A suggestibility scale for children

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event A suggestibility scale for children Yeong Rok Oh1*, Kwang B. Park1 and Ji M. Pyo1 1 Chungbuk National University, Department of Psychology, Republic of Korea The present study was to develop a measurement scale of suggestibility for children which was defined as a personality trait independent of memory and/or attentional capacity. The procedure employed by Gudjonsson(1984a, 1987) to measure the suggestibility of adults was modified so that the confounding effect of memory and/or attentional capacity on the score can be controlled for. Specifically, the subjects heard the story and recalled the contents of the story repeatedly until 2/3 of the content was successfully recalled before responding to the questions designed to measure the suggestibility. As a result, the variability in the suggestibility scores due to differential capacity of memory and attention was eliminated. In order to test the validity of the suggestibility scores obtained with the modified procedure, two groups of the subjects were selected: one with the subjects who obtained high suggestibility scores and the other with the subjects who obtained low suggestibility scores. Each of the selected subjects experienced a situation in which he/she interacted with an adult before being questioned about the experience by another adult. The subjects with high suggestibility scores made more errors in answering leading and misleading questions about the experience than did the subjects with low suggestibility scores. The result was discussed for its theoretical implications for the construct of suggestibility and its practical implications for the investigations of crimes committed against or by children.