culturelles et perspectives cliniques. Revue de neuropsychologie, 9(1), 27-34. https://doi.org/10.1684/nrp.2017.0405
Gudjonsson, G. H. (1984). A new scale of interrogative suggestibility. Personality and Individual Differences, 5(3), 303‑314. https://doi.org/10.1016/0191-8869(84)90069-2
Gudjonsson, G. H., & Clark, N. K. (1986). Suggestibility in police interrogation: A social psychological model. Social Behaviour, 1(2), 83-104.
Karpinski, A. C., & Scullin, M. H. (2009). Suggestibility under pressure: Theory of mind, executive function, and suggestibility in preschoolers. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 30(6), 749‑763. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2009.05.004
Korkman, M., Kirk, U., & Kemp, S. (2012). Bilan neuropsychologique de l’enfant, Seconde Edition : NEPSY II. Paris: Les Editions du Centre de Psychologie Appliquée.
Melinder, A., Endestad, T., & Magnussen, S. (2006). Relations between episodic memory, suggestibility, theory of mind, and cognitive inhibition in the preschool child. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 47(6), 485‑495. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9450.2006.00542.x
Weede Alexander, K., Goodman, G. S., Schaaf, J. M., Edelstein, R. S., Quas, J. A., & Shaver, P. R. (2002). The role of attachment and cognitive inhibition in children’s memory and suggestibility for a stressful event. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 83(4), 262‑290.
Jérôme Le Guen – M2 PPCECC