Developmental Differences in Eyewitness Suggestibility and Memory for Source

Abstract

To what extent do children who report suggested information believe they actually remember seeing the suggested details they report? Asking whether children misremember seeing suggested items is in essence a question about children's ability to monitor the source of their memories. The current study reports the results of two experiments designed to assess potential age-related changes in subjects' ability to accurately monitor the source of suggested information either immediately or following a 1-week delay. The results of both experiments revealed that although all subjects claimed to remember seeing suggested items, the magnitude of this effect varied with age such that first-graders made more source confusions than third- and fifth-graders, who in turn made more confusions than college subjects. Our findings suggest that these age differences are not simply a function of more general age-related memory or performance deficits, but instead reflect developmental differences in the tendency to confuse suggested information for actually witnessed events.