The roles of prior experience and the timing of misinformation presentation on young children

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