Sarah Whitney November 11, 2015
Critical Thinking Paper Dr. Nancy Furlong

A current question that has been frequently asked is whether eyewitness reports provided by children during a court case are reliable. Children's memory capacity, their susceptibility to suggestion, and the delay between a crime and providing an eyewitness statement are some factors that can influence the reliability of these reports. Eyewitness reports provided by children can be reliable if given within a reasonable time frame, and that the presented questions are not suggestive. Also, that the eyewitness reports are provided by older children (9 to 12 years old), their reports tend to be more reliable than those of younger children (5 to 8 years old). Taking these factors into account in future court cases with children as eyewitnesses will ensure the best possible reliability in children's statements. The number of children as eyewitnesses is ever-growing and therefore child eyewitnesses are more involved in the field of legal testimony (Flin, Boon, Knox, & Bull, 1992). Due to this greater involvement, it is frequently questioned whether children are able to serve as credible eyewitnesses during a court case, especially in cases where the sole eyewitnesses to an offense are children (Flin et al., 1992). There can be several factors that might influence the reliability of children's eyewitness reports. Firstly, children of all ages have the capability to give accurate reports when they are asked to freely recall a particular event. However, the younger the children are, the less detail they will eventually report. Secondly, the delay between being a victim or witnessing a crime and providing an eyewitness statement can take up to six months (Flin et al., 1992). Since memory tends to decline over time, the accuracy of the eyewitness memory may decline as well. Lastly, children appear to be suggestible, although younger children, five to eight years old, more so than older children, nine to twelve year olds.
As mentioned previously, children are able to provide an accurate report when asked to freely recall a particular event, although younger children tend to report less detail than older children, which is problematic when serving as an eyewitness in court. Pipe and Wilson (1994) examined whether or not the memory capacity of children can be enhanced when providing more detail in their statements by using cues. The recruited children, six and ten year olds, had an interaction with a magician, after which they were interviewed twice regarding this interaction after 10 days and after 10 weeks. The children were placed in one of four conditions. One with no cues where the interview room not the same as magic show room. Contextual cues, interview room the same as magic show room. Relevant cues where items used by magician and contextual cues were present, and last irrelevant cues where magic trick items similar to those used by the magician, and contextual and relevant cues were present. It appeared that all children reported more accurate information after a short delay than after a long delay. However, younger children reported less accurate information than the older children. All children reported more information when the relevant cues were present than when they were not. However, there was no difference in accuracy between the four conditions (Pipe & Wilson, 1994).
Gee and Pipe (1995) have performed a study which has replicated and extended the above-mentioned results by conducting a similar study in six and nine year olds. This study showed that during free recall all children provided reports that were highly accurate. However, older children reported more correct information, but also made more errors than the younger children. After a short delay of ten days, all of the children reported more correct information than after a long delay of ten weeks. A prior interview increased the amount of information reported by the older children only after a long delay. It seemed that relevant objects lessened the age differences that were present during prompted recall.
Although the results of both these studies have shown that children are able to provide accurate reports of experienced events, this accuracy can be negatively influenced by the way that children are questioned. Research has shown that the responses that children provide to open-ended questions, for example "Tell me what happened" are more accurate than the responses they provide to specific questions "Did you hurt your leg?" (Bruck & Ceci, 1999). Additionally, when children are presented with forced-choice questions, "Was it blue or red?" they rarely indicate that they do not know the answer, which compromises the reliability of children's eyewitness reports (Bruck & Ceci, 1999). Also, repeated questioning can decrease the accuracy of children's responses to questions as it can lead children to change their initial answer (Bruck & Ceci, 1999), perhaps because they assume incorrectly that their first response was incorrect.
It appears that children are able to provide accurate reports of experienced events (Gee & Pipe, 1995) (Pipe & Wilson, 1994), although they recall more correct information when they are presented with relevant cues (Pipe & Wilson, 1994) or prompts/objects (Gee & Pipe, 1995). Taken together, these findings indicate that when children are presented with relevant cues or objects that were present at the time of the incident, they might increase the reliability of the children's eyewitness reports. Additionally, to ensure the best possible reliability in children's statements, open-ended questions should be used during questioning. Another factor that can influence the reliability of children's eyewitness statements is vulnerability to suggestion, or the suggestibility effect (Ceci, Ross, & Toglia, 1987). When a certain memory trace or recollection of the original event becomes distorted or replaced after being exposed to flawed post-event information, this is referred to as the suggestibility effect (Ceci et al., 1987). Ceci et al. (1987) designed experiments to investigate this effect in children. They examined whether the memories of younger children are more vulnerable to misleading information than those of older children. All children were told a story after which they either received misleading information about the story or not. After an amount of time the children had to recall the story. Results showed that the children most vulnerable toward the effects of misleading information appeared to be the youngest children, three to four years old, whereas the other age groups, seven to nine and ten to twelve, did not differ from each other. Children that did not receive misleading information performed better than their same age peers that did receive this information. This result has been replicated by two other studies performed by Ceci et al. (1987). The last study showed that children are susceptible to misleading information, regardless of whether this information is given by a child or an adult (Ceci et al., 1987). It has also been shown that children's suggestibility can be influenced by situational factors. Ceci et al. (1987) found that when children were being questioned by means of a non-supportive such as serious behavior, closed body posture, instead of a supportive more friendly behavior, open body posture interviewing style, they answered significantly more of the misleading questions incorrectly. This finding indicates that questioning children by means of a supportive instead of a non-supportive interviewing style could lead children to be more resistant to suggestions, and therefore keep children's suggestibility to a minimum (Ceci et al., 1987).
An issue that is frequently questioned is whether children are able to recall accurate memories of a certain event a few months after this event has occurred, and this was studied by Flin et al. (1992). All included test subjects, five to six years old and nine to ten years old, observed an event after which they were either interviewed once after a long delay or twice after a short and a long delay regarding this event by means of cued recall, free recall of the event in combination with specific questions regarding what happened during the event, or enhanced recall, cued recall in combination with additional questions regarding contextual details of the event to enhance their memories. Results showed that the overall accuracy did not differ between the three age groups one day after the event. However, the overall accuracy of both children's age groups was significantly reduced and this reduction was largest for the younger children (Flin et al., 1992). Subjects who were interviewed by means of enhanced recall after day one had a significantly higher overall accuracy after five months, than those who had not been interviewed after day one. Other research has shown that although children have a better verbal memory for a particular event after a short delay than after a long delay, they can have a relatively good verbal memory for an event that occurred six years ago. The results indicate that although events can be verbally recalled after a long delay, the overall accuracy of children's eyewitness reports will be higher when witnesses are able to present their evidence within a short time frame after the incident has occurred (Flin et al., 1992). This time frame should be smaller for younger children, due to the greater loss in accuracy of their reports.
Whether children are able to serve as credible eyewitnesses during a court case is frequently questioned, and especially in those cases where the sole eyewitnesses to an offense are children (Flin et al., 1992). Studies regarding children's memory capacity have shown that children can provide accurate reports of events when they are asked to freely recall these events (Gee & Pipe, 1995), although older children provide more accurate information than younger ones. In the presence of relevant cues or relevant prompts and objects, children can recall more correct information, although younger children appear to be less accurate than older children in the presence of objects (Gee & Pipe, 1995). It also appeared that younger children are more vulnerable toward the effects of misleading information than older children (Ceci et al., 1987). This suggests that children, and especially younger children, are likely to agree when they are presented with questions that contain suggestions. However, it has also been shown that the suggestibility of children can be influenced by situational factors such as interviewing style during the questioning of children. When using a supportive instead of a non-supportive interviewing style, children are likely to be more resistant to suggestions. Regarding the effect of a delay on memory, it has been shown that children are able to verbally recall a certain incident after a long delay. However, the reliability of the eyewitness reports provided by children is higher when the witnesses are able to present their evidence within a short time frame after the incident has occurred (Flin et al., 1992). This time frame should be smaller for younger children, due to the greater loss in accuracy of their reports.
Based on these findings, specific methods can be identified to help the acquisition of more reliable eyewitness statements. Eyewitness reports provided by children can be reliable, provided that the questions presented to them are open- ended and do not contain suggestions, which children are likely to agree with. Also, while questioning children, the interviewer should adopt a supportive, instead of a non-supportive interviewing style, and the delay between the incident and providing a statement as an eyewitness should remain within a reasonable time frame. As mentioned previously, the number of children as eyewitnesses is ever- growing (Flin et al., 1992). Therefore, ensuring the best possible reliability in children's statements will help lead to an increased number of rightful convictions. In future court cases with children as eyewitnesses, the interviewer should adopt a supportive interviewing style and should avoid specific, forced-choice and repeated questions as well as the use of questions that contain suggestions. Also, the time frame in which children are summoned to present their evidence should be small, and children could be provided with relevant cues or objects to improve the accuracy of the eyewitness statements, and therefore make their statements as reliable as possible. Lastly, a big factor in reliable statements from children is the age of the child. All the reports suggests older children from nine to twelve tend to be less influenced and effected by all the above research.

REFERENCES

Bruck, M., & Ceci, S.J. (1999). The suggestibility of children's memory. Annual Review of Psychology, 50, 419-439.
Ceci, S.J., Ross, D.F., & Toglia, M.P. (1987). Suggestibility of children's memory: Psycholegal implications. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 116, 38-49.
Flin, R., Boon, J., Knox, A., & Bull, R. (1992). The effect of a five-month delay on children's and adults' eyewitness memory. British Journal of Psychology, 83, 323-336.
Gee, S., & Pipe, M.-E. (1995). Helping children to remember: The influence of object cues on children's accounts of a real event. Developmental Psychology, 31, 746-758.
Pipe, M.-E. (1996). Children's eyewitness memory. New Zealand Journal of Psychology, 25, 36- 43.
Pipe, M.-E., & Wilson, J.C. (1994). Cues and secrets: Influences on children's event reports. Developmental Psychology, 30, 515-525.