Child Witnesses

Question 1

Why are children problematic witnesses?

Answer 1

Poorer knowledge-base: may understand less of what they see.
Less well-developed metamemory skills may lead to poorer encoding and recall.
Poorer reality monitoring may lead to difficulty in distinguishing between fact and fantasy.
Greater susceptibility to misinformation effects from interviewers.

Question 2

Children’s performance compared to adults:

Answer 2

1. Accuracy of identification:
   Chance and Goldstein (1984):
   Level of correct identifications of a once-seen face
   increases with age: adult performance by age 12.
   False recognitions decrease with age.
   In eyewitness simulations, all ages do poorly.Davies,

Stevenson-Robb and Flin (1988):
Children more likely to false identify a face from a
target-absent array as one they have seen before,
even after practice at not doing so.

2. Accuracy of verbal recall:
   Typical findings of studies on children’s recall:
3. Accuracy of spontaneous recall is comparable to adults’.
4. Spontaneously produce much less information.
5. More susceptible to being influenced by interviewer.

Flin, Boon, Know and Bull (1992):Effects of delay between event and witness’ interview.
Adults, 6 and 9 year-olds witnessed staged “mishap” during foot-care lecture.
“Cued” recall - set of 26 questions.
“Enhanced” recall - free recall plus specific questions plus context reinstating questions. No age differences in recall after one day. Suggestibility increased with delay in children but not adults.

Question 3

Qualitative differences in spontaneous reporting:
King and Yuille (1986):
Yuille, Cutshall and King (1986):

Answer 3

1) Youngest children report action details and ignore actors’ physical characteristics.
Older children and adults recall more details of actors.

2) Children observed bicycle “theft”.
8 and 10 yr olds similar in recall of events, but 10 yr olds recalled spontaneously nearly 90% more information about the thief’s appearance.

Question 4

Problems with distinguishing fact from fantasy:

Ackil and Zaragoza (1995):

Answer 4

Effects of age on source memory. 7, 9, 11 and ug’s saw movie.
Experimenter read summary containing information that was not in the video (supplemented, rather than contradicted).
Tested either immediately or 1 week later.
For each item, asked:
(a) whether remembered seeing the item in the video;
(b) whether remembered hearing the item in the summary.

Results:
All subjects “remembered” seeing suggested items.
Younger children made more source confusions than older; worse when testing was delayed.

Question 5

False memory syndrome
Hyman, Husband and Billings (1995):
Ceci et al (1994):
Loftus and Coan (1995):

Answer 5

1) Suggested false memories to students at first interview; these were sometimes incorporated into recollections at second interview.
2) Preschoolers repeatedly asked to think about real and false events, e.g. “did you ever get your finger caught in a mousetrap and go to hospital?” 1/3 incorrectly “remembered” false events they had originally denied.
3) Older siblings reminded younger siblings about childhood experiences including getting lost in a mall. Never occurred, but repeated asking about it led individuals to “remember” it.

Question 6

Ways to improve children’s recall:

Answer 6

1. Social support:
2. Rapport building by interviewer:
3. Context reinstatement:
4. Cognitive Interview:
5. Modified lineup procedures to fix the “he’s not there” problem:

Question 7

Bruck and Melnyk (2004): individual differences in suggestibility?

Answer 7

demographic factors
(SES, gender)

psycho-social factors
(self-concept, compliance, social engagement, stress/emotional arousal/state anxiety, mother’s attachment style, parent-child relationship, parenting style, temperament, mental health

cognitive factors
 (intelligence, memory, Theory of Mind, executive function, distractibility, creativity)