Controversy : Thinking It Over
How Reliable is children's Eyewitness testimony?
He research on children's memory, particularly recognition memory, suggests that their ability to remember events from the past is very impressive. But victims of abuse, neglect, or other crimes, their capability to render an accurate account of past event has been called into question
What Is the Controversy?
Just how reliable is children's memory when they are called on to give eyewitness testimony? Children's memory for events, even those that occurred months or years in the past, is remarkably good. On the other hand, children's memory is also susceptible to suggestive or leading questions by attorneys, clinicians, and other interrogators. The stakes are high regarding these issues. If children have been the victims of crime, the perpetrators should be punished; but if children's memories are inaccurate in these contexts, a criminal suspect might be falsely accused.
What Are the Opposing Arguments?
Some research indicates that children's recall of distinctive events, such as a trip to Disney World or a medical emergency, is surprisingly complete and accurate even four or five years after the event. For example, in one study of two-to thirteen-year-old children who had been treated in a hospital emergency room, even two-year-old remembered a substantial amount about their injuries when they were interviewed five years later. Data like these suggest that children's memories are reliable.
On the other hand, other studies have shown that children, especially preschoolers, are likely to misreport a past event if they are asked misleading questions. In some of the original studies of "false memory" in children, Stephen Ceci and his colleagues tested children ages three through twelve years on their ability to remember the details of a story. A day later, children in one of the experimental conditions were asked leading questions that distorted the original information, such as :Do you remember the story about Loren,who had a headache because she ate her cereal too fast?" In the original story, Loren had a stomachache from eating her eggs too fast. Compared with children who did not hear misleading questions, children who heard biased questions made more errors on a subsequent test that required them to select pictures depicting the original story: they chose the pictures showing a girl eating cereal and having a headache. This tendency to err was especially pronounced in children ages four and under.