APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 18: 1037–1058 (2004) Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/acp.1076 Verbal Ability, Self-Control, and Close Relationships with Parents Protect Children Against Misleading Suggestions K. ALISON CLARKE-STEWART,* LINDSAY C. MALLOY and VIRGINIA D. ALLHUSEN University of California-Irvine, USA SUMMARY Suggestibility to misleading questions about events that occurred in a laboratory playroom visit 9 months earlier was assessed in 70 5-year-old children (54% boys). Six measures of children’s suggestibility were coded from videotaped and transcribed interviews: agreement with false suggestions that the research assistant had undressed them, hit them, hurt them, touched them on the bottom, and done bad things, and a overall rating of suggestibility. These measures of suggestibility were related to characteristics of the child and family that had been collected over the course of a longitudinal study beginning when the children were 1 month of age. Children who had more advanced verbal abilities, adaptive inhibitory control, and close and secure relationships with supportive and psychological healthy parents were better able to resist the interviewer’s suggestive questions and persuasive attempts. Copyright # 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. INTERVIEW WITH CHILD A Interviewer: Remember when you went in the Ghostbusters House and Patrick asked you to lie down on a blanket next to him? Child A: [Pause, thinking, looking down. Looks up slightly, nods.] Interviewer: Do you remember that? Child A: [Nods slightly.] Interviewer: What was that like? Child A: Um, I liked that pretty much. Interviewer: Well, did Patrick touch you when you were in the Ghostbusters House lying down? Child A: [Shakes head, no.] Interviewer: No? Are you sure? Now think hard. Other kids have said that Patrick touched them. Do you remember now? Child A: [Pause, thinking. Deep breath. Nods, yes.] He did. Interviewer: He did? Child A: [Nods, yes.] Copyright # 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. *Correspondence to: K. A. Clarke-Stewart, Department of Psychology and Social Behavior, School of Social Ecology, University of California-Irvine, Irvine CA 92697, USA. E-mail acstewar@uci.edu