Do Children Have False Memories

Citing pertinent research, state and explain your opinion of the reliability of the testimony of a 5 year old churl who accuses an adult of serious versed insult. Its very easy to look at squirtrens testimony from a psycholo join or a researchers perspective, but how would we respond if we were approach with a situation where a 5 year old peasant is accusing an adult of serious cozy hollo?Would we be mobile to dismiss the strong accusation or would we examine the possibility of this sheath. In this essay evidence for and against the reliability of small fryrens testimony is evaluated, especially considering a delicate matter such as intimate roast. It go out bound by outlining what enlargemental and cognitive psychologists have discovered to date around childrens holding capacity and how it differs from that of adults then the focus will transmit to literature on familiar abuse.Memory or come backing ope counts like each other aspect of development studied, its development is gradual, and this goes to say that children without doubt, dont possess the same ability to call in as adults. The digit traverse for store seems to increase with age, so for example a child of 3yrs will remember more or less(prenominal) 2 words and a child of 4 will remember 3 words from a passed list of word, and these atomic number 18 believably to be the last words (recency effect( Meadows,1986). in that location be three aras of remembrance that seem to show improvement in children as we progress by dint of development basic capacity, the amount of reading that can be remembered in STM, children will develop strategies that will help transfer training into long-term storehouse and finally they will also have big(p)er world experience which means a greater context allowing for the integration of new information, consequently new memories. (Meadows, 1986) There are many reasons why children show these deficits in memory.One of them is because the y need meta-cognition, basic beliefs and knowledge virtually memory, its dynamics, which is fundamental for understanding how information is learned. pip-squeakren clearly dont possess this meta-cognitive awareness to monitor other(prenominal) experiences and performance to update resource allocation strategies. (Castel, Humphreys, Lee, Balota and McCabe, 2011) This old paragraphs were to convey the concomitant that children do have distinct abilities compared to adults, this recounts us that their recall for feeled situations might lack in accuracy.When we ask a child to give testimony for witnessing an planet we are asking them to access their autobiographical memory, which includes a sketchy version of personal memories and experiences, diluted from all unnecessary lucubrate. This type of memory is highly subject to biases in attempting to maintain continuity and it practically doesnt quest for the temporal frame. Can children accurately recall events that they expe rience in the noncurrent accurately or do they often develop counterfeit memories of events that never took set up? Some studies show that children as young as 5 can remember events quite well even after a period of delay preceding recall. Flin, Boon, Knox and Bull (1992) gave children a talk on how to keep their feet clean, while the talk was happening an assistant staged easy over and knocking over a side carousel. Recall was interpreted the twenty-four hours after the talk and 5 months later, similar to court workings. There was no relation frame betwixt age and amount of information recalled the following day, children age 6 recalled 17/ 26 items and adults recalled 18/26 items. However Flinn et al found that 5 months later 6 yr olds recall had decreased by 40 %.This fill shows that children can remember quite well, however those memories are not fully stored in long-term memory . This event however isnt a authoritative life event neither is it of distressing nature li ke some events children are called to avow for in court solecisms. This could justify the high recall even for the jr. children. Research by Goodman, Hirschman, Hepps and Rudy (1991) Peterson and Whalen (2001) and many more agree that children can actually remember trying events very well and without doubt sexual abuse of any kind is a stressful plentiful situation which dupes should remember well.Children can give accurate testimony following sexual victimisation, back up by evidence from allegations and high rate of omission errors instead of inform unsupported events, (Birdrose & Goodman, 2000) More interestingly research has shown that children can easily develop sullen memories, cognise as memories of events that never took place (Loftus, 2004). A sincere example was -the Mc Martin trial . In this controversial trial a school teacher was acc utilize of ritually abusing children.The charges against the teacher were eventually dropped, as close to of the children r ecalled very ambiguous events, such as creation taken on an helicopter to a far away farm to witness a horse while it was beaten. It is believed that they were suggestively interviewed and then developed enough flesh out to make these become real memories. (Schreiber et al, 2006). Prevalence information can strongly influence childrens recall, it seems that children start by considering whether the event is plausible, then proceed to develop thoughts and images about the events, which at that point become mistaken for real memories.In an experiment Otgaar, Candel, Merckelbach and Wade (2009) exposed children age 7-8 and age 11-12 to a commentary of a real past experience and also that of a false past experience. The real experience was the childs first gear day at school the false one was a explanation of being abducted by an UFO, prevalence was given by giving them an article about the commonality of UFO abductions. The results showed that children again remembered accuratel y the real event, this is consistent with (Flin et al, 1992. some even were convinced they had been abducted, some even inform things not present in the story such as being transported by a beam of blue light, clearly indicating formation of a false memory. 70% of jr. children remembered being abducted. We cannot totally conclude that childrens memory for grotesque events is always false however we can say that they can easily develop false memories for implausible events, this is more noticeable in younger child This still isnt sufficient to answer the question of the reliability of a 5 yr old accusing an adult of abuse.Research suggests that children place an important emphasis on script like representations, basically representations of how events are connected in a stereotypical way, based on anterior knowledge of everyday activities, they may use this scripts to fill in details of events even when they are not part of the story, ( Mc Shane 1991). When a child is required t o provide eye-witness accounts of what happened during an episode, even when its not as arduous as sexual abuse, they need to be able to separate that slip from that in which they are questioned, things they have maybe seen and when they had spoken about it for the first time. Lloyd, Doydum and Newcombe, 2009), psychologist fear they are unable to do this. There is a great influence of prior knowledge on free recall, cued recall, recognition memory and source memory sometimes children may rely on gist to make conclusions. Odegard, Cooper, Lampinen, Reyna and Brainard (2009) carried out an experiment where children attended 4 thematic natal day parties of fictional characters and were later interviewed regarding the events that took place, some which were generic and some which were specific to the reputation of the party.When interviewed using the National Institute of Child Health and Human ontogeny (NICHD) protocol, older children did better than the younger ones at providing both thematic and generic events for the parties, this could be explained by the fact that they possess knowledge of the script of parties and they used this to reconstruct what happened however this also led them to make more thematic source errors. It was also found that 45% of 5-6 year olds reported events that didnt happen or mixed them up between the parties they attended.This is consistent with the previous study in that younger children made more mistakes Nonetheless this cannot tell us how can a five year old falsely accuse someone of something they have never heard of or even seen, they dont posses schemas for these neither do they know whether its sizeable or bad. Or how can they develop a false memory of an act of sexual abuse unless they had experienced it. Leander, Christianson and Granhag (2007) examined the eyewitness of 8 children between the ages of 3-10, who had been sexually do by by an unfamiliar perpetrator who was the same in all cases.They think on the amo unt and type of information remembered and self-renunciation of the assault. The documentation of childrens testimony was found to be consistent with the justification of the perpetrator, picture evidence, medical examination and police evidence. They found that most children reported things that preceded the abuse and that exclusively 21. 5% of what they reported was of the sexual act, the remaining was apathetic information. They youngest child age 3 didnt say much about both post and pre-abuse factors and only mentioned one fact of sexual nature.The rate of denial and reluctance to report the act was high especially amongst younger children. In this case it was easier to believe that the abuse occurred because there were multiple victims, and enough evidence to give credibility to the childrens testimony. We can imagine that a five year old would not come to an adult manifestation I have been sexually abused, they probably never eared those terms neither do they know the me aning. This is to say that testimony of abused children may be disconnected often not including any sexual facts, but we shouldnt be too quick to discard it.Hershkowits and Lanes (2007) found that younger children who dont understand the concept of abuse are better able to disclose information as they are unbelievable to have feelings of guilt and dont understand the severity of abuse in society. Over the years there has been extensive work on interviewing techniques, Psychologists have developed interviewing techniques to effectively extrapolate information from children, therefore interviewing the child can reveal whether testimony is true or false. Childrens description of real events differs from that of false events.In Hershkowitz (1999) children describing events that really happened provided longer and richer responses to open-ended prompts rather than focused ones. Children who are providing implausible accounts tend to rely of the suggestions of the interviewer and elabora te on them. The study also showed that younger children were more likely to recall implausible false events compared to older ones, so maybe false memories are not only created on the basis of event plausibility perhaps if a 5 year old was giving a false account of abuse they would exhibit such characteristics.Holcomb and Jacquin (2007) mock sexual abuse trial revealed that the suspect was more likely to be found guilty when a by stander witness was present, unlike when a victim-witness was present however jurors were more likely to believe young children. Research also shows that children find it difficult to converse having been sexually abused many will go through phases of secrecy, weakness and retraction (Summit, 1983). If a child manages to disclose it, we should assume that there should be a degree of truthfulness if not why go through with it.Sometimes their testimony is characterised by retractions, which throw investigations into chaos and have two meanings repairing a f alse allegation or preventing the consequences when its true. In a upstart court trial Steven Barker, the step father of Peter Connelly also known a Baby P was accused of sexually abusing his 2 yr old sister. The girl disclosed this information to her step mother at the age of 4, the delay might suggest that some details of the could be omitted.The child was subject to very hard questioning and although the jury were divide due to her denial of the act on several accounts, it was proven that she was a victim. Coming to a conclusion isnt as easy as it could seem and this gives just a brief insight to what jurors are often faced with in court trials that involve young victims of sexual abuse. The most important thing is that the ability to remember of a five yr old should never be taken for granted especially for something as severe as sexual abuse.The evidence shows that can remember stressful events, even with delay, but majority dont report sexual details, are prone to suggestibi lity, and can develop false memories. None the less its very improbable that a child, who has never seen nor eared of sexual abuse and hasnt been fed with the wrong information by parents or even through suggestive interview would confess of having been a victim of sexual abuse. It is better to acknowledge childrens testimony and weight up the evidence. REFERENCES Bidrose, S. & Goodman, G. S. (2000).Testimony and evidence A scientific case study of memory for child sexual abuse. use cognitive Psychology, 14,197-213. Castel, A. D. , Humphreys, K. L. , Lee, S. S. , Galvan, A. , Balota, D. A. , & McCabe, D. P. (2011). The development of memory efficiency and value-directed retrieve across the life span A cross-sectional study of memory and selectivity. Developmental Psychology,47(6), 1553-1564. Flin, R, Boon, J. , Knox, A. And Bull, r. (1992) The effect of a five month delay on childrens and adults, eyewitness memory.British Journal of Psychology, 83 Goodman, G. S. , Hirschman, J. E. , Hepps, D. H. , &Rudy, L. (1991). Childrens memory for stressful l events. Merril Palmer Quarterly, 37, 109158. Hershkowitz, I. , Lanes, O. , & Lamb, M. E. (2007). Exploring the disclosure of child sexual abuse with alleged victims and their parents. Child Abuse & Neglect,31(2), 111-123. Hershkowitz, I. (1999). The dynamics of interviews involving plausible and implausible allegations of child sexual abuse. use Developmental Science,3(2), 86-91. Holcomb, M.J. , & Jacquin, K. M. (2007). Juror perceptions of child eyewitness testimony in a sexual abuse trial. Journal of Child Sexual Abuse,16(2), 79-95. Loftus, E. F. (2004). Memories of things unseen. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13,145147. Lloyd, M. E. , Doydum, A. O. , & Newcombe, N. S. (2009). Memory binding in early childhood indorse for a retrieval deficit. Child Development,80(5), 1321-1328. Leander, L. , Christianson, S. , & Granhag, P. (2007). A sexual abuse case study childrens memories and reports.Psychiatry , Psychology And Law,14(1), 120-129. Meadows, S. (1986). Understanding Child Development. London Century Hutchinson Ltd. McShane, J. (1991). Cognitive development . An information processing approach. Cambridge, MA, US Basil Bruckwell. Otgaar, H. , Candel, I. , Merckelbach, H. , Wade, K. A. (2009). Abducted by a UFO Prevalence information affects young childrens false memories for an implausible event. Applied Cognitive Psychology,23(1), 115-125. Odegard, T. N. , Cooper, C. M. , Lampinen, J. M. , Reyna, V. F. , & Brainerd, C. J. (2009).Childrens eyewitness memory for multiple real-life events. Child Development,80(6), 1877-1890. R. C. Summitt, The child sexual abuse accommodation syndrome, Child abuse and Neglect, Vol 7, 2, P. 177-193. Schreiber, N. , Bellah, L. D. , Martinez, Y. , McLaurin, K. A. , Strok, R. , Garven, S. , et al. (2006). Suggestive interviewing in the McMartin Preschool and Kelly Michaels day care abuse cases case study. Social Influence, 1, 1647. Tully, B. (2002) . The evaluation of retractions in sexual abuse cases. Child Abuse Review,11(2), 94-102. doi10. 1002/car. 728