NCJ Number
148100
Journal
Law and Human Behavior Volume: 17 Issue: 6 Dated: (December 1993) Pages: 645-659
Date Published
1993
Length
15 pages
Annotation
Children's ability to provide accurate information during an investigation or trial is discussed.
Abstract
This article reports on an investigation of children's definitions of the truth that can pertain to their ability to provide accurate information during an investigation or trial: whether corroborating an inaccurate statement made by a parent is lying or telling the truth. There are several characteristics of such a statement that children may attend to when determining whether it is a lie or the truth. If they attend to the objective inaccuracy of the corroboration, they are likely to determine that it is a lie. If they attend to the fact that the statement is being made by a powerful adult who, in the past, has defined right and wrong, then they may view the statement as right, and consequently the truth. Subjects were 133 preschool through third-grade children who were shown a videotape in which either a boy makes a false statement to a neighbor about the neighbor's daughter hitting him and his mother listens passively or a mother makes a similar false statement and the boy corroborates it. None of the children classified the corroboration as the truth. Only a small percent of the preschool and kindergarten children classified the boy's or mother's initial false statement as the truth; all of the older children classified these statements as a lie. About 20 percent of the children recalled incorrectly that the neighbor's daughter hit the boy. The author cautions that several characteristics of this investigation limit the generalizability of the results. References