Children's Eyewitness Research Articles

Children's Evidence

The authors first present an outline of recent concern in Scotland regarding children's ability to act as witnesses, followed by a summary of the Scottish rules of evidence governing children's testimony in both criminal and civil cases. Next, they review the main findings from two programs of psychological research into children's evidence in criminal cases funded by the Scottish Home and Health Department. The first project examined children's eyewitness memory, their knowledge of the legal system, and their ability to give evidence in criminal trials. The second study evaluated the first trial period of the video link system for child witnesses in Scottish courts.

Effects of prior knowledge and response bias upon recognition memory for a story: Implications for children's eyewitness testimony

Abstract: The present study was designed to evaluate the integration hypothesis and the response bias hypothesis for explaining the fragility of children's eyewitness memory, by varying the plausibility of postevent information and the strength of response bias in recognition tests. Preschool children were told a story in which a boy named Ken saw a housebreaker stealing various objects and the postevent information was also incorporated into the story. The first recognition test was administered immediately following the presentation of an interpolated story, and the second recognition test was administered 10 weeks later. The results indicated that high‐plausibility objects tended to be recognized as the stolen objects in the second recognition test, and that recognition accuracy was higher for a new‐distractor condition than for a misleading‐distractor condition. These findings were interpreted as suggesting that the memory representation of the story might be changed through the integration processes and/or rendered inaccessible in terms of the response bias.

The effect of parent versus unfamiliar interviewers on children's eyewitness memory and identification accuracy.

This research was designed to learn if children's relationships with interviewers might influence the accuracy of their eyewitness memory and their ability to make identifications from lineups. In two experiments, kindergarten children (5-year-olds) viewed a slide show depicting a minor theft. Children were then interviewed by either their own parent or an unfamiliar experimenter with either a target present or target absent simultaneous photographic lineup. When lineups were presented by parents, children were less accurate, changed their identifications more frequently, and were more likely to acquiesce with a suggestion about an alternative identification. Children showed poorer recall of the event when interviewed by their parent in an unstructured interview (Experiment 1); however, no differences were observed when parents and experimenters followed the same script (Experiment 2). Overall, the results indicate that interviewers can influence the accuracy and consistency of children's eyewitness identifications.

The incredible (and sometimes incredulous) child witness: Child eyewitnesses' sensitivity to source credibility cues.

Witnesses who receive misleading postevent information usually perform more poorly on memory tests than do witnesses who receive only unbiased information. This effect is especially pronounced for young children. For adults, the credibility of the source of the misleading information moderates this effect; misinformation presented by a credible source impairs performance to a greater degree than does misinformation presented by a noncredible source. In the present experiment, preschool children listened to a story accompanied by several illustrations. Later, they watched a videotape ofa child, a credible adult, or a discredited adult answering questions about the story. For some children, the person in the videotape provided misleading information. The children's memory reports were impaired only when misinformation was presented by the credible adult, indicating that even young children are sensitive to source credibility cues.

Facilitating children's eyewitness recall with the revised cognitive interview.

Eighty-six 2nd-grade children participated in a Simon says game with an unfamiliar adult. The children were subsequently interviewed twice with either a standard interview or the revised cognitive interview (CI), once within 3 hr of the event and then 2 weeks later. On both the initial interview and the 2-week delayed interview, children receiving the revised CI recalled significantly more correct information than did children receiving a standard interview. In addition, children who were interviewed twice with the revised CI recalled more unique accurate facts (M = 25.44) than children who received 2 standard interviews (M = 16.75). The CI also elicited more inaccurate facts; however, the accuracy rate (proportion of reported facts that were accurate) for the 2 groups was equivalent. The research has implications for police and others who interview real child victims and witnesses.

“Is this man your daddy?” Suggestibility in children's eyewitness identification of a family member

Studies of natural language development suggest that overextension of family memberships terms, such as daddy or papa, occurs in children in the second year of life, but rarely persists thereafter. However, in British Courts it is common for the testimony of 3- and even 4-year-olds to be dismissed on the grounds that these children may not be reliably identifying their father or stepfather when they claim that daddy was the perpetrator of abuse. This study examined whether 3-year-olds could be persuaded to confirm that a stranger who was labelled as daddy was their own father. A mock interview with experienced disclosure interviewers was conducted. Five of the 17 children—all from blue-collar families—misidentified a photograph of their own father when an identification question was repeated. Rather than undermining the validity of all preschoolers testimony, it is suggested that the responses of some children to apparently mundane questions of fact are influenced by contextual factors, including repetition of the question and the perceived omniscience of the interviewer.

Child witnesses: fragile voices in the American legal system

Children are frequently called to testify in court in criminal prosecutions, divorce and child custody hearings, dependency abuse proceedings, and other disputes. But is their testimony reliable? This book carefully assesses research on the cognitive capabilities of children as well as the emotional, social, and moral influences that might affect children's potential reliability, and it recommends reforms in American legal processes that will protect child witnesses from trauma and ensure accurate testimony. Lucy S. McGough, a specialist in family law, examines the known developmental facts on perception, memory, and reporting that affect children's ability to serve as trial witnesses. She also analyzes many actual trials, including the McMartin Pre-School prosecution in California, the Morgan-Foretich custody and visitation controversy, and the five U.S. Supreme Court child sexual abuse cases, assessing how a child witness may be more prone to memory-fade, suggestibility, or fantasy than an adult witness. McGough also examines the legal processes and rules of evidence that affect how eyewitness accounts by children are received: trial processes for evaluating the credibility of witnesses; the hearsay rule and its exceptions; the Constitution's confrontation clause; and the use and abuse of expert witnesses. And she presents a proposal for the early videotaping of a child's eyewitness account in order to minimize the most serious potential reliability risks posed by child witnesses. The product of ten years of research and investigation, this book should help remedy the failure of American law to take into account all that we now know about the fragility of children's memories.

The incredible (and sometimes incredulous) child witness: Child eyewitnesses' sensitivity to source credibility cues.

The incredible (and sometimes incredulous) child witness: Child eyewitnesses' sensitivity to source credibility cues.

Helping children to remember: The influence of object cues on children's accounts of a real event.

The authors examined the effects of reinstating objects from an event on 6- and 9-year-old children's reports of the event in which they had either participated or observed. Half of the 95 were interviewed twice, 10 days and 10 weeks after the event (Group 1), and the remaining were interviewed a single time, 10 weeks after (Group 2). Following free recall, prompted recall and direct questions were accompanied by objects from the event and distractors for half the children. The effect of the delay on free recall was ameliorated by the prior interview for older but not younger children. Objects attenuated age differences in prompted recall for participants and enhanced accuracy in response to questions. Objects also led to more errors at the long delay. Analyses based on signal detection theory indicated that both response strategy and memory-related factors contributed to developmental changes in compliance with misleading questions. It is now widely recognized that cannot be categorized as competent or incompetent witnesses on the basis of age alone. Many factors influence children's accounts of events, and an interactional perspective on children's eye witness testimony, according to which the skills demonstrated by the child are jointly determined by the child and the environmental context, is beginning to emerge. Such a perspective highlights the importance of the interviewer's behavior (e.g., Stellar, 1991) which, in turn, points to the need to develop innovative interviewing techniques so that children can be empowered to become their most reliable selves (McGough, 1991, p. 167). In recent studies, a number of procedures designed to improve children's event reports have been examined, including interviewer style (Goodman, Bottoms, Schwartz-Kenney, & Rudy, 1991), preparation and training prior to interviews (Saywitz & Snyder, 1993), procedures from Fisher and Geiselman's (1992) cognitive interview (Memon, Cronin, Eaves, & Bull, 1993; Saywitz, Geiselman, & Bornstein, 1992), and the use of nonverbal props (DeLoache, Kolstad, & Anderson, 1991; Goodman & Aman, 1990; Pipe, Gee, & Wilson, 1993). In the present study we ex

The effect of drawing on memory performance in young children.

In Experiment 1, 32 5- to 6-year-old boys and girls participated in a unique event and were interviewed about that event I day later. Half of the children were asked to draw what happened during the event and half were asked to tell what happened. In both conditions, only children's verbal behavior was scored. Children in the draw group were as accurate and reported more information than children in the tell group, especially in response to direct questions. In Experiment 2, 32 5- to 6-year-olds and 32 3- to 4-year-olds participated in the same event used in Experiment I and were interviewed I month later. The 5- to 6-year-olds in the draw group reported more information than the 5- to 6-year-olds in the tell group after the 1-month delay. Drawing did not, however, increase the amount of information reported by 3- to 4-year-olds. These findings have important theoretical implications for memory development and important practical implications for children's eyewitness testimony.

Facilitating children's eyewitness recall with the revised cognitive interview.

Facilitating children's eyewitness recall with the revised cognitive interview.

Mental reinstatement of context: A technique for interviewing child witnesses

AbstractThe effectiveness of mental reinstatement of context as a technique for interviewing child witnesses was examined. Adult, 6‐year‐olds and 11 ‐year‐olds viewed a film and were interviewed in one of three conditions; (1) free recall, (2) mental reinstatement of the context in which the film was viewed or (3) a series of specific questions about the film. In terms of correct information recalled, mental reinstatement of context and specific questions produced more correct responses than did free recall. In terms of errors of commission, specific questions produced more responses than either free recall or mental reinstatement of context. Age‐related increases in both correct and incorrect responses were found supporting some previous findings. The implications of these results in terms of children's eyewitness memory were discussed, and future research directions were indicated.

Two years later: Effect of question repetition and retention interval on the eyewitness testimony of children and adults.

This study examined witnesses' memories for an event experienced 2 years earlier. Ss in 4 age groups (6-, 8- and 10-year-olds and adults; N= 79) answered repeated questions about an ambiguous incident that occurred as part of an earlier study (D. A. Poole & L. T. White, 1991). Surprisingly, the effects of question repetition were similar to the patterns observed 2 years ago. There were important differences in the testimonies of children and adults, however, that were not observed in the initial study: Children were less consistent than adults across sessions on yes-no questions, less accurate in response to open-ended questions, and more likely to fabricate answers to a question about a man's occupation. Some children also confused the actions of 2 research assistants. These results indicate the need for additional research on qualitative and quantitative changes in children's testimonies over long delays. The literature on children's eyewitness testimony is a story of contradictions, with developmental trends in accuracy, suggestibility, and response to stress differing from study to study (see Ceci & Bruck, 1993, for a review). Discrepancies have prompted critics to argue that eyewitness research lacks theoretical cohesion and that established theories of perception and memory are not immediately applicable because of the influence of motivational and social factors in event reporting (Sheehy & Chapman, 1982, p. 345). In early studies, concerns about ecological validity often loomed larger than efforts to reconcile eyewitness findings with traditional concepts of memory development.

Children's eyewitness memory: Effects of participation and forensic context

We examined effects of participation and forensic context on 4-year-old children's testimony. Children in “participant” and “police” conditions actively participated in games with a “babysitter”; each child in the “observer” condition watched a videotape of a child and the babysitter playing. Eleven days later, children were individually questioned about the event. Before the interview began, children in the police condition talked to a police officer who said the babysitter might have done something bad. Comparison of participant- and observer-condition performance indicated that participation increased free-recall accuracy concerning actions that took place and lowered suggestibility. Comparison of participant- and police-condition performance indicated that forensic context led to increased error in free recall and additional comments to misleading questions. However, forensic context also resulted in higher accuracy on an age-identification task and did not affect children's accuracy in answering abuse-related questions.

Knowing and remembering in young children

Preface List of contributors 1. Introduction: what young children remember and why Judith A. Hudson and Robyn Fivush 2. Remembering what happened next: very young children's recall of event sequences Patricia J. Bauer and Jean M. Mandler 3. Developmental differences in the relation between scripts and episodic memory: do they exist? Michael Jeffrey Farrar and Gail S. Goodman 4. Children's organisation of events and event memories Hilary Horn Ratner, Brenda S. Smith and Robert J. Padgett 5. Young children's understanding of models Judy S. DeLoache 6. Children's play interests, representation and activity K. Ann Renninger 7. The emergence of autobiographical memory in mother-child conversation Judith A. Hudson 8. The social and functional context of children's remembering Barbara Rogoff and Jayanthi Mistry 9. Autobiographical memory across the preschool years: toward reconceptualising childhood amnesia Robyn Fivush and Nina R. Hamond 10. Children's concerns and memory: issues of ecological validity in the study of children's eyewitness testimony Gail S. Goodman, Leslie Rudy, Bette L. Bottoms and Christine Aman 11. The suggestibility of preschoolers' recollections: historical perspectives on current problems Stephen J. Ceci, Michael P. Toglia and David F. Ross 12. Remembering, forgetting and childhood amnesia Katherine Nelson 13. Recall and its verbal expression Jean M. Mandler 14. Learning from the children Ulric Neisser Indexes.

The effects of social support on children's eyewitness testimony

AbstractChild witnesses often give only short accounts of witnessed events. Part of the reason for this failing centres on the stress present during an interview. The most obvious means of reducing stress in children, through the provision of social support, has typically been neglected in eyewitness research, presumably because of fears over children's excessive suggestibility. Social support is also believed to inhibit children during interviews. However, these fears appear to stem more from general suspicions about children's competencies rather than empirical findings. Studies are described which show that child witnesses express a strong desire for social support, and that support may be provided in a number of different ways, from peers as well as adults. It is argued that social support is one of the most unfairly neglected issues in eyewitness research, and the minimal evidence available suggests that allowing support may have a facilitative effect on task performance, including free‐recall memory.

The other Alfred Binet.

Alfred Binet is famous as the author of the IQ test that bears his name. He is almost unkown, however, as the investigator who generated numerous fascinating investigations into developmental, experimental, educational, and social psychology. This «other» Binet generated tasks, findings, and interpretations that foreshadowed current work on children's understanding of number conservation, validity of children's eyewitness testimony, the constructive nature of memory, effects of group pressure on conformity, and individual differences in cognitive styles. This article reviews Binet's major contributions, considers why the fame of his intelligence scale was so lasting and why that of his other contributions was so fleeting, and discusses implications of his contributions for current efforts to formulate unified theories of cognition and cognitive development

Children's definitions of the truth and their competency as witnesses in legal proceedings.

Young children's competency as witnesses in legal proceedings has been debated during the past several years. This has been due in part to greater emphasis on prosecuting perpetrators of child sexual abuse and the consequent increase in the number of children being asked to testify at the trial of their alleged abusers. Little basic research has been done on one component of competency: children's definitions of the truth and lies. In this article, federal and state rules of evidence and case law regarding children's competency are reviewed. Previous investigations of children's definitions of lies are then presented, followed by a description of a more recent experiment. The results of this experiment suggest that children do have definitions of the truth in one regard that make it appropriate for them to be considered competent witnesses. The results also raise concerns about young children's eyewitness ability.

The Effect of a Repeated Interview on Young Children's Eyewitness Memory

The effect of multiple interviews on the reliability of child witnesses' testimony is a current concern in both the legal and child welfare fields. This was a preliminary study of the effect of a repeated interview on the memory of five-and six-year old children for an inoculation experience. In general, findings were consistent with those from other ecologically valid studies. The children provided minimal information spontaneously but gave relatively accurate responses to what, who, where and when questions. They often were able to resist suggestible questions, and identify a person present at the inoculation from a photograph. With a repeated interview, children's performance (correct responses and errors) was consistent across time. However, interval did have an effect on some memory tasks. The findings support the current trend towards early interviewing of child witnesses after a crime, followed by minimal re-interviewing.

The Development of Forgetting and Reminiscence

Many theoretical positions on memory development anticipate that forgetting rates should vary substantially with age. The nature of these age variations is also relevant to many applied questions about child development that have major social policy implications, such as the veracity of children's eyewitness testimony and the long-term effectiveness of classroom instruction. Surprisingly, developmental studies of long-term retention have repeatedly produced the puzzling finding that forgetting rates are age invariant. It now seems, however, that these null age trends may have been artifacts of variables such as measurement insensitivity, floor effects, and stages-of-learning confounds. Assuming, as some later studies suggest, that forgetting rates vary with age when these factors are controlled, there are three overriding questions that must be dealt with in the developmental analysis of forgetting: the relative importance of storage failure versus retrieval failure, the relative importance of true forgetting processes versus test-induced processes, and the relative importance of storage-based reminiscence versus retrieval-based reminiscence. We describe a framework (disintegration/redintegation theory) that provides a conceptual environment within which research on these questions can progress. This framework, which evolved from fuzzy-trace theory, reinterprets processes such as storage failure, retrieval failure, restorage, and retrieval relearning in terms of levels of featural integration in traces (i.e., the extent to which contextual information is integrated with core semantic gist to produce a coherent representation). The theory is implemented in a mathematical model (the trace-integrity model) whose parameters deliver measurements of relevant memory processes on a common ratio scale. In a series of experiments, the model was used to study the theory's predictions about the contributions of these memory processes to long-term retention in subjects between the ages of 7 and 70. All the experiments were standard long-term retention designs (an initial acquisition session, followed by a 1-2-week forgetting interval, followed by a series of retention tests).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)