Accounts and their epistemic implications. A investigation of how 'I don't know' answers by children are received in trauma recovery talk

We examine how ‘I don’t know’ answers provided by children in psychological
research interviews on trauma recovery talk are received. We analyse the
two main ways in which these answers are taken up by the psychologist.
Both are hearable as offering an account for the child, but carry different
implications. Where the first account claims access to what can legitimately
be remembered, the second steers away from this ‘sensitive’ epistemic course
by accounting for the question the interviewer asked. The first strategy
results in qualifying responses from the child and the second strategy invites more elaborate replies from the child on what happened. Exploring these
practices demonstrates how children display their social competence in this
delicate interview setting.
Keywords: children; I don’t know answers; trauma recovery talk; accounts;
remembering; conversation analysis; competence