The current study addressed how the timing of interviews affected children's memories of unique and repeated events. Five- to six-year-olds (N=125) participated in activities 1 or 4 times and were misinformed either 3 or 21 days after the only or last event. Although single-experience children were subsequently less accurate in the 21- versus 3-day condition, the timing of the misinformation session did not affect memories of repeated-experience children regarding invariant details. Children were more suggestible in the 21- versus 3-day condition for variable details when the test occurred soon after misinformation presentation. Thus, timing differentially affected memories of single and repeated events and depended on the combination of event-misinformation and misinformation-test delays rather than the overall retention interval.
Child Dev. 2007 Jul-Aug;78(4):1137-52. Roberts KP, Powell MB. Wilfrid Laurier University, Department of Psychology, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. kroberts@wlu.ca
There are no comments for this entry.
[Add Comment]