Narrative Skills,Gender, Culture,and Children’s Long-Term Memory Accuracy of a Staged Event

This study examined the extent to which school-aged children’s general narrative skills provide cognitive benefits for accurate remembering or enable good storytelling that undermines memory accuracy. European American and Chinese American 6-year-old boys and girls (N = 114) experienced a staged event in the laboratory and were asked to tell a story from a picture book that accessed their narrative skill. Children were interviewed about the staged event 6 months later to assess memory accuracy. Greater narrative skill when storytelling was associated with decreased free recall and recognition memory accuracy for the staged event. In free recall responses, this effect was driven by an increase in the likelihood that inaccurate details would be included in responses from children with better general narrative skills. For girls only, narrative skill predicted poorer recognition accuracy. Girls were also more language-proficient and provided more correct details in free recall than did boys. Chinese American children were more accurate than European American children when responding to recall prompts due to less frequent provision of incorrect details, particularly in girls. Findings are discussed in light of the roles of socialization in memory-reporting accuracy.     

Returning to the scene: reminders and context reinstatement enhance children's recall.

Two studies examined the efficacy of context reinstatement as a reminder in enhancing 5- to 7-year-old children's recall. In Experiment 1, children who had been interviewed shortly after an event were reinterviewed 6 months later. Children exposed to a context reminder 24 hr before the 6-month interview and children interviewed in the event context did not differ but reported significantly more information in a verbal interview than children receiving a standard interview. A control group experienced the reminder but not the event and established that the effects of the reminder were not due to new learning. There was no effect of the reminder on accuracy and no effect in reenactment. In Experiment 2, children were interviewed for the first time after 6 months, and effects of the reminder were found for both verbal recall and reenactment. Nonverbal reminders may effectively enhance the amount of information children report without decreasing accuracy.     

Individual differences in children's event memory reports and the narrative elaboration technique

Children between 7 and 8 years old took part in a staged event at school and 1 week later were assessed using a short form of the Wechsler Intelligence scale for children (third edition) and measures of metamemory, narrative ability, and socioeconomic status. Two weeks following the event, children either received narrative elaboration training (NET; K.J. Saywitz & L. Snyder, 1996) and were prompted with the four NET cue cards at interview; received verbal prompts corresponding to the cue card categories, but without prior training; or were presented with the cards at interview without prior training. Children given verbal labels as prompts recalled as much information as children who received NET training and cue cards. Measures of intelligence were predictive of amount recalled for cards-only children but not for the other 2 groups, indicating that differences in recall between low- and high-IQ groups were attenuated when recall was supported by NET training or verbal prompting.     

Differences and similarities in event recall and suggestibility between children and adults in Germany and the United States

Children (5-6 year olds, 7-8 year olds, 9-10 year olds) and adults from Germany and the United States were shown a brief video of a theft. One week later, participants were asked to give a free narrative of an observed event (free recall), followed either by sets of misleading or unbiased questions, and finally they were given a three-choice recognition question for each queried item. German participants of all ages had higher levels of correct free recall than did American participants. American adults and 9-10 year olds gave more correct responses to the open-ended unbiased questions than did their German counterparts. Germans of all ages made more correct responses to the misleading questions, whereas national differences, favoring the Germans, for incorrect response to misleading questions were restricted to the 5-6 year olds. National differences were interpreted as reflecting possible differences in strategic abilities, exposure to formal instruction, and the degree to which children experience self-directed, autonomous learning opportunities.     

Post‐event information presented in a question form eliminates the misinformation effect

This study investigated the influences of sentence surface forms on the misinformation effect. After viewing a film clip, participants received a post‐event narrative describing the events in the film. Critical sentences in the post‐event narrative, presented in either a statement or a question form, contained misinformation instead of questions with embedded false presuppositions; thus participants did not have to answer questions about the original event. During the final cued‐recall test, participants were informed that any relevant information presented in the post‐event narrative was not in the original event and that they should not report it. Consistent with previous findings, Experiment 1 demonstrated that post‐event information presented as an affirmative statement produced the misinformation effect. More importantly, post‐event information presented in a question form, regardless of whether it contained a misleading or studied item, increased the recall of correct information and reduced false recall. Experiment 2 replicated the main finding and ruled out an alternative explanation based on the salience of misleading items. Post‐event information presented in a question form created a condition similar to that which produces the testing effect.     

Variations on a technique: enhancing children's recall using narrative elaboration training

The current study examined first, whether the positive effects demonstrated by the Narrative Elaboration Technique (NET) could be further enhanced when coupled with mental reinstatement of context (MR), prior to interview, and second, compared the efficacy of the NET at a two‐week delay and a nine‐month delay. In Study 1, 47 children took part as a class in a staged event about safety. Two weeks later they received a single training session, and the following day were interviewed with either the NET (n = 16), NET + MR (n = 17), or in a control condition (n = 14). Children trained with the NET reported approximately twice as much correct information, and were more accurate, than a control group who did not receive NET training, although the combination of the NET + MR did not result in a further significant enhancement of recall. In Study 2, 22 children took part in the safety event, and nine months later received a single training session, and were interviewed the following day with either the NET (n = 11), or in a control condition (n = 11). Children who received the NET training reported more correct information than those who did not. The practical applications of the NET and its variations are discussed. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Facilitating eyewitness memory in adults and children with context reinstatement and focused meditation

This study examined the comparative efficacy of two brief techniques for facilitating eyewitness memory in police investigations. Adult and child participants (N = 126; 64 children and 62 adults) who had viewed a videotape of a crime were subsequently tested for their memory of the event following either a focused meditation procedure (FM, derived from hypnotic interviewing techniques), a context reinstatement procedure (CR, a component of the cognitive interview), or a control procedure (no memory facilitation instructions). For both adults and children, the FM and CR procedures enhanced performance on both open‐ended and closed questions to levels above those achieved by controls, although those in the CR condition produced significantly more correct responses than those in the FM condition. However, only those in the CR group displayed elevated levels of confidence in relation to incorrect responses on closed questions. Implications for the possible use of such procedures are discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mental context reinstatement or drawing: Which better enhances children's recall of witnessed events and protects against suggestive questions?

The aim of this experiment was to examine the effectiveness of two techniques in enhancing children's recall of an event that they experienced approximately a week earlier. Younger (5–6 years) and older (8–9 years) children were interviewed about a magic show event in one of three conditions. Before recalling the event, some children were instructed to mentally reinstate the context of the event (MCR group), others were asked to draw the context of the event (DCR group), and others received no reinstatement instructions (NCR). Results showed that these instructions had no impact on children's free recall or responses to open‐ended prompts. However, reinstatement instructions impacted children's responses to suggestive questions: those in the DCR group gave more accurate responses than those in the NCR group. These findings provide preliminary support for the use of drawing as a potentially protective exercise that lessens the impact of biased questions with child witnesses.     

Mental reinstatement of context: A technique for interviewing child witnesses

The effectiveness of mental reinstatement of context as a technique for interviewing child witnesses was examined. Adult, 6-year-olds and 11 -year-olds viewed a film and were interviewed in one of three conditions; (1) free recall, (2) mental reinstatement of the context in which the film was viewed or (3) a series of specific questions about the film. In terms of correct information recalled, mental reinstatement of context and specific questions produced more correct responses than did free recall. In terms of errors of commission, specific questions produced more responses than either free recall or mental reinstatement of context. Age-related increases in both correct and incorrect responses were found supporting some previous findings. The implications of these results in terms of children's eyewitness memory were discussed, and future research directions were indicated.     

But I thought it was Mickey Mouse: the effects of new postevent information on 18-month-olds' memory

Two experiments examined the effects of postevent information on 18-month-olds' event memory. Experiment 1 (N=60) explored whether children's memory was reinstated when action information was eliminated from the reinstatement and only object information was introduced. Experiment 2 (N=48) examined children's recall when either (a). information about the objects' target actions was replaced with new action information or (b). the original training objects were replaced with new objects. In an elicited-imitation paradigm, children were trained to perform six target actions, watched a video reinstatement 10 weeks later, and were tested for recall 24 h after reinstatement. Two results were found. First, a video reminder eliminating action information reinstated children's memory as effectively as a video containing object and action information. Second, children were reminded of their past training when during reinstatement action information was preserved and new objects were presented but were not reminded when object information was preserved and new actions were presented.     

Environmental context-dependent eyewitness recognition

The present study helped resolve the apparent conflict between many laboratory list-learning studies, which have not found environmental context-dependent recognition memory, and staged field studies (e.g. Malpass and Devine, 1981), whose results with ‘guided memory’ techniques suggest that eyewitness face recognition should depend upon environmental context reinstatement. It was found in two different experiments that, relative to testing in a new place, returning participants to the environment where a live staged event had occurred improved performance on identification of a confederate's face (i.e., hit rate). Although physical reinstatement improved identification performance in Experiment 1, mental reinstatement instructions to subjects tested in a new environment did not improve identification performance over an uninstructed group. The environmental reinstatement effect did not interact with test delay or confederate. In Experiment 2 it was found that environmental reinstatement improved accuracy (hit rate and foil identification rate) when the correct target was present in the test line-up, and that false identifications were not significantly affected by contextual manipulations when the correct target was absent from the line-up. The results provide an empirical basis for the hypothesis that returning to the scene of an event improves eyewitness face recognition.     

Confidence judgments in children's and adults' event recall and suggestibility

The present work investigated the role of children's and adults' metacognitive monitoring and control processes for unbiased event recall tasks and for suggestibility. Three studies were conducted in which children and adults indicated their degree of confidence that their answers were correct after (Study 1) and before (Study 2) answering either unbiased or misleading questions or (Study 3) forced-choice recognition questions. There was a strong tendency for overestimation of confidence regardless of age and question format. However, children did not lack the principal metacognitive competencies when these questions were asked in a neutral interview. Under misleading questioning, in contrast, children's monitoring skills were seriously impaired. Within each age group, better metacognitive differentiation was positively associated with recall accuracy in the suggestive interview.     

An investigation of the interaction between cognitive style and context reinstatement on the memory performance of eyewitnesses

The power of context reinstatement to improve recall is well established, but the degree of effect obtained varies widely between studies. Exploring possible causes for this variation, this paper examines the relationship between cognitive style and the efficacy of context reinstatement in improving free and cued recall in an eyewitness paradigm. Experiment 1, using a live staged event and a 1 week delay, indicated a significant improvement in free recall with the reinstatement of context and, as expected, no such improvement in cued recall. However, analysis of the data according to field dependency, as measured by Witkin, Oltman, Raskin, and Karp's [A manual for the Embedded Figures Test (1971) Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press] Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT) revealed that, in free recall, field dependent witnesses' scores improved significantly with context reinstatement, whilst the scores of field independent witnesses did not. In cued recall, however, the field independent witnesses scored significantly higher overall than field dependent witnesses. Experiment 2 sought replication of these findings again utilised the GEFT and the Riding [Cognitive Styles analysis (1991) Birmingham: Learning and Training Technology] Cognitive Styles Analysis (CSA). Analysis of the data according to the Wholist-Analytic (W-A) dimension of the CSA, indicated no interaction with either context reinstatement or memorial performance. However the GEFT analysis produced similar results to that obtained in Experiment 1. The meaning of the interaction between the GEFT and both free and cued recall, and the failure of the CSA to similarly interact are discussed, together with the implication of these findings for establishing the value of reinstating context for individual eyewitnesses.     

When elaboration leads to appropriation: unconscious plagiarism in a creative task

Brown and Murphy's (1989) three-stage paradigm (generation, recall-own, generate-new) was used to assess the effects of participant elaboration on rates of unconscious plagiarism in two experiments using a creative task. Following the generation phase, participants imagined and rated a quarter of the ideas (imagery elaboration), generated improvements to another quarter (generative elaboration), and listened to a quarter of the ideas again without elaboration, with the remaining ideas acting as control. A week later, participants attempted to recall their own ideas, and generate new solutions to the same cues. In Experiment 1 both forms of elaboration equally increased correct recall, and decreased plagiarism in the generate-new task. However, generative elaboration led to significantly greater plagiarism in the recall-own task, but imagery elaboration did not. Participants in Experiment 2 were encouraged not to plagiarise by means of a financial incentive. However, they showed the same pattern as seen in Experiment 1. Therefore, contrary to a simple strength account, the probability of a person plagiarising another's ideas is linked to the particular nature of the elaboration carried out on that idea, rather than its familiarity.     

When elaboration leads to appropriation: Unconscious plagiarism in a creative task

Brown and Murphy's (1989) three-stage paradigm (generation, recall-own, generate-new) was used to assess the effects of participant elaboration on rates of unconscious plagiarism in two experiments using a creative task. Following the generation phase, participants imagined and rated a quarter of the ideas (imagery elaboration), generated improvements to another quarter (generative elaboration), and listened to a quarter of the ideas again without elaboration, with the remaining ideas acting as control. A week later, participants attempted to recall their own ideas, and generate new solutions to the same cues. In Experiment 1 both forms of elaboration equally increased correct recall, and decreased plagiarism in the generate-new task. However, generative elaboration led to significantly greater plagiarism in the recall-own task, but imagery elaboration did not. Participants in Experiment 2 were encouraged not to plagiarise by means of a financial incentive. However, they showed the same pattern as seen in Experiment 1. Therefore, contrary to a simple strength account, the probability of a person plagiarising another's ideas is linked to the particular nature of the elaboration carried out on that idea, rather than its familiarity.     

Effect of varying picture-sentence congruence on children's free recall.

70 fourth-grade children were shown objects arbitrarily arranged in an integrated scene. Subjects were randomly assigned to conditions which either presented a sentence that correctly labeled and correctly described the physical arrangement of the objects, presented a sentence containing the correct labels of the objects but not the correct physical arrangement, or presented a sentence which did not contain the correct labels and incorrectly described the physical arrangement. Control conditions either provided subjects with correct labels or omitted presentation of verbal prompts. Congruence between the object display and the sentence produced significantly higher recall and clustering than the incongruence or control conditions. The incongruence conditions did not produce significantly higher recall than the control conditions, suggesting that incongruence interferes with formation of stable grouping of items which appears to be an important factor in facilitating free recall.     

Does the nature of the experience influence suggestibility? A study of children's event memory

Two experiments examined the effects of event modality on children's memory and suggestibility. In Experiment 1, 3- and 5-year-old children directly participated in, observed, or listened to a narrative about an event. In an interview immediately after the event, free recall was followed by misleading or leading questions and, in turn, test recall questions. One week later children were reinterviewed. In Experiment 2, 4-year-old children either participated in or listened to a story about an event, either a single time or to a criterion level of learning. Misleading questions were presented either immediately or 1 week after learning, followed by test recall questions. Five-year-old children were more accurate than 3-year-olds and those participating were more accurate than those either observing or listening to a narrative. However, method of assessment, level of event learning, delay to testing, and variables relating to the misled items also influenced the magnitude of misinformation effects.     

The effects of mental context reinstatement on children's accounts of sexual abuse*

Forensic interviewers guided 46.4‐ to 13‐year‐old alleged victims of sexual abuse to recall the context in which the reported incidents had taken place. A comparable group of 50 alleged victims were interviewed using an interview protocol that was identical except that the mental context reinstatement (MCR) techniques were not included. MCR did not increase the total number of event‐related details reported, but it did lead children to reported proportionally more details (55% versus 46%) in response to invitations rather than focused prompts. Such information is more likely to be accurate. MCR had an especially powerful effect on the youngest children (4‐ to 6‐year‐olds) studied. The results suggest that non‐suggestive contextual cues may indeed be useful in forensic interviews. Published in 2001 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effects of mothers’ conversation style and receipt of misinformation on children's event reports

Can memory sharing conversations with mothers lead to errors in children's event memory when mothers are exposed to misinformation about what their children experienced and does this effect vary as a function of maternal memory-sharing style? Mothers were exposed to a false suggestion about a non-shared event and then discussed that event with their children. When later interviewed, those children whose mothers were provided this misinformation were likely to wrongly report experiencing activities consistent with the maternal suggestion and embellish their reports of these activities with elaborative detail. Moreover, children whose mothers spoke in a highly elaborative manner were more likely to recall occurrences in line with the maternal suggestion and provided more fictitious narrative detail describing non-occurring-but-suggested information than did children whose mothers used a less elaborative style. These findings suggest that when mothers hold false beliefs about a non-shared event, an elaborative maternal style is associated with an increase in children's false reports reflecting maternal beliefs.     

Contextual overlap and eyewitness suggestibility

Studies of eyewitness suggestibility have traditionally used a paradigm that maximizes the extent to which the postevent interview overlaps with the witnessed event in terms of narrative content, narrative structure, and environmental context. The present study explored whether these dimensions of overlap contribute to people's tendency to confuse suggested details for those they have actually witnessed. We systematically manipulated the extent to which the postevent questionnaire overlapped with the witnessed event. Across two experiments, overlap in narrative content, narrative structure, or environmental context was not found to increase suggestibility effects, even though the manipulation did have other memory effects (e.g., it improved cued recall of the actual source of the suggestions, Experiment 2). These findings suggest that understanding the interaction between the structure and content of the objective context in which misinformation is encountered and various remembering contexts (e.g., recognition vs. recall) is important for advancing our understanding of source confusion in an eyewitness situation.