NCJ Number
199622
Journal
Legal and Criminological Psychology Volume: 8 Issue: 1 Dated: February 2003 Pages: 39-50
Date Published
February 2003
Length
12 pages
Annotation
This study examined the effectiveness of contextual cues (related to the environment, situation, or surroundings) in improving the accuracy of children's narrative accounts of a repeated event.
Abstract
Although there is an abundance of research that has examined the effect of contextual cues on children's ability to access related details about a single event, no research to date has focused on whether children's memory of an occurrence of a repeated event can be enhanced by providing a contextual cue. Specifically, is it possible that a contextual cue could help children to identify and distinguish the target occurrence from other occurrences in the series of repeated events. The sample used in the current study consisted of 129 children (63 boys and 66 girls) aged 6 to 7 years recruited from 7 elementary schools in the Melbourne metro area (Australia). The children participated in the same staged event 4 times, with 16 target details varying in each occurrence (e.g., the color of a cloak varied each time). Three days later, the children's free recall of the final occurrence was elicited. This occurrence was identified in one of two ways; either it was identified through the temporal term "last," or the term "last" was combined with a feature related to the environmental context or setting that was unique to the occurrence (i.e., the interviewer referred to a new object that was worn throughout the occurrence or a new person who carried out the event). For each condition, performance was compared to that of children who experienced the event only once. The study found the children's memory of details specific to the target occurrence was better after the single than the repeated event; however, for both event types, children who were given the contextual and temporal cue performed better than those who were given the temporal cue only. The benefit of using a contextual cue did not result in an increase in errors. Further research is required to determine whether this finding would apply to a more practical situation in which the child rather than the interviewer generates the cues. 2 tables and 25 references