Suggestibility of children's memory Flashcards
How are children interviewed? (6)
Many times by different people
Research tries to replicate reality by:
- being based on staged life-like events
- treating children as eye witnesses
- changing stress levels and secrecy requirements
- asking children to recall information after some specific interval
- introducing misinformation and suggestibility
What is the problem with research trying to replicate reality? (1)
Concerns about ecological validity
What is free recall? (1)
Involves asking the child to tell you everything that they can remember about what happened
What is the limitation of free recall? (2)
Children give accurate, but often limited information in free recall, this could be due to motivation or vocabulary
What did the Goodman et al, 1990 study investigate and what did they find? (5)
3-5 year olds underwent routine medical procedure
Gave no false information in free recall
Most distressed children gave the most accurate reports
41% made false ID of the nurse
3, 5 and 7 years old showed little intrusion of inaccurate information when asked to free recall about medical examination (Gordon and Follmer, 1994)
Which type of questions are asked at an interview with children and give examples (2)
Open-ended
How are you feeling?
What happened next?
Closed
Do you feel scared?
Did they come in?
What have researchers found about open questions? (2)
With open questions: (Petersen et al,
1996)
- children shows 91% accuracy about their trip to A&E
- dropped to 45% accuracy with closed questions
Open questions are less effective with pre-schoolers in terms of
amount of information
Consistent effect of open questioning in real life
What have studies shown about bias to closed questions in interviews with children? (3)
Overwhelming evidence for decreased accuracy
Fritzley and Lee, 2003:
- 2 yrs biased to ‘yes’
- 4/5 yrs biased to ‘no’
- 3 yrs show developmental transition
Who conducted studies on nonsensical questions? (3)
Hughes and Grieve (1980)
Waterman et al (2000, 2001)
What did Hughes and Grieve find and what does this show? (3)
Almost all 5 and 7 year olds answered nonsensical questions
25% initially said ‘don’t know’, when asked again almost all offered an answer
Child answering does not imply understanding
What did Waterman et al find and what does this show? (3)
When asked a closed, nonsensical question every child offered an answer
When asked an open, nonsensical question, 95% said ‘don’t know’
Need to be cautious about the meaning of a child’s answer
Who conducted study on repeated questioning and what did they do (4)
Poole and White, 1991
4, 6 and 8 yr olds witnessed ambiguous events
Half were interviews immediately and 1 week later
And half were only interviewed 1 week later
Each time all question types asked 3 times
What did Poole and White, 1991 find about repeated questioning? (3)
Open questions, even when repeated, yield good accuracy
Closed questions, when repeated, younger children likely to change their response both within and across interviews
Increasingly confident about answers
What is suggestibility? (2)
Extent to which individuals (either consciously or unconsciously) come to accept and subsequently incorporate post-event information into their memory recollections
What are the three types of suggestibility? (3)
Interrogative suggestibility
Misinformation effects
Autosuggestion (reading)
Who conducted study on interview bias in suggestibility and what did they do? (2)
Thompson et al
Staged ambiguous event to 5 and 6 year olds
What did Thompson et al find about interview bias in suggestibility? (3)
Neutral interview - reports were accurate
Biased interviewer - more errors of commission
When questioned by parents 2 weeks later - children continued to assent to false events suggested by the interviewer
Who conducted study on the effect of misinformation in suggestibility and what did they do? (4)
Buck et al
5 year old inoculated by paediatrician
One year later they were all interviewed 4 times
Some interviewers suggested false information in questioning
What did Buck et al find about effect of misinformation in suggestibility (2)
Misleading suggestions often incorporated into children’s reports
Also reported non-suggested, inaccurate details
What is the implication of misinformation in suggestibility? (4)
Children assent to false information when suggested by the questioning of the interviewer
Rates of assenting to false information rise with each repeated, suggestive interview about false events
Once children begin to assent to, or offer, false information in their accounts, they may continue to embellish their accounts further
New information provided by the child after an initial (free recall) interview is likely to be inaccurate (Salmonand Pipe, 2000
Name the hypothesis that can explain the suggestibility effects (5)
The vacant slot hypothesis
The co-existence hypothesis
The demand characteristics (social compliance) hypothesis
The substitution hypothesis
The source monitoring hypothesis
What is the vacant slot hypothesis (2)
No memory trace was laid down so suggested information is inserted into the ‘vacant slot’ OR was weakly encoded
But without suggestibility there is 90% accuracy in free recall
What is the co-existence hypothesis? (2)
Both accurate and suggested memory are available and recoverable but ‘false’ memory is more recent
What is the demand characteristics (social compliance) hypothesis? (1)
The ‘false’ memory is the ‘required’ one (why would an adult try to
trick me?)
What is the substitution hypothesis? (1)
Post event information replaces / distorts the original memory
What is the source monitoring hypothesis? (2)
Initial and subsequent representations of event exist but child has difficulty identifying source
Even when they can repeal their report, young children maintain
assent to suggestibility and many cannot recall the source of the
suggestion (Poole and Lindsay, 1996).
Preschoolers’ ability to produce CSA reports are compromised by what? (3)
Limited memory capacity
Limited language capacity
Limited knowledge about sexual acts
What did Leaner (2010) find about reporting child abuse? (1)
Two or three interviews may be needed to enable children to give complete and informative reports
What is suggestibility about abuse? (2)
Children are resistant to misleading
questions about significant people
Suggestibility was only in relation to non-central details