Children’s recantation of adult wrongdoing: An experimental investigation

• 6- to 9-year-olds witnessed an adult’s wrongdoing and were then interviewed twice.
• Children’s caregivers reacted supportively or unsupportively to the child’s disclosure.
• In Interview 2, 23% of children recanted their disclosure of the wrongdoing.
• Children in the unsupportive caregiver condition were more likely to recant.
• Vulnerability to adult familial influence affects children’s disclosure patterns.

Child maltreatment cases often hinge on a child’s word versus a defendant’s word, making children’s disclosures crucially important. There is considerable debate concerning why children recant allegations, and it is imperative to examine recantation experimentally. The purpose of this laboratory analogue investigation was to test (a) how often children recant true allegations of an adult’s wrongdoing after disclosing and (b) whether children’s age and caregiver supportiveness predict recantation. During an interactive event, 6- to 9-year-olds witnessed an experimenter break a puppet and were asked to keep the transgression a secret. Children were then interviewed to elicit a disclosure of the transgression. Mothers were randomly assigned to react supportively or unsupportively to this disclosure, and children were interviewed again. We coded children’s recantations (explicit denials of the broken puppet after disclosing) and changes in their forthcomingness (shifts from denial or claims of lack of knowledge/memory to disclosure and vice versa) in free recall and in response to focused questions about the transgression. Overall, 23.3% of the children recanted their prior disclosures (46% and 0% in the unsupportive and supportive conditions, respectively). No age differences in recantation rates emerged, but 8- and 9-year-olds were more likely than 6- and 7-year-olds to maintain their recantation throughout Interview 2. Children whose mothers reacted supportively to disclosure became more forthcoming in Interview 2, and those whose mothers reacted unsupportively became less forthcoming. Results advance theoretical understanding of how children disclose negative experiences, including sociomotivational influences on their reports, and have practical implications for the legal system.