Four- to 11-year-old children were interviewed about 2 different sorts of memories in the same home visit: recent memories of highly salient and stressful events--namely, injuries serious enough to require hospital emergency room treatment--and their earliest memories. Injury memories were scored for amount of unique information, completeness…

This is a review of two bodies of research conducted by myself and my colleagues that is relevant to child witness issues, namely childhood amnesia and children's eyewitness memory for stressful events. Although considerable research over the years has investigated the phenomenon of childhood amnesia in adults, only recently has it begun to be…

A problematic issue for forensic interviewers is that young children provide limited information in response to open-ended recall questions. Although quantity of information is greater if children are asked more focused prompts and closed question types such as yes/no or forced choice questions, the quality of their responses is potentially…

Injured children (N=145 between 2 and 13 years of age) were recruited from a hospital emergency room and were interviewed about the injury event soon afterward and then twice more at yearly intervals. Their transcripts were coded three ways: completeness of overall structural components of a prototypical injury event (e.g., who, when, where),…

Assessed children's recall of injury and hospital treatment 2 years after injury. Found that children recalled injury details better than treatment. Amount recalled decreased only for hospital treatment details; accuracy decreased for both injury and treatment. An extra interview 1 year after injury helped only younger children recall hospital…

Interviewed 13- to 34-months olds about their trauma injury within days and after 6, 12, and 18 or 24 months. Found that the youngest demonstrated little verbal recall. Some who could not narrate about past events at time of injury could verbally recall target words 18 months later. Most of the oldest children demonstrated good verbal recall 2…

Three- through 13-year olds were interviewed a few days after a hospital stay for traumatic injury, and again six months later. Children provided considerable information about the injury and hospital stay and made few commission errors; children's distress at the time of injury did not affect their recall of the event, but distress during the…

This study investigated children's memory of stressful, personally meaningful events--in this case, injury experiences. Children (2 to 13 years old) who were brought to the emergency room of a hospital were recruited as subjects if they had sustained trauma injuries such as broken bones or lacerations requiring suturing. A total of 42 were…