The Effects of Interviewer’s Rapport-building Style, Duration, Children’s General Anxiety Level, and Ages upon Event Memory
AUTHOR : 이승진,곽금주
INFORMATION : page. 133~157 / 2014 Vol.21 No.2
ABSTRACT
Two external factors and one internal factor were explored in association with children’s responses to
general probes about their previous experiences. Particularly, this study sought to test to what extent (a)
the questioning style and length in the rapport-building session and (b) the level of children’s general
anxiety were linked with the accuracy of children’s recall across ages. A total of 148 children aged from
4 to 9 years interacted with researcher during an event and were interviewed about the target event by
another researcher. The results suggested that more accurate information in the child’s voluntary responses
was associated with an open style rapport-building condition regardless of the children’s ages. More
interestingly, the accuracy of children’s free recall differed as a function of a length of the rapport-building
and the level of children’s general anxiety level; that is, children who were evaluated as comparatively
more anxious than other children who were evaluated as rather less anxious recalled information in greater
detail in a long rapport-building condition. Ultimately, this study identified a number of significant
variables affecting how children report an experience and especially, the findings are marked for more
anxious children in general who are in special need of support and for whom a long and open style
rapport-building with the interviewer might be more important.