The American Psychological Association has announced that 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.

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.

Reference: "Children's Eyewitness Reports After Exposure to Misinformation From Parents," Debra Ann Poole, Ph.D., D. Stephen Lindsay, Ph.D.; Journal of Experimental Psychology - Applied, Vol 7

03/24/2001