Draw It Again Sam: The Effect of Drawing on Children's Suggestibility and Source Monitoring Ability

Abstract

Preschool children (aged 3 to 6 years) participated in a magic show. Later, the children were given repeated true and false reminders about the show. Half the children were asked to draw these true and false reminders (drawing condition) and half the children were asked questions about the reminders but not to draw them (question condition). Later, children in the drawing condition had better recall of true reminders than children in the question group; however, children in the drawing group also recalled more false reminders than children in the question group. Finally, although children in the drawing group had better memory of the source of the reminders than children in the question group, both groups equally reported that the false reminders actually happened.