Introduction

First question-- what's a cottage industry? (while this is probably unimportant, its a question that arose...)
                                    (Jim's answer: A "cottage industry" is a conceptual combination).

They were interested in examining the repeated questioning both within and across interview settings; repeated questioning can lead children to make memory errors in two ways:

• Repeated questioning might signal to a child that his or her previous answer was wrong
• Repeated misleading questioning might lead to distortions of the original memory

• Young children are more likely to comply with misleading suggestions than are older children and adults
• However, when asked a question in a free-recall format, young children are still accurate for items deemed as central to the story or situation

They hypothesized the following:
1) Free recall accuracy will decrease after repeated interviews

• less correct information over time
• more incorrect information over time

• more accurate when asked the first time, after two misleading interviews
• less accurate after four misleading interviews

Method and Procedure

1) Kindergarten and second-grade children were shown a video of a boy and a girl fighting over a game-boy; the boy takes it away from the girl.

2) Each child put together an age-appropriate puzzle

3) They were asked to give a free-recall report of the video

4) Then they were given one of two kinds of post event information in the form of a structured interview:

• 20 Unbiased, leading questions about the event; questions were left open ended to make it more like an actual trial
• 20 Biased and misleading questions, children were asked to accept or reject the new information; they were required to evaluate the information to make it more like a pre-trial deposition where those pesky lawyers try to influence your responses

-- Within-subjects: free recall and final recognition 2 days after the six-week delay

-- Between subjects: initial recognition either 2 days after the 2-week, 4-week, or 6-week delay

• 2 weeks later- each child was asked to freely recall the video, then was asked the same 20 questions as before

-- 2 days later, each child took a recognition test that corresponded to the questions there asked two days before

• 4 weeks later-- each child was asked to freely recall the video, then was asked the same 20 questions as before

• 6 weeks later- each child was asked to freely recall the video, then was asked the same 20 questions as before

-- 2 days later, each child took a recognition test that corresponded to the questions there asked two days before

6) Data Coding-each interviewed was taped and transcribed

• They were looking for specific items from each interview, thus each interview was scored based on whether the predetermined information was correct, incorrect, or not there
• Each child was given a percent-correct score and a percent-incorrect score

Statistical Design-- yikes!

DV's-- percent correct and incorrect for central and non-central items

IV's --

• Grade -- kindergarten or 2^nd grade
• Group -- initial recognition 2 days after the 2, 4, or 6 week interview
• Condition -- biased-leading or biased mis-leading
• Week (within-ss) -- immediate, 2, 4, 6, and final recognition

Free recall for Central Items

• percent-correct decreased over time
• percent-correct was poorer for children who were asked unbiased-leading questions

• Regardless of age, kids in the misleading condition made fewer incorrect and more correct responses (it was harder to answer the unbiased questions because they were open-ended)

• Leading questions-- kindergartners made fewer correct responses and more incorrect responses than second-graders
• The difference between the leading and misleading conditions disappeared in the last interviews for the older, but not the younger, kids

• Main effect of Recognition

-- Older kids had higher correct, and lower incorrect, recognition scores

-- Kids in the misleading condition made more incorrect recognition judgements

• Initial Recognition

-- tendency for a negative relationship between correct and incorrect recognition of non-central items for kids in the 6-week condition (hmmm...)

The results were consistent with past research

In general, older kids performed better than younger kids

Kids free-recall was generally accurate

For recognition tests, misleading information tended to increase False-alarms, but had no effect on Correct-hits

When given the opportunity to say "yes" or "no," (biased, misleading condition) kids were more often correct; most likely because this is easier

Kids were confused by the biased-leading questions, which were also harder to answer

Suggestibility Studies