Discuss what psychological research tells us about the accuracy of young children’s memory for events they have participated in.
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Discuss what psychological research tells us about the accuracy of young children’s memory for events they have participated in.
Research in the area of eyewitness testimony sees memory as a reconstructive process. Loftus (1979) argued that the evidence given by witnesses in court cases could be said to be unreliable due to the problem of leading questions. Loftus and Zany (1975) investigated this by showing students a film of a car accident and then asking them to complete a 22-item questionnaire, 6 of which were critical questions. For half the participants the questions included; “did you see a”, for the other half the questions included; “did you see the”. These questions were about things that didn’t happen. The findings showed that 15% of the students in the “did you see the” group said yes compared to 7% in the other group most of whom were more likely to say “don’t know”. Buckhout (1975) looked at the accuracy of witnesses by staging the shooting of a professor in front of 141 students. The findings showed that the eyewitnesses over estimated the length of time the crime lasted and the weight of the gunman, the also underestimated his age. Seven weeks later only 40% of the witnesses could identify the gunman from photographs; even the ‘shot professor’ couldn’t identify the gunman. Months later Buckhout used a line up of suspects and found that only 14% of witnesses could pick out the right criminal.
The have been endless amounts of research in to the accuracy of an adults memory when recalling events they have participated in. but what do we know about children’s event memory? Dent and Wilkinson (1988) stated that when recalling an event, children are less accurate and even less detailed except when the environment of the event is accurately restored. It has also been found that the more interested a child is in an event the more accurate the memory, and if the personal interest is very high the recall can be almost as good as the average adults (King and Yuille 1987). Ceci, Ross and Toglia stated that a child’s memory is more influenced by adults than it is by other children, but if a child has participated in an event rather than simply watching the suggestibility of the of the child lowers (Rudy and Goodman 1991). Thompson et al (1997) tested this theory by conducted a study in which five an six year olds witnessed a confederate named Chester handling some dolls. Some children saw Chester cleaning dolls and toys in a playroom, while others saw him handling the dolls ‘roughly and mildly abusively’. The children were then interviewed about the event they saw. Two different interviewers were used and three interview techniques applied; in Type1 the interviewers used an “accusatory” tone, which suggested that the Chester had been playing with the toys instead of working, in Type2 the interviewers used an “exculpatory” tone which suggested that Chester was simply cleaning the toys and not playing, In these two types the questions varied from mildly suggestive to strongly suggestive. In Type3 the interviewers used a “neutral, non suggestive tone”. After the interview and some weeks later the children were asked to recall what Chester had done by their parents. The results showed that those who were questioned by the neutral interviewer or by an interviewer whose method of questioning coincided with what the child saw Chester do, recalled the event accurately and there recollection coincided with Chester’s statement. On the other hand those who were questioned by an interviewer whose method of questioning contradicted what the child saw, conformed to the suggestion made by the interviewer. It was also found that if the children were asked interpretive questions the tended to agree with the interviewers point of view rather than what actually happened. When the children were asked neutral questions by their parents their answers coincided with the interviewers biased views. This study provides empirical evidence that an interviewers suggested beliefs about an event can influence the accuracy of a child’s memory.
