The effects of repeated experience on children's suggestibility.

Abstract

The effect of suggestive questions on 3- to 5-year-old and 6- to 8-year-old children's recall of the final occurrence of a repeated event was examined. The event included fixed (identical) items as well as variable items where a new instantiation represented the item in each occurrence of the series. Relative to reports of children who participated in a single occurrence, children's reports about fixed items of the repeated event were more accurate and less contaminated by false suggestions. For variable items, repeated experience led to a decline in memory of the specific occurrence; however, there was no increase in susceptibility to suggestions about details that had not occurred. Most errors after repeated experience were intrusions of details from nontarget occurrences. Although younger children and children who were interviewed a while after the event were more suggestible, respectively, than older children and those interviewed soon after the event, repeated experience attenuated these effects.

Binding an event to its source at encoding improves children’s source monitoring.

“…In one study, most of the details children reported were presented at some point over four occurrences of a repeated event and there were very few intrusions of details that were never presented. Children were confused, however, as to which details came from which occurrence, even though they remembered that they had happened (Powell et al, 1999). Yet researchers have made little progress in understanding the mechanisms that are needed to reduce such source confusions (Roberts, 2002).…”

“…Often source and memory accuracy are dissociated (as in studies of repeated events, e.g., Connolly & Lindsay, 2001;Powell et al, 1999); yet in other studies it seems that children can directly retrieve source (e.g., Lloyd et al, 2009). Even if source is attributed (rather than retrieved) at test, the quality of the memory trace (e.g., vividness, decay of perceptual information, lack of source-specifying information) must have some impact on subsequent source-monitoring decisions.…”

Children’s ability to distinguish between memories from multiple sources: Implications for the quality and accuracy of eyewitness statements

“…Research on children's source monitoring, however, raises the question of whether this standard is too high when children have experienced multiple similar events. According to source-monitoring theory and as demonstrated in the research discussed above, events that are similar and predictable can be difficult for children (and adults) to distinguish (Connolly & Lindsay, 2001;Lindsay et al, 1991;Powell et al, 1999;Roberts & Blades, 1999). Given that the nature of sexual abuse often entails similar, predictable events as indexed by children's testimony such as "it was the same as last time" or "he always does it like this" (Roberts & Powell, in press), conditions in sexual abuse cases in particular (compared to typical one-time crimes such as road traffic accidents, adbuctions) are ripe for source confusions which may seriously impede prosecution.…”

“…Research on children's reports after multiple experiences of a similar event shows that children are often confused between the different incidents, for example, reporting a detail from one incident as if it occurred during a different one (e.g., Connolly & Lindsay, 2001;Powell, Roberts, Ceci, & Hembrooke, 1999 According to the source-monitoring framework, memories of events that are similar are more difficult to distinguish than are memories of events that are dissimilar (e.g., Johnson et al, 1993;Lindsay et al, 1991). Characteristics of target events will inevitably influence the kinds of information that are encoded in memories and, given that one method of monitoring source is assessing the qualitative characteristics of memories (Johnson et al, 1993), it is not surprising that several researchers have found that memories of similar sources are harder to distinguish from each other than are memories of dissimilar sources (Day, Howie, & Markham, 1998;Foley, Aman, & Gutch, 1987;Foley, Harris, & Hermann, 1994;Lindsay, Johnson, & Kwon, 1991;Roberts & Blades, 1999).…”

“…This requires, then, that children remember the details (i.e., the content) of what occurred and tag those details to the context in which it occurred (e.g., time and place); in other words, they must monitor the source of the retrieved information. In laboratory settings, children who have experienced multiple, similar events find it difficult to retrieve a detail from a particular incident (Fivush et al, 1992;Hudson, 1990;Powell et al, 1999). An analysis of children's errors, however, shows that they have impressive memories of what they Children's ability to distinguish 21 have experienced: Children most commonly erred by reporting a detail from one experienced incident as if it had happened in another experienced incident (e.g., claiming that they heard the story about Supercat during the last incident, when they actually heard the Supercat story in the penultimate incident, Powell et al, 1999).…”