NCJ Number
185926
Date Published
1998
Length
27 pages
Annotation
This chapter focuses on memory and suggestibility in maltreated children.
Abstract
The paper reviews relevant studies on memory and suggestibility in children, including developmental literature on the effects of stress and trauma on memory. It examines the possible role of individual differences in children's memory performance and the importance of ecological validity in studying children's eyewitness memory. In addition, the article summarizes a study on the effects of age, dissociation, and stress arousal on memory and suggestibility in abused and neglected children. The article concludes that politics has entered the child-witness debate. Some scientists imply that virtually all children are highly suggestible and can be subject to memory distortion about any aspect of an event, and others imply that children's memory can never be corrupted in any significant way and that children are incapable of lying. The article states that neither implication is true and that the question of the accuracy of children's memory falls somewhere between these two extremes. Tables, notes, references