| Children Susceptible to False Reports of Experiences | |
WASHINGTON -- Much research has examined the suggestibility of preschool age
children when recalling events. Now, new research shows that even school age
children are susceptible to misinformation from parents and sometimes fail to
differentiate fact from fiction even when given specific instructions to help
direct them toward the truth. These findings are reported on in the March issue
of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, published by the American
Psychological Association (APA).
Psychologists Debra Ann Poole, Ph.D., of Central Michigan University and D.
Stephen Lindsay, Ph.D., of University of Victoria, assessed whether
misinformation from parents would influence the eyewitness reports of preschool
and school age children. In the study, 114 children (3 to 8 years old)
participated in three sessions over a four-month period to examine their recall
of actual experiences and the influence of parental misinformation on their
eyewitness reports.
First, the children interacted with a man called "Mr. Science" who
showed them four science activities. Mr. Science demonstrated each activity and
then encouraged the child to try it out for him or her self. After the science
demonstrations, the children were asked open-ended questions by an interviewer.
Some of the questions were: "Tell me what you saw or heard or did in the
science room, so I will know about them too" and "Can you tell me more
so that I will know all about what happened in the science room?"
Three months later, storybooks about the visit with Mr. Science were given to
the children's parents, with instructions to read the story aloud to the child.
The story described two science demonstrations the child had experienced with
Mr. Science and two science demonstrations that did not occur during the child's
interaction with Mr. Science. Each story also described a fictitious event about
the child being touched by Mr. Science in a mildly unpleasant way.
Shortly after the parents read the story to their children, an interviewer
visited the children in their homes and asked open-ended questions about the
visit with Mr. Science. Following these free-recall questions, children were
asked yes/no questions about specific events, such as "Did Mr. Science have
a machine with ropes to pull?" A yes response elicited, "Tell me about
the machine" and a no response elicited, "Can you tell me about the
machine?"
The final phase of the interview was a source-monitoring procedure -- the
children were reminded of the story, told that some events in the story might
not really have happened during their visit with Mr. Science, and asked to
indicate whether particular events appeared in the story and/or actually
happened with Mr. Science. A month later, the children were interviewed for a
third time, without any further exposure to misleading suggestions.
In the immediate interview, almost all children reported at least some
information, and their reports were highly accurate. But soon after exposure to
the storybook, 40 of the 114 children (35%) reported a total of 58 fictitious
events during free recall of the interaction with Mr. Science (including 17
reports of the suggested unpleasant touching experience). Surprisingly, the
authors found that the younger (3- to 4-year-olds) and older (5- to 8-year-olds)
children equally often reported suggested events in response to open-ended
questions such as, "Can you tell me more about what happened during the
science experiment?" Accuracy of responses further declined when the
children were subsequently asked direct yes/no questions, such as "Did Mr.
Science have a machine with ropes to pull?"
Unfortunately, said the authors, children's responses when prompted to describe
events did not clarify the true status of their initial yes or no answers. These
results reinforce the concern of forensic experts about the difficulty children
sometimes have in distinguishing real and suggested events, especially if they
have previously been exposed to suggestions and are encouraged to narrate the
fictitious events.
The source-monitoring procedure decreased false reports by the older children
(5- to 8-year-olds), especially right after the storytelling by parents in which
real and non-real events were mixed together. But a minority of the older
children continued to report that they had experienced suggested events, even
after the interviewers told the children it was ok to say no and warned them of
the possibility of fictitious events in the story. Moreover, the
source-monitoring procedure had no effect on the rate of false reports by the 3-
and 4-year-olds.
To improve the reliability of child witnesses in criminal cases, say the
authors, interviewers will have to employ better source-monitoring procedures to
enable children to differentiate between memories from different sources.
--American Psychological Association
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