A Decade Later: Adolescents' Memory for Medical Emergencies

Abstract

SummaryApproximately a decade earlier, 39 adolescents (3–5 years old at the time of event occurrence) were interviewed about stressful injuries serious enough to require hospital emergency room treatment. Parent and/or other witnesses were also interviewed to provide a record against which children's recall was compared. Prior to the current follow‐up, the adolescents had varying numbers of interviews (2–5), and half had been interviewed 5 years previously, whereas the remainder had not been interviewed for 8 or more years. In spite of the long delay since injury and the young age of the adolescents at the time, their recall of their injury was still excellent in terms of completeness, unique narrative detail, and accuracy, although there was a small decrease in accuracy. However, recall of hospital treatment was poorer and showed significant deterioration over time. In addition, the presence of an interview after 5 years (halfway through the 10‐year delay) as well as the number of interviews had no significant effect on 10‐year recall of either event, although more interviews tended to make free recall of the injury more detailed.Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.