THE SUGGESTIBILITY OF CHILDREN'S MEMORY

Children's recall of emotionally arousing, repeated events: a review and call for further investigation

The influence, if any, of emotional arousal on memory is a controversial topic in the literature. Much of the research on memory for emotionally arousing events has focused on a few specific issues (e.g., differences in types of details recalled in emotionally arousing and neutral events; increasing ecological validity). Although gaining more recent attention, a neglected area in the literature has been memory for instances of repeated, emotionally arousing events. This issue has important implications for understanding children's ability to recall events in a forensic setting. We review existing findings on memory for emotionally arousing events in general and particularly in children, children's memory for events that occur repeatedly, and then discuss the scarce research on repeated emotionally arousing events and the need for further research in this area. We conclude that although it is clear that children are capable of accurately reporting arousing and repeated experiences, it is also apparent that circumstances both within and outside the control of investigative interviewers influence this ability.

Children's false memories: easier to elicit for a negative than for a neutral event

The present study examined the role of valence in the development of children's implanted false memories. Seventy-six 7-year-old children listened to two true and one false narrative. The false narrative was either neutral ("moving to another classroom") or emotional negative ("being accused by the teacher for copying off your neighbor"). In addition, half of the children were presented with their class photograph while listening to the narratives. During two interviews, children recalled as many details as possible from the true and false events. Results showed that the negative event elicited more false memories than the neutral event. The presentation of a true photograph did not promote the development of false memories.

Individual differences in working memory capacity affect false memories for missing aspects of events

Recently, Gerrie, Belcher, and Garry (2006) found that, when participants watch an event with parts missing, they falsely claim to have seen the missing parts--but they were more likely to claim they had seen less crucial parts than more crucial parts. Their results fit with a source-monitoring framework (SMF; Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993) explanation of false memories. In this paper we used individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) to examine the SMF explanation of false memories for missing aspects of events. An accumulating body of research suggests that WMC is strongly related to controlling attention, including the ability to distinguish between sources of information. The primary purpose of the present study was to examine whether people with larger WMC are better able to ward off false memories for missing information than those with a smaller WMC. We showed that higher WMC reduced false recognition of crucial information, but did not change false recognition of noncrucial information. Additionally, we found that WMC had little effect on participants' subjective experience of true and false recognition of events, regardless whether the information was crucial or not. These results provide further evidence that people's WMC is related to their source-monitoring ability.

Awareness, dreaming and unconscious memory formation during anaesthesia in children

Recent studies have reported an incidence of awareness in children of around 1%, while older studies reported incidences varying from 0% to 5%. Measuring awareness in children requires techniques specifically adapted to a child's cognitive development and variations in incidence may be partly explained by the measures used. The causes and consequences of awareness in children remain poorly defined, though a consistent finding is that many children do not seem distressed by their memories. There are, however, some published reports of persistent psychological symptoms after episodes of childhood awareness. Compared to explicit memory, implicit memory is more robust in young children; however there is no evidence yet for implicit memory formation during anaesthesia in children. Children less than 3 years of age do not form explicit memory, although toddlers, infants and even neonates have signs of consciousness and implicit memory formation. In these very young children the relevance of awareness remains largely unknown.

Anxious and nonanxious children’s recall of a repeated or unique event

The current study examined 4- and 5-year-olds' memory for an event that was experienced once or was the first in a sequence of four similar events. The event was private swimming lessons for beginners that, because of natural variation in fear of water, were experienced as stressful for some children and not stressful for others. Consistent with much previous research, there was evidence that repeat-event children remembered less than did single-event children. There was some evidence for a beneficial influence of stress on resistance to suggestions. No other effects of stress were found in either the single- or repeat-event children. Implications for the debate on the influence of stress on memory and for children's testimony are discussed.

Mixing memories: the effects of rumors that conflict with children's experiences

This study examined age differences in children's vulnerability to be misled by two types of false overheard rumors, namely a rumor that suggested a reasonable explanation for an earlier unresolved experience and a rumor that suggested an explanation that conflicted with information already in memory. Results indicated that all of the children were highly susceptible to wrongly report the rumor as an actual experience when it merely filled a gap in memory. However, the 5- and 6-year-olds were better able than the 3- and 4-year-olds to resist the rumor when it suggested a conflicting explanation for a past event. Developmental changes in children's understanding of conflicting mental representations were linked to their ability to resist being misled by the conflicting rumor.

Autobiographical memory and suggestibility in children with autism spectrum disorder

Two paradigms were developed to examine autobiographical memory (ABM) and suggestibility in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Children with ASD (N = 30) and typically developing chronological age-matched children (N = 38) ranging in age from 5 to 10 years were administered an ABM questionnaire. Children were asked about details of current and past personally experienced events. Children also participated in a staged event, and later were provided with true and false reminders about that event. Later, children again were interviewed about the staged event. The results from both paradigms revealed that children with ASD showed poorer ABM compared to controls. Generally, their ABM was marked by errors of omission rather than by errors of commission, and memory was particularly poor for early-life events. In addition, they were as suggestible as the typically developing children. The results are discussed in terms of applied and theoretical implications.

Children’s metamemorial judgments in an event recall task

Two studies were conducted in which two different indicators of metacognitive monitoring were investigated in a complex everyday memory task. In the first phase of each experiment, 8- and 10-year-olds as well as adults were shown a short event (video) and gave judgments of learning, that is, rated their certainty that they would later be able to recall specific details correctly. In the second phase of the experiments, participants underwent a memory interview about the event and in Study 2 also gave confidence judgments, that is, rated their certainty that the provided answers to the memory questions were correct. Results revealed significant influences of memory characteristics on monitoring in that delaying judgments and monitoring judgments concerning irretrievable information affected judgments of learning. From 8 years of age onward, there were relatively appropriate metamemorial monitoring abilities in both indicators. Moderate intraindividual consistency was found across the two measures of metacognitive monitoring, with a tendency toward higher consistency in older age groups. The results are discussed in terms of the adequacy of the underlying theoretical construct.

Older, not younger, children learn more false facts from stories

Early school-aged children listened to stories that contained correct and incorrect facts. All ages answered more questions correctly after having heard the correct fact in the story. Only the older children, however, produced story errors on a later general knowledge test. Source errors did not drive the increased suggestibility in older children, as they were better at remembering source than were the younger children. Instead, different processes are involved in learning correct and incorrect facts from fictional sources. All ages benefited from hearing correct answers because they activated a pre-existing semantic network. Older children, however, were better able to form memories of the misinformation and thus showed greater suggestibility on the general knowledge test.

Does providing props during preparation help children to remember a novel event?

We investigated the conditions under which preparatory information presented 1 day before a novel event influenced 6-year-olds' recall 1 week later. Children were assigned to one of six experimental conditions. Three conditions involved preparatory information that described the event accurately but differed according to the presence and type of props (verbal, real props, and toy props). In two conditions, which also differed according to whether verbal information was supplemented with real props, half of the preparatory information described the event accurately, whereas the other half was thematically similar to, but inconsistent with, the event (misleading verbal and misleading props). Compared with the attentional control condition, all forms of preparation that described the event accurately increased correct recall. Preparation that included props improved photograph recognition. When half of the accurate information was replaced by misleading information, the positive benefit on recall was reduced, and when misleading props accompanied the misleading information, errors increased. The potential underlying mechanisms and implications for pediatric settings are discussed.

Development of the false-memory illusion

The counterintuitive developmental trend in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) illusion (that false-memory responses increase with age) was investigated in learning-disabled and nondisabled children from the 6- to 14-year-old age range. Fuzzy-trace theory predicts that because there are qualitative differences in how younger versus older children and disabled versus nondisabled children connect meaning information across the words on DRM lists, certain key effects that are observed in adult studies will be absent in young children and in learning-disabled children. Data on 6 such adult effects (list strength, recall inflation, delayed inflation, delayed stability, thematic intrusion, and true-false dissociation) were used to investigate this hypothesis, and the resulting data were consistent with prediction.

Children's memory for complex autobiographical events: Does spacing of repeated instances matter?

Often, when children testify in court they do so as victims of a repeated offence and must report details of an instance of the offence. One factor that may influence children's ability to succeed in this task concerns the temporal distance between presentations of the repeated event. Indeed, there is a substantial amount of literature on the "spacing effect" that suggests this may be the case. In the current research, we examined the effect of temporal spacing on memory reports for complex autobiographical events. Children participated in one or four play sessions presented at different intervals. Later, children were suggestively questioned, and then participated in a memory test. Superior recall of distributed events (a spacing effect) was found when the delay to test was 1 day (Experiment 1) but there was little evidence for a spacing effect when the delay was 1 week (Experiment 2). Implications for understanding children's recall of repeated autobiographical events are discussed.

Eyewitness Evidence: Improving Its Probative Value

The criminal justice system relies heavily on eyewitnesses to determine the facts surrounding criminal events. Eyewitnesses may identify culprits, recall conversations, or remember other details. An eyewitness who has no motive to lie is a powerful form of evidence for jurors, especially if the eyewitness appears to be highly confident about his or her recollection. In the absence of definitive proof to the contrary, the eyewitness's account is generally accepted by police, prosecutors, judges, and juries. However, the faith the legal system places in eyewitnesses has been shaken recently by the advent of forensic DNA testing. Given the right set of circumstances, forensic DNA testing can prove that a person who was convicted of a crime is, in fact, innocent. Analyses of DNA exoneration cases since 1992 reveal that mistaken eyewitness identification was involved in the vast majority of these convictions, accounting for more convictions of innocent people than all other factors combined. We review the latest figures on these DNA exonerations and explain why these cases can only be a small fraction of the mistaken identifications that are occurring. Decades before the advent of forensic DNA testing, psychologists were questioning the validity of eyewitness reports. Hugo Münsterberg's writings in the early part of the 20th century made a strong case for the involvement of psychological science in helping the legal system understand the vagaries of eyewitness testimony. But it was not until the mid- to late 1970s that psychologists began to conduct programmatic experiments aimed at understanding the extent of error and the variables that govern error when eyewitnesses give accounts of crimes they have witnessed. Many of the experiments conducted in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s resulted in articles by psychologists that contained strong warnings to the legal system that eyewitness evidence was being overvalued by the justice system in the sense that its impact on triers of fact (e.g., juries) exceeded its probative (legal-proof) value. Another message of the research was that the validity of eyewitness reports depends a great deal on the procedures that are used to obtain those reports and that the legal system was not using the best procedures. Although defense attorneys seized on this nascent research as a tool for the defense, it was largely ignored or ridiculed by prosecutors, judges, and police until the mid 1990s, when forensic DNA testing began to uncover cases of convictions of innocent persons on the basis of mistaken eyewitness accounts. Recently, a number of jurisdictions in the United States have implemented procedural reforms based on psychological research, but psychological science has yet to have its fullest possible influence on how the justice system collects and interprets eyewitness evidence. The psychological processes leading to eyewitness error represent a confluence of memory and social-influence variables that interact in complex ways. These processes lend themselves to study using experimental methods. Psychological science is in a strong position to help the criminal justice system understand eyewitness accounts of criminal events and improve their accuracy. A subset of the variables that affect eyewitness accuracy fall into what researchers call system variables, which are variables that the criminal justice system has control over, such as how eyewitnesses are instructed before they view a lineup and methods of interviewing eyewitnesses. We review a number of system variables and describe how psychological scientists have translated them into procedures that can improve the probative value of eyewitness accounts. We also review estimator variables, variables that affect eyewitness accuracy but over which the system has no control, such as cross-race versus within-race identifications. We describe some concerns regarding external validity and generalization that naturally arise when moving from the laboratory to the real world. These include issues of base rates, multicollinearity, selection effects, subject populations, and psychological realism. For each of these concerns, we briefly note ways in which both theory and field data help make the case for generalization.

Developmental Progression in Children’s Strategic Memory Regulation

A developmental study was conducted that investigated 7- to 11- years-olds’ ability to strategically regulate their memory performance. The study, based on Koriat and Goldsmith’s (1996) theoretical framework, sought to stimulate strategic regulation processes. In order to do so, the threshold to provide or withhold answers was manipulated and included bonuses for correct responding and penalties for incorrect answers. Participants were shown a video concerning the production of sugar from beets and were individually interviewed a week later. Responses had to be made to both answerable and unanswerable questions in both an open-ended and a yes/no question format. The results revealed that depending on the question format, there were different effects of the threshold manipulations on the frequencies of correct, incorrect, and “I don’t know” responses. Although there were no differences in response behaviour between the 1:0 and 1:1 incentives conditions when the questions were open-ended, children were able to differentially respond to the two bonus-to-penalty ratios when the questions were in yes/no format. Consistently, there were no interactions between age and response threshold indicating that strategic regulation competencies develop slowly but continuously during the primary school years showing the first signs of emerging competencies from an age of 7 onwards.

The influence of prior knowledge and repeated questioning on children's long-term retention of the details of a pediatric examination

Children's recall of the details of pediatric examinations was examined over the course of a 6-month interval. Although the 83 4- to 7-year-old participants reported a substantial amount of information at each assessment, performance declined over time, dropping sharply over the course of 3 months but then remaining constant out to the final interview at 6 months. As expected, older children provided more total information than younger children did and reported a greater proportion of the event components in response to general rather than specific questions. However, comparable patterns of remembering and forgetting over time were observed at each age level. In addition, no effects of repeated questioning--in the form of an interview at 3 months for half of the children--were observed on performance at the 6-month assessment. Moreover, children's prior knowledge about routine doctor visits was assessed before the checkup for half of the participants at each age and was associated with initial but not delayed recall. Although knowledge increased with age as expected, it nonetheless affected recall over and above the influence of age.

Children's basic memory processes, stress, and maltreatment

Building upon methods and research utilized with normative populations, we examine extant assumptions regarding the effects of child maltreatment on memory. The effects of stress on basic memory processes is examined, and potential neurobiological changes relevant to memory development are examined. The impact of maltreatment-related sequelae (including dissociation and depression) on basic memory processes as well as false memories and suggestibility are also outlined. Although there is a clear need for additional research, the investigations that do exist reveal that maltreated children's basic memory processes are not reliably different from that of other, nonmaltreated children.

Age differences in the effects of social influence on children's eyewitness performance and their metacognitive monitoring

The current work investigated the effects of social influence on children's recall accuracy and metacognitive monitoring. Two studies were conducted in which 8- and 10-year-olds were confronted with postevent information in an interview situation. An interviewer (Study 1) or a confederate (Study 2) provided postevent information with two levels of assertiveness, inducing (a) a variation of conformity pressure and (b) a variation of information credibility. Afterwards, children's confidence judgments were assessed. The results revealed significant age differences in children's ability to adequately cope with variations of social influence. Although conformity pressure was especially important for the 8-year-olds, effects of informative social influence were independent of age. However, 10-year-olds were also able to act appropriately on low credibility, thereby demonstrating a more sophisticated consideration of social influence sources. Moreover, varying assertiveness also affected the quality of children's confidence judgments by improving their metacognitive differentiation skills.

Relations of parental report and observation of parenting to maltreatment history

Parenting assessments (the Parent-Child Conflict Tactics Scale, CTSPC; and a mother-child observation) were examined for their ability to identify mothers with a history of physically abusing or neglecting their child. Participants were mothers of 139 children (age 3 to 6 years; 58 with a history of maltreatment). Mothers with a history of maltreatment reported higher scores on the Neglect, Nonviolent Discipline, and Psychological Aggression subscales of the CTSPC. These group differences, however, were limited to mothers who acknowledged a history of maltreatment, as mothers who concealed their maltreatment history rated themselves similar to controls. Observation of parental behaviors during a brief, nonstressful task did not discriminate mothers who maltreated from mothers who did not maltreat. The findings suggest that parental report using the CTSPC may be useful in assessing parenting behaviors among mothers with a history of maltreatment, although socially desirable responding is a significant problem.

Pre-event stereotypes and misinformation effects in young children

This study examined the effects of pre-event stereotypes on 5-year-old children's memories for the visit of an adult male to their school. Children were read three stories in which this man was described in positive, negative, or neutral terms. Following the visit, children were read post-event narratives which contained positive and negative misinformation that was consistent and inconsistent with the pre-event stereotype. Children were then given a recognition test under inclusion and exclusion instructions. Negative misinformation was correctly rejected more often than positive misinformation. Children given a positive pre-event stereotype were more likely to accept positive misinformation than those in the other stereotype conditions. Process dissociation analyses revealed that recollection for negative misinformation was larger than for positive misinformation; the opposite was the case for familiarity.

The influence of another's perspective on children's recall of previously misconstrued events

Children's abilities to reframe their memories of events after hearing another child's perspective of the same events were examined, and links between memory reframing, cognitive ability, and social competence were explored. Nine- to 11-year-olds (N = 79) were told to imagine that the events in a narrated story happened to them. Next, they heard another story that described either the same events (experimental condition) or unrelated events (control condition) from another child's perspective. The children in the experimental group reframed their memories in light of the alternative perspective, whereas the children in the control condition did not. Children with higher cognitive scores had higher memory reframing scores and received higher social competence ratings than children with lower cognitive scores.

Awareness During Anesthesia in Children: A Prospective Cohort Study

During routine adult anesthesia, the risk of awareness is 0.1%-0.2%. No recent studies have reported the incidence in children. Altered pharmacology and differing anesthesia techniques suggest that the incidence may differ in children. In this prospective cohort study, we determined the incidence of awareness during anesthesia in children. Eight-hundred-sixty-four children aged 5-12 yr who had undergone general anesthesia at The Royal Children's Hospital were interviewed on 3 occasions to determine the incidence of awareness. The awareness assessment was nested within a larger study of behavior change after anesthesia. Reports of suspected awareness were sent to four independent adjudicators. If they all agreed, a case was classified as true awareness. Twenty-eight reports were generated. There were 7 cases of true awareness, for an incidence of 0.8% (95% confidence interval, 0.3%-1.7%). Only one aware child received neuromuscular blockers, compared with 12% in the nonaware group. No aware child reported distress, and no substantial difference was detected in behavior disturbance between aware (20%) and nonaware (16%) children. The data provide some evidence that, like adults, children are also at risk of intraoperative awareness. Although the cause remains unclear, anesthesiologists should be alerted to the possibility of awareness in children.

Psychological evidence at the dawn of the law's scientific age

The Supreme Court's 1993 decision in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., holding that the admissibility of scientific evidence depends on its scientific merit, has made American law receptive to valid science to an unprecedented degree. We review the implications for psychology of the law's taking science seriously. We consider the law before Daubert, and the ways that Daubert as well as modifications to the Federal Rules of Evidence have affected the admissibility of expert testimony. We describe the ramifications of these changes for psychology used as authority to create a general legal rule, as evidence to determine a specific fact, and as framework to provide context. Finally, future prospects for improving psychological testimony are offered: Court-appointed experts will increase the psychological sophistication of judges and juries, and evidence-based practices on the part of psychologists will increase the sophistication of the expert testimony that they proffer in court.

Der Rückschaufehler bei Kindern und Erwachsenen

Zusammenfassung. Der Rückschaufehler (engl. “hindsight bias“) beschreibt die Tendenz, sich bei Schätzaufgaben durch vorgegebene Informationen systematisch beeinflussen zu lassen. Dieses Phänomen ist gut untersucht, allerdings ist seine entwicklungspsychologische Genese noch völlig unklar. Deshalb haben wir 274 Kinder und Erwachsene gebeten, die Antworten auf schwierige numerische Wissensfragen zu schätzen. Zu jeder Frage wurde ein niedriger oder hoher Wert als “Schätzung einer anderen Person“ (einer “Lehrerin“ oder eines “Schülers“) vorgegeben. Die Versuchspersonen wurden instruiert, diese Information bei ihrer Schätzung nicht zu berücksichtigen. Die Ergebnisse zeigten einen deutlichen Rückschaufehler, d. h. auf niedrige Werte erfolgten niedrigere Schätzungen als auf hohe Werte. Dieser Effekt war bei den Kindern stärker ausgeprägt als bei den Erwachsenen. Die Quelle des vorgegebenen Wertes (“Lehrerin“ oder “Schüler“) wirkte sich dabei nicht aus. Die Ergebnisse werden im Rahmen des kognitiven Prozessmodells “SARA“ diskutiert.

Does a Warning Help Children to More Accurately Remember an Event, to Resist Misleading Questions, and to Identify Unanswerable Questions?

Abstract. This study examined potential effects of a warning instruction prior to an eyewitness interview including answerable and unanswerable questions, which both were either unbiased or misleading. A total of 84 six-, eight- and ten-year-old children were shown a short video about the production of sugar and they were individually questioned about it one week later. Half of the children received the warning instruction. The results revealed clear age effects in the correct answers and accuracy to answerable questions and in the appropriate “don’t know” answers to unanswerable questions, but no effect of warning across all dependent measures. These findings suggest that preschool and elementary school age children cannot use such information adequately to increase their number of correct answers in the interview. Results are discussed in terms of cognitive explanations for these deficits.

The effects of memory trace strength on eyewitness recall in children with and without intellectual disabilities

Children with mild moderate intellectual disabilities (ID) were compared with typically developing peers of the same chronological age (CA) on an eyewitness memory task in which memory trace strength was manipulated to examine whether increased memory trace strength would benefit those with ID more than those without ID. No evidence was found for this claim or for the notion that different mechanisms are implicated in memory processes for children with ID versus CA controls. Fuzzy-trace theory was also used to contrast question types that probed verbatim memory versus gist memory. Manipulations of trace strength, when used with immediate recall (to reduce the impact of decay), were predicted to improve verbatim memory more than gist memory. The results broadly supported the predictions. Performance was not improved in the stronger trace strength condition on measures of recall that tapped gist memory (e.g., open-ended recall), whereas performance was significantly better in the stronger trace strength condition on two of the three measures of recall that tapped verbatim memory (i.e., closed misleading questions, open-ended specific questions). Differences in performance between the groups were quite marked on several question types, supporting previous findings that those with ID have certain vulnerabilities as potential witnesses compared with peers of the same CA.

The Psychology of Confessions: A Review of the Literature and Issues

Recently, in a number of high-profile cases, defendants who were prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced on the basis of false confessions have been exonerated through DNA evidence. As a historical matter, confession has played a prominent role in religion, in psychotherapy, and in criminal law-where it is a prosecutor's most potent weapon. In recent years, psychologists from the clinical, personality, developmental, cognitive, and social areas have brought their theories and research methods to bear on an analysis of confession evidence, how it is obtained, and what impact it has on judges, juries, and other people. Drawing on individual case studies, archival reports, correlational studies, and laboratory and field experiments, this monograph scrutinizes a sequence of events during which confessions may be obtained from criminal suspects and used as evidence. First, we examine the preinterrogation interview, a process by which police target potential suspects for interrogation by making demeanor-based judgments of whether they are being truthful. Consistent with the literature showing that people are poor lie detectors, research suggests that trained and experienced police investigators are prone to see deception at this stage and to make false-positive errors, disbelieving people who are innocent, with a great deal of confidence. Second, we examine the Miranda warning and waiver, a process by which police apprise suspects of their constitutional rights to silence and to counsel. This important procedural safeguard is in place to protect the accused, but researchers have identified reasons why it may have little impact. One reason is that some suspects do not have the capacity to understand and apply these rights. Another is that police have developed methods of obtaining waivers. Indeed, innocent people in particular tend to waive their rights, naively believing that they have nothing to fear or hide and that their innocence will set them free. Third, we examine the modern police interrogation, a guilt-presumptive process of social influence during which trained police use strong, psychologically oriented techniques involving isolation, confrontation, and minimization of blame to elicit confessions. Fourth, we examine the confession itself, discussing theoretical perspectives and research on why people confess during interrogation. In particular, we focus on the problem of false confessions and their corrupting influence in cases of wrongful convictions. We distinguish among voluntary, compliant, and internalized false confessions. We describe personal risk factors for susceptibility to false confessions, such as dispositional tendencies toward compliance and suggestibility, youth, mental retardation, and psychopathology. We then examine situational factors related to the processes of interrogation and show that three common interrogation tactics-isolation; the presentation of false incriminating evidence; and minimization, which implies leniency will follow-can substantially increase the risk that ordinary people will confess to crimes they did not commit, sometimes internalizing the belief in their own culpability. Fifth, we examine the consequences of confession evidence as evaluated by police and prosecutors, followed by judges and juries in court. Research shows that confession evidence is inherently prejudicial, that juries are influenced by confessions despite evidence of coercion and despite a lack of corroboration, and that the assumption that "I'd know a false confession if I saw one" is an unsubstantiated myth. Finally, we address the role of psychologists as expert witnesses and suggest a number of possible safeguards. In particular, we argue that there is a need to reform interrogation practices that increase the risk of false confessions and recommend a policy of mandatory videotaping of all interviews and interrogations.

Development and preliminary psychometric properties of the multidimensional neglectful behavior scale-child report

This article describes the development and psychometric properties of the Multidimensional Neglectful Behavior Scale-Child Report (MNBS-CR). The measure is broadly conceptualized to tap child neglect across four core domains: cognitive, emotional, physical and supervisory neglect, and it assesses exposure to violence, alcohol-related neglect, abandonment, and children's appraisals of parenting. Features include pictorial items, audio computer-assisted testing, and programming by age and gender of the child and caregiver. A clinical sample of 144 children, age 6 to 15 years, and a comparison sample of 87 children were tested. Results showed that the MNBS-CR has high reliability, with higher reliability found for older children (alpha = .94) than for younger children (alpha = .66). Among older children, the MNBS-CR Supervisory scale was significantly associated with the Child Behavior Check List (CBCL), and total MNBS-CR scores were significantly associated with clinician reports of behavioral disorders. Younger and older neglected children scored significantly higher on the MNBS-CR than community children.

Entwicklungsveränderungen in Konformität und in kognitiven Folgen sozialer Beeinflussung

Zusammenfassung. Die vorliegende Studie beschäftigt sich mit Entwicklungsveränderungen bei sozialer Beeinflussung sowie deren Auswirkungen auf die Erinnerungsleistung. 89 Kinder im Alter von 7 bis 8 und 9 bis 10 Jahren wurden nach einer Woche zum Inhalt eines Kinderfilms befragt. Im ersten Interview wurde die Erinnerungsleistung über offene Fragen ermittelt. Anschließend wurde die Stärke des sozialen Einflusses von irreführenden und richtig lenkenden Suggestionen zusätzlich durch die Anwesenheit und das Antwortverhalten einer Verbündeten der Interviewerin variiert. Am nächsten Tag wurde die suggestive Befragung ohne Verbündete wiederholt. Eine Kontrollgruppe durchlief beide suggestiven Befragungen ohne Verbündete. Es zeigten sich deutliche Alterseffekte in der Fähigkeit sozialer Beeinflussung zu widerstehen: Während 7- bis 8-Jährige noch durch Suggestionen sowie zusätzlich durch die Verbündete beeinflussbar waren, bestand bei 9- bis 10-Jährigen nur noch ein Einfluss der Verbündeten. Dies zeigte sich auch in altersspezifischen Unterschieden in den Nachwirkungen der Befragungssituation mit der Verbündeten auf die spätere Befragung ohne Verbündete.

Inviting witnesses to speculate: effects of age and interaction on children's recall

Inviting speculation has been found to increase children's false recall. In this study, kindergartners and third graders saw a clown perform actions alone or in interaction with a child. Two weeks later, the speculation group recalled all actions and was asked to speculate on half the actions. The control group recalled all actions without speculating. Four weeks after the show, all children recalled all actions again. The speculation group gave more false answers to the speculated items than the control group. Surprisingly, older children tended to report as many if not more false responses than younger children, regardless of speculation. In the speculation group, there were fewer false answers for interactions than actions, but false answers did not differ across observation types in the control group. Finally, speculation did not affect free and cued recall differentially.

True and False Memories in Maltreated Children

Differences in basic memory processes between maltreated and nonmaltreated children were examined in an experiment in which middle-socioeconomic-status (SES; N = 60), low-SES maltreated (N = 48), and low-SES nonmaltreated (N = 51) children (ages 5-7, 8-9, and 10-12 years) studied 12 Deese-Roediger-McDermott lists. Using recall and recognition measures, the results showed that both true and false memories increased with age and, contrary to some speculation, these trends did not differ as a function of maltreatment status. However, there were differences in overall memory performance as a function of SES. These results are discussed in the broader framework of children's memory development and the effects of the chronic stress associated with child maltreatment on basic memory processes.