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Use research on childrens episodic memory to support your answers. The law has traditionally viewed children as unreliable witnesses, based on perceptions that they are prone to fantasy, that they are suggestible and that their evidence is otherwise inaccurate. General attitudes toward child witnesses have changed dramatically over the last decade, though some psychologists are still divided. Some deem children as reliable and quite capable of providing accurate and detailed testimony (due to their resistance to suggestion regarding events they took part in), whilst others describe them as having difficulties in distinguishing reality, for which further questioning must be initiated, and thus unreliable (Ceci & Bruck). But over all, it is logical to assume that children have similar failings to their adult counterparts, with the possible exception of being more easily confused by technical or complex questions. When dealing with allegations that relate to the childs personal experience we are generally dealing with episodic memory.
Episodic memory relates to remembering events that have been personally experienced and making sense out of them. Procedures that are utilised by the mind in creating memory are threefold. First, information must be encoded. Some information is only encoded briefly. These short-term memories enter the working memory that holds the information for short time periods. Second, memories must be stored.
Information that is not maintained in long-term memory cannot be recalled later. Third, memories must be retrieved. A process goes on in the brain where stored information is located and brought into awareness. Different components of a memory, for example the sensory or visual aspects, may be stored in different parts of the brain. The linking together of these various fragments becomes what a person experiences as a memory.
Given that children's recall and recognition are thought to be inferior to the recall and recognition of adults the question arises as to how much of this inferiority can be attributed to each of the different stages of memory. The answer to this has great significance in relation to the questioning of children as witnesses. If the inferiority of children's recall and recognition is entirely attributable to encoding, then the only matter that needs to be considered is the manner in which courts should receive children's evidence. If, on the other hand, some or all the relative deficiency of children's recall and recognition can be traced to retention and retrieval, then appropriate techniques that minimise the deficiencies can be implemented.
Recall of more realistic material by different age groups has been investigated. In these studies, people of different ages have been exposed to staged events or have viewed a brief segment of a videotape. The findings of these studies suggest that the relationship between recall and age is not a simple matter. Feben (1985) showed her subjects three- minute videotape on fire fighting and then tested the subjects' recall of details of the tape. Feben found that young children's recall of specific features of objects depicted in the tape, for example the colour of the fireman's buttons, did not differ greatly from that of adults, but the accuracy of their recall of the theme and the sequence of events was significantly lower. Goodman and Reed (1986) attempted to examine recall by children and adults of their interaction with an unfamiliar adult.
Six- year- olds and adults achieved a similar level of performance on their recall of events elicited by objective questions. However adults recalled much more information, both correct and incorrect, than children. Saywitz (1987) requested her subjects to listen to a description of a crime on audiotape and then gave subjects three different types of memory tests: free recall, recognition, and a number of questions about content that the subjects might not have considered pertinent to the crime for example, asking for a description of clothing or details of the weather. There were two findings of relevance. Firstly, eight and nine- year- olds embellished the story more than older subjects. Secondly, when directed to specific objects and events, for example clothing, young children were accurate in their recall of the features of these objects and events.
This latter finding is consistent with the findings of Feben (1985) described above. It seems that childrens memory for events can be changed by asking leading questions, repeated yes or no questions, and by making misleading suggestions. The goal for interviewing children is to avoid asking leading questions. Yet many courts allow some degree of leading questions, otherwise, children will not speak at all. The problem is that even the most harmless of questions could become leading questions. For example, if the interviewer asks, "What happened when you were with Ken?" there is an assumption that the child was in fact with Ken, and that something did indeed happen (Goodman & Schaaf, 1997).
Since it is virtually impossible not to ask leading questions, researchers have looked at the extent to which questions are leading. Some questions, are very leading, e. g. , "He kissed you, didnt he?" The goal in interviewing children is to avoid asking this type of leading question. Children may also give inaccurate testimony if the language of the questions asked is complex. For example in one study with 5 - to 7 -year-olds, the question was, "The pirate engaged in blowing bubbles during the course of the puppet show, is that not true?" (Goodman & Schaaf, 1997). Children were 10 % more likely to agree with this question than when the question was more simply worded (e.
g. , the pirate blew bubbles, didnt he?" Children can also become more suggestible to leading questions if they feel intimidated by the interviewer. Children are less susceptible if the interviewer is friendly towards them. Childrens recall of events can also be influenced by false information suggested by others. For example, "How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?" suggests a very fast speed, compared to "How fast were the cars going when they hit each other?" A study by Poole and Lindsay (1995) in Journal of Experimental Child Psychology found that listening to false information could mislead 4 -, 5 -, 6 -, and 7 -year-olds. Children interacted with a Mr Science. They were then interviewed using non-suggestive techniques.
The children gave lots of correct information about their interactions with Mr Science. Three months later, some of the children listened to their parents read a story about Mr Science that described events that they had, and had not experienced. The children were interviewed again. The children made many false reports in the second interview.
A study by Rudy and Goodman (1991) in Developmental Psychology, analysed the extent to which 36 7 - and 8 -year-old children, and 18 4 -year-olds, from middle-class homes, had better recall if they participated in an event than if they observed the event. The children were brought to the University by their parents. The researchers met the parents, and organised the children into pairs. One of the children in each pair was randomly made the "participant" and the other the "bystander." The participant was to play the game "Simon says" with an adult stranger, while the other child watched the game. For example, the child was asked to touch their own knee and then the knee of the adult. The adult also dressed the child as a clown, and took a photo of the child.
The adult played a thumb-wrestling game with the child, which required the child to hold the adults hand. All events were videotaped from behind a one-way mirror. Children were interviewed about what happened about two weeks later. Parents were shown the interview questions and had an opportunity to delete questions they did not like. Parents also stayed with their children during each interview. First the children were asked to recall what happened during the games.
Then they were asked specific questions, some of which were leading, and some of which were misleading. A misleading question is where something is implied to have happened which didnt happen (e. g. , "How many times did he smack you?" ) or had a tag that implied that the event in the question was true (e. g. , "He was very big, wasnt he?" ). The interview included misleading questions, such as: "He didnt touch you did he?" , "Did he kiss you? and "He took your clothes off didnt he?" Results showed that younger children...
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