Children who experienced a repeated event only appear less accurate in a second interview than those who experienced...

When children have experienced a repeated event, reports of experienced details may be inconsistently reported across multiple interviews. In 3 experiments, we explored consistency of children's reports of an instance of a repeated event after a long delay (Exp. 1, N = 53, Mage = 7.95 years; Exp. 2, N = 70, Mage = 5.77 years, Exp. 3, N = 59, Mage = 4.88 years). In all experiments, children either experienced 1 or 4 activity sessions, followed at a relatively short delay (days or weeks) by an initial memory test. Then, following a longer delay (4 months or 1 year), children were reinterviewed with the same memory questions. We analyzed the consistency of children's memory reports across the 2 interviews, as well as forgetting, reminiscence, and accuracy, defined with both narrow and broad criteria. A highly consistent pattern was observed across the 3 experiments with children who experienced a single event appearing more consistent than children who experienced a repeated event. We conclude that inconsistencies across multiple interviews can be expected from children who have experienced repeated events and these inconsistencies are often reflective of accurate, but different, recall. (PsycINFO Database Record