Children's ability to remember activities performed and imagined: implications for testimony

This study examined the ability of six year old children to remember activities performed or imagined when they are done alone or interactively with another person. Results suggest that children remember activities performed better than those imagined, both immediately and after an eight week delay. Activities performed interactively with another person were remembered better than those performed alone after the delay. Children provided fewer responses to open-ended than to specific questions, but their responses to open-ended questions were more likely to be correct. Responses to questions about events that did not occur were quite good initially but accuracy decreased significantly in response to follow-up probes.