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Props and children's event reports: the impact of a 1-year delay
Insights
Children
Area of Science:
- Child Psychology
- Memory Research
- Forensic Interviewing
Background:
- Accurate recall in children is crucial for legal and clinical settings.
- Understanding factors influencing children's memory over time is essential.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the impact of interview props on children's recall accuracy.
- To examine memory retention and accuracy at 3 days and 1 year post-event.
- To compare recall performance across different age groups and interview conditions.
Main Methods:
- Quasi-experimental design involving 3- and 5-year-old children.
- A simulated medical examination of a "sick" teddy bear.
- Interviews conducted at 3 days and 1 year using real props, toy props, or verbal prompts.
Main Results:
- Both real and toy props initially aided recall compared to verbal prompts.
- Toy props led to less accurate reports than real props or verbal prompts at 3 days.
- Real props maintained higher accuracy than toy props at 1 year.
- Older children's recall was stable over time, while younger children's was more error-prone.
- Repeated information was more reliable than new information introduced later.
Conclusions:
- The type of props used in interviews significantly affects children's recall accuracy and reliability.
- Real props generally yield more accurate long-term recall than toy props.
- Age is a critical factor in memory retention, with younger children being more vulnerable to errors.
Abstract:
Three- and 5-year-old children took part in a quasi-medical event in which the child and an adult stranger examined a "sick" teddy bear. Three days and 1 year after the event, children were interviewed in one of three interview conditions; with real items from the event (real props); with toy representations of those items (toy props); or with verbal prompts (no props). After 3 days, both toys and real items facilitated children's reports compared to verbal prompts, but children interviewed with toy props were less accurate than those interviewed with either real items or verbal prompts. After 1 year, the reports of children interviewed with real items remained more accurate than those of children interviewed with toys, although real items did not differentially protect recall from forgetting compared to either toys or verbal prompts. The report of the older children were as accurate at the 1-year delay as at the 3-day delay, whereas the reports of the younger children were particularly susceptible to errors. Correct information was more likely to be repeated across interviews than were errors. New information introduced for the first time after 1 year was highly unreliable for both age groups, whereas that repeated across interviews was highly reliable.