Helping children to remember: The influence of object cues on children's accounts of a real event.

Abstract

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

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“…In light of earlier findings, it was expected that artifact and photo cues would generate more detailed memories (i.e., more ESKs of this event; see Gee & Pipe, 1995;Hudson & Fivush, 1991) than a no-cue (or text) situation, and that odor cues would generate more detailed memories than other cue modalities (see Aggleton & Waskett, 1999). However, the results show that no particular cue type elicited superior recall.…”

Making the most of information‐gathering interviews with children

“…Many of these have been examined in laboratory contexts and involve providing children with either items (Gee & Pipe, 1995;Smith, Ratner, & Hobart, 1987) or representations of items (Goodman & Aman, 1990;Price & Goodman, 1990;Priestley & Pipe, 1997;Salmon, Bidrose, & Pipe, 1995) associated with the to-be-remembered event, revisiting the context in which the event occurred (Pipe & Wilson, 1994;Priestley, Roberts, & Pipe, 1999;Wilkinson, 1988), or drawing during interviews (Butler, Gross, & Hayne, 1995;Gross & Hayne, 1998). Although these techniques enhance the amount of information retrieved, at least under some conditions (see Salmon, 2001, for a review), interviewers seldom know which props might be relevant, and need to avoid introducing props at times which would make them suggestive.…”

A Decade Later: Adolescents' Memory for Medical Emergencies

“…For example, reinstating interviews had little effect on 6-year-old children's recall of a magic lesson (Gee & Pipe, 1995), even a year later (Pipe, Gee, Wilson, & Egerton, 1999), or on young children's recall of a pediatric checkup (Ornstein et al, 2006), or on 3-to 5-year-olds' memory of playing in a lab (Quas et al, 2007). However, it is important to emphasize that in these studies, there was little suggestive questioning or misinformation introduced, and so these issues are not considered here.…”