Forced-choice: Are forensic interviewers asking the right questions?

In spite of exhortations to the contrary, forensic interviewers typically a sk forced-choice questions, especially yes/no and multiple-choice. In this study, older and younger preschoolers' responses to yes/no and multiple-cho ice questions were compared. For yes/no questions, half were correctly answ ered by "yes" and half by "no." For 2-option multiple-choice questions, the first option was correct for a third of them, the second option was correc t for another third, and neither option was correct fur the remainder. Half the children were instructed they could say "I don't know" Both older and younger preschoolers demonstrated a response bias toward saying "yes" to ye s/no questions; they did not exhibit response biases for multiple-choice qu estions, choosing the two given options equivalently often. When neither op tion was correct, they more frequently said "I don't know", especially youn ger preschoolers. "I don't know" was almost never given in response to yes/ no questions. Furthermore, instructions allowing "I don't know" had no effe ct. These results have implications for forensic interviews; they suggest t hat responses to yes/no questions are more unreliable and information from them more suspect than responses to multiple-choice questions.