Novel forms of reluctance among suspected child sexual abuse, Child Maltreatment (2023).

4-to 15 year-old children’s misinterpretation of invitations asking “about the time” as requests for temporal information forensic interviews, Child Abuse & Neglect (2022).

Foster youth’s placement preferences: The roles of kin, siblings, and age, Child Abuse & Neglect (2022).

Young children’s understanding of the epistemic and deontic meanings of ask and tell, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology (2022).

Do children unintentionally report maltreatment? Comparison of disclosures of neglect versus sexual abuse, Child Abuse & Neglect (2022).

Children’s underextended understanding of touch, Psychology, Public Policy, & Law (2022).

Maltreated and non-maltreated children’s truthful and dishonest reports: Linguistic and syntactic differences, Frontiers in Psychology (2022).

Elaborations and denials in children’s responses to yes-no any/some questions in forensic interviews, Child Maltreatment (2023).

Attorney’s questions and children’s responses referring to the nature of sexual touch in child sexual abuse trials, Child Maltreatment (2023).

Child witnesses productively respond to “How” questions about evaluations but struggle with other “How” questions, Child Maltreatment (2023).

Successful criminal prosecutions of sex trafficking and sexual abuse of minors: A comparative analysis, Child Maltreatment (2023).

Appellate review of child sexual abuse convictions: the importance of character evidence, Child Maltreatment (2023).

The initial medical assessment of possible child sexual abuse: history, history, history, Academic Pediatrics (2023).

Children’s elaborated responses to yes-no questions in forensic interviews about sexual abuse, Child Maltreatment (2023).

Building rapport in interviews with adolescent trafficking victims, Child Abuse Review, (2024).

The utility of direct questions about actions with the hands in child forensic interviews, Psychology, Public Policy & Law (2024).

Adults’ interpretation of invitations using the word “time”, Child Abuse Review (2024).

Forensic interviewers’ difficulty with the birthday narrative, Child Abuse and Neglect (2024).

Using rapport building to improve information yield when interviewing adolescents: a systemic review and call for research, Child Abuse and Neglect (2024).

The comparative productivity of the birthday narrative in 6-to 11-year old maltreated children. Child Maltreatment (2024).

Beyond 50%: Providing contextual and coaching information substantially improves adults’ ability to detect children’s lies, Psychology, Crime, and Law (2024).

Urgent issues and prospects on investigative interviews with children and adolescents, Legal and Criminological Psychology (2024).

View More Publications in Peer-reviewed Journals

Use of global trait cues helps to explain older adults’ decrements in detecting children’s lies. Legal and Criminological Psychology. (2022)

Imprecision about body mechanics when child witnesses are questioned about sexual abuse, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, (2022).

The difficulty of teaching adults to recognize referential ambiguity in children’s testimony: The influence of explicit instruction and sample questions, Applied Cognitive Psychology, (2021).

Causal indicators for assessing the truthfulness of child speech in forensic interviews, Computer Speech & Language, (2021). 

Children’s under-informative responding is associated with concealment of a transgression, Applied Cognitive Psychology, (2021). 

Police interviewing behaviors and commercially sexually exploited adolescents’ reluctance, Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, (2021).

Identifying novel forms of reluctance in commercially sexually exploited adolescents, Child Abuse & Neglect, (2021).

Don’t know responding in young maltreated children: The effects of wh- questions type and enhanced interview instructions, Law & Human Behavior, (2021).

Increasing true reports without increasing false reports: Best practice interviewing methods and open-ended wh- questions, American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children Advisor, (2021).

Children’s signaling of incomprehension: The diagnosticity of practice questions during interview instructions, Child Maltreatment, (2021).

Detecting children’s true and false denials of wrongdoing: Effects of question type and base rate knowledge, Behavioral Sciences & The Law, (2020).

Understanding expert testimony on child sexual abuse denial after New Jersey v. J.L.G.: Ground truth, disclosure suspicion bias, and disclosure substantiation bias, Behavioral Sciences & the Law, (2020).

View More Publications in Law Reviews

“Ohio v. Clark: Brief of Amicus Curiae American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children in Support of Petitioner.” Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, (2015).

“Children’s Memory for Conversations about Sexual Abuse: Legal and Psychological Implications.” Roger Williams University Law Review, (2014). (Symposium: Child Witnesses in Sexual Abuse Cases).

“Child Witnesses and the Confrontation Clause.” Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, (2012).

“The History of Children’s Hearsay: From Old Bailey to Post-Davis.” Indiana Law Journal, (2007).

“Applying Suggestibility Research to the Real World: The Case of Repeated Questions.” Law & Contemporary Problems, (2002).

View More Publications in Books

“Child Witnesses.” In (N. Brewer & A.B. Douglass, eds.) Psychology & Law, (2019).

“When Interviewing Children: A Review and Update.” In J. Conte & B. Klika (Eds.), APSAC Handbook on Child Maltreatment (4th ed.), (2018).

“Investigative Interviewing of the Child.” In D. N. Duquette, A. H. Haralambie, & V. S. Sankaran (Eds.), Child Welfare Law and Practice: Representing Children, Parents, and State Agencies in Abuse, Neglect, and Dependency Cases (3rd ed., pp. 87-113). Denver, CO: Bradford

Lyon, T. D. “Child Witnesses and Imagination: Lying, Hypothetical Reasoning, and Referential Ambiguity.” In M. Taylor (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of the Development of Imagination (pp. 126-136). New York, NY: Oxford.

Assessing the Competency of Child Witnesses: Best Practice Informed by Psychology and Law.” In M. Lamb, D. La Rooy, L. Malloy, & C. Katz (Eds.), Children’s Testimony: A Handbook of Psychological Research and Forensic Practice (pp. 69-85). Sussex, England: Wiley-Blackwell.

“American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children in Support of Petitioner, Ohio v. Clark (merits).”

“American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children in Support of Petitioner, Ohio v. Clark (petition for cert.).”

“National Association of Counsel for Children and American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children in Support of Respondent, Giles v. California.”

“National Association of Counsel for Children in Support of Respondents. Adrian Martell Davis v. Washington, Hershel Hammon v. Indiana.“

“American Psychological Association, National Association of Counsel for Children, American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, and California Professional Society on the Abuse of Children in Support of Respondent. Marion R. Stogner v. California.“

View More Practitioner Guides

USC Child Interviewing Lab Tele-Forensic Interview Protocol.

Ten Step Investigative Interview. [Spanish version]., revised (2013).

Supplemental Investigative Interview Questions.

Interviewing Children: Getting More With Less. [Powerpoint notes pages] (DVD).

Questioning of Child Witnesses. [Model Brief].

View More Short Pieces

Questioning unaccompanied immigrant children: Lessons from developmental science on forensic interviewing. SRCD Child Evidence Brief, No. 6.

Interviewing Victims and Suspected Victims Who are Reluctant to Talk. APSAC Advisor, 25 (4), 16-19.

Twenty-Five Years of Interviewing Research and Practice: Dolls, Diagrams, and the Dynamics of Abuse Disclosure. APSAC (American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children) Advisor, 24 (1-2), 14-19.

Witnesses, Children As Legal. In R. Shweder, T. Bidell, A. Dailey, S. Dixon, P. Miller, & J. Modell (Eds.), The child: An Encyclopedic Companion (pp. 1036-1039). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

[Legal and psychological support for the NICHD interviewing protocol] Author’s response to Vieth (2008). Child Abuse & Neglect, 33, 71-74.

“The Law and Psychology of the Child Witness.” Review of the book Child Witnesses: Fragile Voices in the American Legal System, by L. S. McGough. Contemporary Psychology, 41, 701-702.