By analyzing transcripts of a child testimony in court, we studied how a child is questioned by a judge, a prosecutor (child's advocate) and a defense attorney, and how such questions affect the child's answers. First, we counted the linguistic indices of wh-questions (why, what, etc.) ; pronouns (that, this, etc.) ; multi-questions (clauses) ; leading questions (tag-questions) , as well as the number of words (length of questions) for each questioner. Then we categorized the child's responses into answers with sentences, yes/no, silences, etc. In the results, the prosecutor's questions were shorter, had more wh's and had less pronouns, clauses and negatives than the questions of the judge and the attorney. As for the child, she responded with sentences to the prosecutor more often than to the judge and the attorney. When questioners were collapsed, the questions with wh, and those without clause, negative and tag-questions were more likely to elicit full answers, while longer questions elicited less informative responses such as silence. In overall, that study confirmed that simple short questions elicit more affluent answers.
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