Children Can Make Good Eyewitnesses

Have you ever wonder if a child will make a good eyewitnesses? In this study, they are testing children to see how good is their memory are. They want to know if they can put a child on the stand and they can tell their point of view without messes up or retelling it as a false tale. How will they be able to test this without harming the child in any way? What are the results to this study? One day it all begin at a birthday party/play date…

Christine M. Ricci and Carole R. Beal want to do research to learn if children’s eyewitness memory might be enhanced if the crime take place in a familiar place like a birthday party or at a parallel unfamiliar event such as a play date. Some researchers found there is an increasingly in young children
who have witnessed crimes and going up on the stand to tell about it in a very truthful and accurate way, even after the suggestive questioning. Other researchers have found young witness do not do well in remember the crime and they need to have more specific and probes questions. These type of questions may make the children to retale the event in a different type of light then what it might really be. Or to agree to the events happening the way the cops want it to be.

There have been several studies on child witnesses about “how children’s prior knowledge about an event may influence their memory (Child).” “Omstein and his colleagues have suggested that children who have more extensive background knowledge should be better able to understand the event they are experiencing, which should in turn facilitate retrieval.” There have been other work that have demonstrated if a child is familiarity with an event, this will influences the child to remember a greater detail and the accuracy of the event.
When the child is doing an interviewing techniques that do a reenacting the event, of the child that have a prior knowledge of the event should remember more of the details from the crime episodes.

Christine M. Ricci and Carole R. Beal designed this study to evaluate this hypothesis. In a contrast to other studies, they were doing one that most children will know, without having to remember a script. In a parallel study they have an unfamiliar event, in which the children will have a play date. The play date is all the same as a birthday party with some minor changes. They both have a crime take place during the party, so they can compare the two events of the children’s eyewitnesses’ account of the
event.