Do children make good witnesses?

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Do children make good witnesses?
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Contrasting views of children as witnesses
Whipple (1910) children are the "most dangerous
of witnesses" - remember little, and prone to
fantasy. Varendonck (1911) 16 out of 18
seven-year olds described teacher's
(non-existent!) beard. "When are we going to give
up, in all civilised nations, listening to
children in courts of law?". Lipmann (1911)
children cannot distinguish fact from
fantasy. Binet (1900), Stern (1910) children are
susceptible to leading questions.
Alternative view children are "innocent" and
hence reliable. Dent (1988) under optimum
conditions, children's memories can be as
reliable as adults'.
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• Why are children problematic witnesses?
• Both social and cognitive factors
• 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.

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Children's performance compared to adults 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.
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Diamond and Carey (1977) Claimed "encoding
switch" from piecemeal to configural encoding
occurred at about 10 years of age. Not
supported by subsequent research Freire and Lee
(2001) 4-5 year olds can use configural
information to recognise "Bob", but are easily
distracted by paraphernalia.
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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. Relative judgements of age, height and
weight better than absolute ones.
Mean (absolute) discrepancies between actual and
estimated values
Age (years Height (inches) Weight (pounds)
7-8 13.1 63.7 8.7
9-10 7.5 49.4 8.2
11-12 5.3 47.7 6.4
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Evidence for configural processing in children
Tanaka, Kay, Grinnell, Stansfield and Szechter
(1998) 6, 8 and 10 year old children all show
face superiority effect with upright (but not
inverted) faces. Older children more affected by
inversion.
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Evidence for configural processing in children
Mondloch, Le Grand and Maurer (2002) "Jane" and
sisters have Featural, Spacing or Contour
differences. 6, 8,10 year olds and adults saw
pairs of faces, upright and inverted. All ages
similar in accuracy on Featural and Contour
changes.
Adults show inversion effect for Spacing set
children worse than adults on Spacing
set. Configural processing develops more slowly
than featural.
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2. Accuracy of verbal recall Marin, Holmes,
Guth and Kovac (1979) Subjects aged 6 to adult
viewed a staged argument between two adults.
Adults recalled 5-6 times more information than
6 yr olds. No age differences in proportion of
errors in free recall (lt10). Typical findings
of studies on children's recall 1. Accuracy of
spontaneous recall is comparable to adults'. 2.
Spontaneously produce much less information. 3.
More susceptible to being influenced by
interviewer.
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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. Interviewed 1 day and 5
months later. "Control" cued recall interviewed
only once (at 5 months).
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No age differences in recall after one day. All
groups' recall accuracy was reduced by 5 months'
delay the younger the group, the greater the
reduction. Delay increased number of inaccurate
responses in all groups no clear effects of
age. No advantage of enhanced recall over cued
recall. Suggestibility increased with delay in
children but not adults.
Percentage correct (out of 26 questions)
1 day 5 mths
6 yr old cued 66 36
enhanced 67 45
control - 38

9 yr old cued 74 61
enhanced 67 54
control - 54

adult cued 70 69
enhanced 72 73
control - 62
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Jones and Pipe (2002) "visiting the
pirate" 5-7 year olds' memory tested 0, 1-day,
1-week, 1 month or 6 months later. Most rapid
forgetting was soon after the event (as in
adults). For open-ended recall, a significant
decrease was detected only after 6 months' delay.
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Qualitative differences in spontaneous
reporting King and Yuille (1986) Youngest
children report action details and ignore actors'
physical characteristics. Older children and
adults recall more details of actors. Yuille,
Cutshall and King (1986) 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.
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Problems with distinguishing fact from
fantasy Johnson, Bransford and Solomon
(1979) "Real stimuli" trials shown a picture
0-3 times. "Imagined stimuli" trials imagined a
picture 0-3 times. Judge the frequency of actual
presentations. Confusion no greater for children
(8, 10, 12) than adults. Johnson and Raye
(1984) Review of their "reality monitoring"
studies. Say-listen, listen-listen, listen-think,
do-watch, watch-watch no age-differences.
say-think, do-think age-differences (6 lt 9 lt
adults).
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Ackil and Zaragoza (1995) 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. Reasons (a)
Memory for source is an inference children less
skilled at this. (b) Age-differences in visual
imagery. (c) Poorer at encoding information about
the source itself.
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False memory syndrome ".... one of my first
memories would date, if it were true, from my
second year. I can still see, most clearly, the
following scene, in which I believed until I was
about fifteen. I was sitting in my pram, which my
nurse was pushing in the Champs Elysees, when a
man tried to kidnap me. I was held in by the
strap fastened around me while my nurse bravely
tried to stand between me and the thief. She
received various scratches, and I can still see
vaguely those on her face. Then a crowd gathered,
a policeman with a short cloak and a white baton
came up, and the man took to his heels. I can
still see the whole scene, and can even place it
near the tube station. When I was about fifteen,
my parents received a letter from my former nurse
saying that she had been converted to the
Salvation Army. She wanted to confess her past
faults, and in particular to return the watch she
had been given as a reward on this occasion. She
had made up the whole story, faking the
scratches. I, therefore, must have heard, as a
child, the account of this story, which my
parents believed, and projected into the past in
the form of a visual memory." Jean Piaget, in
Plays, Dreams, and Imitation in Childhood
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False memory syndrome Hyman, Husband and
Billings (1995) Suggested false memories to
students at first interview these were sometimes
incorporated into recollections at second
interview. Ceci et al (1994) 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. Loftus and Coan
(1995) 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.
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Ways to improve children's recall 1. Social
support e.g. interview with friend present (e.g.
Moston and Engleberg 1992). 2. Rapport building
by interviewer Warm, friendly interviewers best
(e.g. Goodman, Bottoms and Schwartz-Kenney, 1991
Goodman, Sharma, Thomas and Considine, 1995). 3.
Context reinstatement Provides recall cues,
reduces verbal demands (e.g.Wilkinson, 1988). 4.
Cognitive Interview Koehnken, Milne, Memon and
Bull (1994) meta-analysis of effectiveness of
Cognitive Interview for children. Increases
amount of correct details and false information
recalled overall accuracy rate remains
constant. "Recall in reverse order" and "change
perspective" instructions confuse children.
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Bruck and Melnyk (2004) individual differences
in suggestibility?
interrogative suggestibility (readiness to agree
with misinformation or misleading questions)
demographic factors (SES, gender)
source misattribution (inability to identify
whether events had occurred or were suggested)
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)
misinformation effects (incorporation of false
information into later reports about an event)
cognitive factors (intelligence, memory, Theory
of Mind, executive function, distractibility,
creativity)
false event creation (construction of an entire
event that never happened)
Reviewed 58 papers (69 studies containing 500
analyses) on individual differences in children's
suggestibility.
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Results Only 16 of all correlations were
significant outliers? Or is suggestibility
caused by a complex combination of cognitive and
psycho-social factors? SES, gender and IQ are
unrelated to suggestibility. Retarded children
are more suggestible than normal children. Event
memory in one setting correlates poorly with
suggestibility in another setting. Weak/inconsiste
nt relationships between suggestibility and all
variables except Children with advanced language
skills more resistant to suggestion. High
creativity associated with suggestibility and
false event creation. Insecure/avoidant mothers
have the most suggestible children. (Do children
raised by secure and supportive parents have
positive self-concepts?) Impossible to identify
whether a particular child would be suggestible.
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Clarke-Stewart, Malloy and Allhusen
(2004) Suggestibility to miselading questions
about playroom events was most reliably predicted
by verbal ability self-control relationships with
parents Children with good verbal abilities,
high self-control and close and secure
relationships with parents, were more resistant
to suggestive questions. (But, five-factor
multiple regression R 0.57 - still explains
only 32 of the variance in suggestibility!)
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Conclusions Under the right circumstances,
children can be reliable and accurate witnesses.
Main problems are lack of metamemory skills,
and susceptibility to interviewer effects (adults
perceived as omniscient and authoritative). Diffi
cult to predict with any accuracy whether an
individual child is suggestible, since
suggestibility depends on a complex interaction
between characteristics of event, child and
interviewer.