The authors examined the effects of reinstating objects from an event on 6-and 9-year-old children's reports of the event in which they had either participated or observed. Half of the 95 children were interviewed twice, 10 days and 10 weeks after the event (Group 1), and the remaining children were interviewed a single time, 10 weeks after (Group 2). Following free recall, prompted recall and direct questions were accompanied by objects from the event and distractors for half the children. The effect of the delay on free recall was ameliorated by the prior interview for older but not younger children. Objects attenuated age differences in prompted recall for participants and enhanced accuracy in response to questions. Objects also led to more errors at the long delay. Analyses based on signal detection theory indicated that both response strategy and memory-related factors contributed to developmental changes in compliance with misleading questions.It is now widely recognized that children cannot be categorized as competent or incompetent witnesses on the basis of age alone. Many factors influence children's accounts of events, and an interactional perspective on children's eye witness testimony, according to which the skills demonstrated by the child are jointly determined by the child and the environmental context, is beginning to emerge. Such a perspective highlights the importance of the interviewer's behavior (e.g., Stellar, 1991) which, in turn, points to the need to develop innovative interviewing techniques so that "children can be empowered to become their most reliable selves" (McGough, 1991, p. 167). In recent studies, a number of procedures designed to improve children's event reports have been examined, including interviewer style

Purpose. Two studies evaluated the effects of question type and of brief pre‐interview training, involving instructions and practice, on the number of correct answers and errors given by children in a structured interview. Methods. A total of 157 children aged from nine to 13 were interviewed about a visit to a science centre with both misleading and non‐misleading open and closed questions. The children also rated their confidence in each of their answers. Half the children received pre‐interview training designed to discourage compliance and guessing. Results. In Study 1 pre‐interview training decreased commission errors to misleading questions, but also decreased the number of correct responses to non‐misleading questions. In Study 2 a revised training package decreased errors for misleading questions without impacting on correct responses. Conclusions. Brief pre‐interview interventions can reduce children's compliance with misleading questions in experimental situations. Both studies provided some support for the cognitive processing hypothesis that the confidence‐accuracy relationship will be stronger for open than for closed questions.

In Study 1, children were reinterviewed about an event they had taken part in 2 years earlier when they were 6 years old (M.-E. Pipe & J. C. Wilson, 1994). In Study 2, children were reinterviewed about an event in which they had participated 1 year earlier when they were 6 or 9 years of age (S. Gee & M.-E. Pipe, 1995). Interviews were conducted with or without cue items and distractors, as in the original studies. The amount of information reported in free recall decreased over the 1- or 2-year delays, and for 6-year-olds, there was also a small decrease in accuracy of free recall. Reinstating specific cue items in Study 2 maintained recall when attention was drawn to them, but prompting children led to a decrease in accuracy. Whereas information repeated across interviews was highly accurate, information reported for the first time at the long delays was not.

The themes that emerged about what people with dementia seek from dementia-friendly communities reinforce previous research, but with an overlay of the difficulties of living in an earthquake-damaged city.