Does implying peer knowledge during an interview promote truthful disclosures from peer disclosure recipients and witnesses?

Abstract

We tested a novel implied peer knowledge paradigm in which both child witnesses and child recipients (children who previously received a disclosure from a witness) were able to infer, with varying degrees of saliency, the likelihood that an adult interviewer would hear about a negative transgression from a peer and adjust their disclosure strategy accordingly. We tracked children’s disclosures (N = 418; aged 6-12 years; Mage = 8.91 years, SD = 1.37) across two interviews and found that providing a verbal notice of implied knowledge to child disclosure recipients (not child witnesses) that a peer who had previously disclosed to them would also be talking to an adult increased their disclosure rates. This study adds to a small body of work examining patterns of disclosure transmissions from witnesses to peers to adults, which is frequently observed in situations of child sexual abuse.