Enhancing children's event recall after long delays

The effects of context reinstatement as means of enhancing 5- and 6-year-old children's event memory in repeated interviews after a 6-month delay were examined. Children were interviewed immediately after the event (baseline interview) and twice at a 6-month delay, with 24 hours between interviews. The first 6-month interview was conducted in a perfect-context reinstatement (n = 15), imperfect-context reinstatement (n = 16), or no-context reinstatement (n = 15) condition. The second 6-month interview was conducted 24 hours later with no-context reinstatement for all children. Context reinstatement attenuated the effects of delay on recall. The accuracy of the details reported was greater in the perfect-context compared to the imperfect-context and no-context conditions. Details repeated between the immediate-baseline interview and in the first 6-month interview were more accurate than details repeated between the first and second 6-month interview. There was no increase in recall (hypermnesia) across the first and second 6-month interviews in any condition. Practical implications of these findings are discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Language: en

[1]  M. Steward,et al.  Interviewing young children about body touch and handling. , 1996, Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development.

[2]  M. Erdelyi,et al.  The Recovery of Unconscious Memories: Hypermnesia and Reminiscence , 1996 .

[3]  M. Pipe,et al.  Providing Props to Facilitate Children′s Event Reports: A Comparison of Toys and Real Items , 1995 .

[4]  R. E. Geiselman,et al.  Effects of cognitive interviewing and practice on children's recall performance. , 1992 .

[5]  Carolyn Rovee-Collier,et al.  The Development of Implicit and Explicit Memory , 2000 .

[6]  M. Bruck,et al.  Suggestibility of the child witness: a historical review and synthesis. , 1993, Psychological bulletin.

[7]  J. Hudson,et al.  Reactivation of toddlers' event memory. , 1994, Memory.

[8]  R. Fisher,et al.  Facilitating children's eyewitness recall with the revised cognitive interview. , 1995, The Journal of applied psychology.

[9]  V F Reyna,et al.  AreYoung children susceptible to the false-memory illusion? , 2002, Child development.

[10]  M. Pipe,et al.  How quickly do children forget events? A systematic study of children's event reports as a function of delay , 2002 .

[11]  A. Irion,et al.  A note on the Ballard reminiscence phenomenon. , 1954, Journal of experimental psychology.

[12]  Margaret-Ellen Pipe,et al.  Helping Children to Remember: The Influence of Object Cues on Children's Accounts of a Real Event , 1995 .

[13]  R. Bull,et al.  Isolating the effects of the Cognitive Interview techniques , 1997 .

[14]  David G. Payne,et al.  Hypermnesia and reminiscence in recall: A historical and empirical review. , 1987 .

[15]  Jacob Cohen.  Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences , 1969, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Research Design.

[16]  M. Pipe,et al.  Props and children's event reports: the impact of a 1-year delay. , 1997, Journal of experimental child psychology.

[17]  M. Pipe,et al.  Reminiscence and hypermnesia in children's eyewitness memory. , 2005, Journal of experimental child psychology.

[18]  M. Erdelyi,et al.  Hypermnesia for pictures: Incremental memory for pictures but not words in multiple recall trials☆ , 1974 .

[19]  V. Reyna,et al.  The development of forgetting and reminiscence. , 1990, Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development.

[20]  S. Ceci,et al.  "The effects of stereotypes and suggestions on preschoolers' reports": Correction. , 1995 .

[21]  D. Dunning,et al.  Examining the generality of eyewitness hypermnesia: A close look at time delay and question type , 1992 .

[22]  A. Baddeley,et al.  When does context influence recognition memory , 1980 .

[23]  C. Peterson,et al.  Recounting the same events again and again: children's consistency across multiple interviews , 2001 .

[24]  N. Spear.  Retrieval of memory in animals. , 1973 .

[25]  H. Hayne,et al.  The organization of reactivated memory in infancy. , 1995, Child development.

[26]  B. Bornstein,et al.  Repeated testing in eyewitness memory : A means to improve recall of a negative emotional event , 1998 .

[27]  S. Ceci,et al.  The effects of stereotypes and suggestions on preschoolers' reports. , 1995 .

[28]  V. Reyna,et al.  Are Children's False Memories More Persistent than their True Memories? , 1995 .

[29]  Margaret-Ellen Pipe,et al.  Cues and secrets: influences on children's event reports , 1994 .

[30]  David G. Payne,et al.  Hypermnesia for pictures and words: Testing the recall level hypothesis. , 1986 .

[31]  M. L. Howe,et al.  Measuring the Development of Children’s Amnesia and Hypermnesia , 1992 .

[32]  Y. Orbach,et al.  Interviewing at the scene of the crime: Effects on children's recall of alleged abuse , 2000 .

[33]  Endel Tulving,et al.  Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory. , 1973 .

[34]  Y. Orbach,et al.  Visiting the scene of the crime: Effects on children's recall of alleged abuse , 1998 .

[35]  M. Pipe,et al.  Returning to the scene: reminders and context reinstatement enhance children's recall. , 1999, Developmental psychology.

[36]  M. A. Safer,et al.  Eyewitnesses show hypermnesia for details about a violent event. , 1988, The Journal of applied psychology.

[37]  D. Weiss,et al.  Interrater reliability and agreement. , 2000 .

[38]  M. Pipe,et al.  Children's recall 1 or 2 years after an event. , 1999, Developmental psychology.

[39]  D. G. Payne,et al.  Hypermnesia: the role of repeated testing. , 1982, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[40]  P. Lachenbruch.  Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences (2nd ed.) , 1989 .

[41]  Robyn Fivush,et al.  Do, Show, and Tell: Children's Event Memories Acquired through Direct Experience, Observation, and Stories , 1996 .

[42]  M. Pipe,et al.  Recalling an event one year later: the impact of props, drawing and a prior interview , 2000 .

[43]  S. Paris.  Memory Organization During Children's Repeated Recall. , 1978 .

[44]  L. Levine,et al.  Autobiographical remembering and hypermnesia: a comparison of older and younger adults. , 1999, Psychology and aging.

[45]  Carolyn Rovee-Collier,et al.  Time Windows in Cognitive Development. , 1995 .