British Journal of Pgchology (1992), 83, 323-336 0 1992 The British Psychological Society

Printed in Great Britain

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The effect of a five-month delay on children’s and adults’ eyewitness memory Rhona Flin* Business School, The Robert Gordon Institute

of Technology, Viewjield Road, Aberdeen A B Y ZP W , Scotland Julian Boon

Leicester University

Anne Knox Glasgow Polytechnic

Ray Bull Portsmouth Polytechnic

Child witnesses must endure a delay of around six months between observing or being the victim of an alleged offence and being required to give evidence in a criminal court. While the legal profession seem to believe that young children’s memories are particularly sensitive to the passage of time, developmental psychology can offer little relevant data to support or refute this presumption. In the present study, children aged six and nine years and adults witnessed a staged event and were subsequently interviewed in the days following the event and/or five months later. Results indicate that while all witnesses forgot information over this period, the younger children (six years) recalled slightly less information than the older children and the adults. The total amount of incorrect information recalled did not increase over the same period. Two different interviewing techniques were used - cued recall vs. ‘enhanced’ recall - the latter incorporating some aspects of the cognitive interview procedure. No differences were found relating to the interview techniques employed. The results underline the importance of recording initial interviews with child witnesses wherever possible.

The ability of children to act as competent witnesses is frequently questioned during criminal trials, particularly when a child is the sole eyewitness to the offence. One issue which is often raised is whether children can retain accurate memories of events they witnessed many months earlier. * Requests for reprints.

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Rhona Flin and others Do children forget faster than adults?

There are no official records kept of the delays experienced by child witnesses waiting to give evidence, and Plotnikoff (1990) argues that the lack of data is hampering attempts to expedite processing of children’s cases. A research study carried out in Aberdeen found that child witnesses wait an average of five months between witnessing an offence and being examined in court (Flin, Davies & Tarrant, 1988) and a more recent study reported that in Glasgow, on average, child witnesses wait seven months before giving evidence (Flin, Bull, Boon & Knox, 1990). There are no English data available (Plotnikoff, 1990) but general figures for London suggest comparable delays (Judicial Statistics, 1988, Cm745, p. 68). What effects do such long delays have on children’s memories? The legal view is that there is a deleterious effect and that it is important to obtain statements from children at the earliest opportunity. For example, Lord Denning has said, ‘If we are to obtain truth and justice, the sooner the child’s statement is taken the better. I have tried many cases and have always found that a statement made to the police immediately after an incident is more likely to be true than a statement made weeks or months later’ (House of Lords Debates, vol. 185, col. 158, 17 November 1987). The recent report from the Home Office’s Pigot Committee (convened to consider videotaping early interviews with child victims) agreed : ‘Evidence which we received from practitioners, psychiatrists, social workers and the police suggested that if an interview takes place shortly after the child’s first allegation or disclosure, it will usually provide the freshest account least tainted by subsequent discussions and questioning’ (Home Office, 1989, 2.16). On this point, psychologists would certainly agree with the lawyers that the detrimental effects of delay on memory are well documented. But one of the key issues for the current debate on videotaping is whether young children’s memories are especially sensitive to the passage of time when compared to those of adults. There is in fact very little valid psychological research on this problem (Ornstein, Larus & Clubb, in press). Nevertheless, the legal profession, apparently undaunted by the lack of empirical data, appear to believe that children’s memories fade faster than those of adults. For example, the Scottish Law Commission which has recently made recommendations on children’s evidence stated: ‘It is now widely accepted that children including very young children, can be as reliable in their recollection of events as adults. However, it also seems to be generally accepted that a child’s capacity for recall, especially on points of detail, may deteriorate more rapidly over time than would that of an adult’ (Scottish Law Commission, 1990, p. 3). Similarly Judge Pigot (1990) has said : ‘One marked evidential weakness of children is that their power of recall or recollection fades more rapidly than that of adults ’ (p. 211). From a psychological perspective, this is actually a debatable point. The received view has traditionally been that there were no age differences in forgetting rates and that observed developmental trends in memory performance were attributable to differences in encoding rather than forgetting (FajnsztejnPollack, 1973). However, Brainerd (Brainerd, Reyna, Howe & Kingma, 1990) has recently been advocating that forgetting rates are not developmentally invariant and that younger children do forget information faster than older children. Although Brainerd’s claim would appear to endorse the legal view, his conclusions are derived

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from laboratory tasks, such as the deliberate learning of word lists. The extant psychological data on the effects of retention intervals on children’s memories are not in fact directly applicable to this particular forensic problem for three principal reasons. First, the experimental paradigm employed needs to be as close an approximation to the real life situation of witnessing a crime as possible. To mimic the emotional intensity of being victimized is ethically prohibited but in Scotland, the majority of children asked to give evidence are not victims, they are bystanders to crimes such as assaults, thefts, road accidents or breaches of the peace (Flin e t al., 1990). In order to recreate experimentally this type of incident, the subjects need to be exposed to a live event without being forewarned of the subsequent memory test. Techniques which have been used to ‘measure eyewitness ability’, such as showing videotapes or slides of criminal activities, simply reproduce too few of the essential characteristics of a real witnessing experience to have relevance for the courts. Second, both adult and child subjects should be tested within the same design in order to permit a direct comparison of performance. Many of the child witness experiments conducted to date have not included an adult group. This is quite understandable, as scripting staged events which are convincing for adults and comprehensible for young children is certainly easier said than done. Nonetheless, psychological pronouncements about children’s evidentiary capabilities need to take into account the comparable strengths and weaknesses of adult performance. Third, the retention intervals tested need to be in the order of five months or more if the effects of the typical delays that child witnesses experience are to be investigated. There are psychiatric case histories of child victims’ long-term memories for traumatic events (Pynoos & Nader, 1988; Terr, 1988) but very few empirical studies have employed delay intervals in excess of three months. (Goodman’s recent attempts to retest children following delays of up to four years are a notable exception [Goodman, Rudy, Bottoms & Aman, 19901.) The study reported below represents an attempt to fulfil the three essential conditions listed above within a single design. One additional factor was incorporated, this being the interviewing technique used to question the children. Interviewing techniques and memory retrieval

The style of questioning used to interview witnesses is of critical importance in determining the quality of the evidence. In the case of child witnesses, misunderstandings during courtroom examinations are not uncommon (Brennan & Brennan, 1988; Flin, Bull, Boon & Knox, 1992). The usual style of questioning in court is for the lawyers to keep a tight control of the witness’s responses by means of a series of ‘closed’ questions (i.e. questions which demand yes/no answers or very specific details). Although specific questioning can produce more information than free recall, it also tends to increase the likelihood of erroneous answers (see Spencer & Flin, 1990). Therefore, one could argue that if the aim of the interview is to elicit a full and accurate account (and this is not necessarily the aim of cross-examination), then highly controlled questioning may not in fact be the optimum technique. However, it is not only the communication skills of our courtroom lawyers that are of concern.

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Child witnesses will have been interviewed several times before they reach the witness box (e.g. by police officers, social workers, doctors) and the quality of these early interviews has also come under scrutiny, both experimentally (Aldridge & Cameron, 1989 ; Geiselman, Saywitz & Bornstein, 1990) and judicially (see Spencer & Flin, 1990, p. 144). The recommended format for investigative interviews is that they should proceed in a stepwise approach, from free recall then to open questions and finally to more specific questions (Home Office, 1989, 4.18). It is now widely agreed that all professionals given the task of interviewing child victims, even members of the legal profession, should be given appropriate training : ‘professional training of judges and lawyers could usefully address some issues in child psychology and cognitive development. Lawyers should understand how to speak to children and should appreciate the consequences of misleading or suggestive questioning ’ (Home Office, 1989, 7.9). In response to this growing demand for training in reliable methods of improving children’s recall without contaminating their evidence, psychologists have begun systematically to examine novel techniques for facilitating children’s testimony, for example by the use of dolls or prompt cards. In the experiment presented here, two styles of interview technique were incorporated into the design with a view to investigating their relative efficacy for different age groups over an extended retention interval. One group of subjects was given a ‘cued’ recall interview which provided a standard set of questions designed to mirror the style of questioning used in courts. The other group of subjects was given an ‘enhanced interview’ which required the subjects to engage in extra cognitive processing of their memories for the event. This enhanced interviewing approach was adapted from the ‘ cognitive interview ’ recently developed by Geiselman & Fisher (1989) in the USA, who have carried out extensive training with law enforcement agencies. These researchers, in response to the need to improve police interview techniques, designed a procedure which utilized various access routes to memory. The aim of this cognitive interview technique is to enhance retrieval from memory by providing different cues to these access routes. These cues are incorporated into a set of four heuristics for taking information, which form the structure of the interview. Initially, the witness is asked to reinstate the context for the memory by reconstructing the environment surrounding the original event. This would then be followed with a request to report everything they could remember without editing any of the facts. Thirdly, having given their account of all the details they can remember in what seems to them a natural order, the witnesses are then requested to recall the events again, only this time in the reverse sequence (e.g. ‘What happened immediately before that?’). Finally, the cognitive interview requires that subjects describe from the perspective of others who were present at the incident concerned, what these others would have remembered (see Geiselman e t al., 1990; Memon & Bull, 1991 for further details). It is claimed that by interviewing in this way, subjects are able not only to recall more, but are also able to remember more over extended intervals than subjects who were either given the standard cued-recall interview or were not previously interviewed. Preliminary research with children suggests that this technique can have a facilitative effect (Geiselman & Padilla, 1988; Geiselman et al., 1990). While the

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latter two components of the cognitive interview were interesting in terms of their potential for maximizing memory accuracy, they were not included in this study for two reasons. First, the prime objective of this project was to identify suitable techniques for examining child witnesses. We could not presently envisage courts requesting witnesses to recall chains of events in reverse order, and we were aware that courts would forbid witnesses to report what they think someone else may have seen. Therefore, these components of the cognitive interview were not employed. Second, we did not expect the imminent widespread introduction of cognitive interviewing by lawyers, police, social workers, etc. (though this would possibly be a recommendation once further research on its effectiveness had been undertaken). Accordingly, we adapted the cognitive interview into an ‘enhanced interview ’. This involved the subjects first being asked to give a full description of what they could remember of the whole event and then being asked a set of specific questions as to what had taken place. In addition they were asked supplementary questions relating to contextual details (e.g. ‘Who were you sitting next to during the talk?’) which were intended to enhance their memories for the event. Method

Subjects A total of 75 boys and 59 girls from two urban primary schools and 43 adults (14 male and 29 female, first-year undergraduates) participated in this study. Half of the children were aged five to six years and half were aged nine to ten years, with an approximately equal representation of males and females within each age group. In all three institutions official permission was sought to conduct the experiment. In the case of the schools, parental permission was sought prior to the children’s involvement, while in the case of the students a full debriefing was provided after the five-month follow-up retest.

All the subjects in the study witnessed one of three identical live presentations of a staged event in as near similar physical environments as it was possible to achieve. Within each of the age levels - five years, nine years, and adult - subjects were randomly allocated to one of three treatment groups. Subjects in the first two of these treatment groups were interviewed about the incident both on the following day and then again after a five-month delay. Although both these groups were interviewed twice, the nature of the interview technique adopted after one day was varied with the first group receiving a standard cued-recall interview and the second receiving the same cued-recall questions embedded in an enhanced interview (labelled ‘enhanced recall’). This therefore produced a 3 (age) x 2 (interview technique) x 2 (delay) experimental design (with age and interview technique forming between-subjects factors and delay forming a within-subject repeated measures factor). In addition, control groups were employed for each age level. These control subjects received no interview on day one and a standard cued recall after a five-month delay period. Thus the delay was also incorporated as a between-subjects factor. In total nine groups were tested across three age ranges and three different interview programmes (see Table 1 for a representation of the experimental design).

Materials and apparatus The staged event involved a nurse presenting a talk on foot hygiene. A large carousel style slide tray and projector, together with 48 slides and a conspicuously coloured flex were used as supporting props, as was a large 2’6” cardboard cut-out of a foot.

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Table 1. The experimental design

Age

6year-olds

9-year-olds

Adults

Test after one day

Retest after five months

N

Cued recall Enhanced recall No test Cued recall Enhanced recall No test Cued recall Enhanced No test

Cued recall Cued recall Cued recall Cued recall Cued recall Cued recall Cued recall Cued recall Cued recall

21 20 27 19 19 27 12 16 15

Two types of response sheets were produced for the experimenters to record the subjects’ responses first for the cued recall interviews at stages 1 and 2, and the second for three groups receiving the enhanced style interview at stage 1. Responses were recorded verbatim or in a precoded fashion depending on the question (see Appendix).

- the

Procedwe The staged event. In order to obtain sufficient sample sizes of the different age groups it was necessary to stage the event three times before the three different age groups. The content of the event was centred on a brief argument which occurred during a routine talk on hygiene. For all groups the talk was given by the same registered nurse with the aid of the same two assistants who were professional actresses. To ensure as much uniformity as possible, all three confederates followed a prepared script. The entire ‘incident’ was videotaped on each occasion in order to retain an accurate record. The event effectively started as soon as the subjects entered the hall in which the talk was to be given. For the children, a teacher simply gave an instruction that they should proceed to the hall (something that was a routine occurrence), while the adult sample arrived expecting one of their scheduled psychology lectures. Once seated, the children were told by a teacher that they were about to have a special talk from the nurse on how to look after their feet and that they should listen carefully to what she said. The adult sample was given equivalent instructions by their regular lecturer, i.e. that the nurse was going to give a talk on foot hygiene. The adults were then asked for their cooperation in a study which was being conducted for the health authorities which, it was explained, was evaluating the perceived utility of such talks for children. During these introductions the two actresses were seen setting up the slide projector and loading the slides. Immediately prior to the nurse commencing her talk, the two actresses made as if to leave. In the process one tripped over the projector cable which caused the carousel to crash to the ground loudly, scattering the slides. Following this, the two assistants began to argue (progressively more angrily) regarding the accident. After about 30 seconds, the nurse said she could manage without the slides and that the assistants should leave. However, the assistants were seen to continue their argument until the nurse, in a controlled but more stem voice, reiterated that they were to depart. The woman who dropped the slides acted as if to leave in a huff, while the other actress apologized to the nurse and offered to pick the slides up. The nurse declined, saying again that she would do without the slides that day, following which the second actress also departed. The nurse then gave her five-minute talk, one which she ordinarily gives to primary schoolchildren as part of her normal work. Towards the end the actress who had left first, came back into the hall and interrupted to say that she was sorry. The nurse then said that it was all right and concluded her talk.

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Subsequently, the children were led back to their classrooms for their normal lessons. Prior to continuing their normal lecture, the adult subjects were asked to complete a brief questionnaire rating the talk for its appropriateness to different age groups of children. Debriefing was given to the adults only after they had been interviewed.

Interviewing after one day. Of the subjects who were interviewed the day after the incident, half were given a standard cued-recall interview and half were given the enhanced interview. All subjects who were interviewed were informed that the interviewer wanted to know what they could remember about the nurse’s talk the day before. In order to explain the need for a further interview, the older subjects were told that the researchers were interested in their memory of the presentation. Both the standard cued-recall and the enhanced interviews asked questions covering the same 26 points about the event. In accord with observed courtroom practice (Flin e t a/., 1990), these points ranged across all aspects of the event including the sequence and content of events, the content of the nurse’s talk, and the clothing worn by those who were involved. (The questions are listed in the Appendix.) However, as noted above, the standard cued-recall and enhanced interviews were distinguished both by an initial attempt on behalf of the subjects at freely recalling what had happened, and by the provision of additional questions designed to foster contextual embedding (e.g. ‘Who did you sit next to?’). Interviewing ufter j v e months. All subjects were interviewed five months after the event with a standard cued-recall interview. The group tested therefore included those subjects who had been interviewed one day after the incident (either with cued recall or enhanced interviews) and another set of subjects who were being interviewed for the first time five months after the event.

Measures Five measures were adopted for scoring the responses, of which the two principal ones were overall accuracy and overall inaccuracy. The scores were based on the number of correct and incorrect responses given to the interviewer’s questions (maximum = 26 in each case), with ‘I don’t know’ responses scoring zero. In addition, three subsidiary measures were taken which recorded the frequencies of: (i) commission errors, where subjects spontaneously volunteered erroneous information; (ii) suggestibility errors where a subject agreed with answers which were suggested by the interviewer; and (iii) the degree to which the subject recalled aspects of the event which were of affective significance. Commission errors were scored with one point for each erroneous detail volunteered. Suggestibility scores were derived from the number of times the subject agreed with a suggested answer provided by the experimenter. There were three such suggested answers incorporated into the interviews, which related to: (i) whether the assistant had picked up and given the nurse back her slides; (ii) whether they shook hands with the nurse when they said ‘sorry’; and (iii) whether the assistant had kissed the nurse when she said sorry (none of these in fact occurred). The final measure, that of affective involvement, was scored according to the subject’s ability to recall: (i) an argument taking place; (ii) an element of blame being involved; and (iii) whether anyone grew angry. The maximum possible score for the measure of suggestibility errors and of the affective significance was therefore 3 for each category.

Results

The treatment groups interviewed after one day and again at five months Overall accuracy. Table 2 shows the mean accuracy scores of the six groups interviewed after one day (range 66-74 per cent) and again after five months (range 36-73 per cent). A 3 (age) x 2 (interview type) x 2 (delay) analysis of variance was conducted which revealed significant main effects for: age ( F (2,101) = 2 6 . 6 , ~< .Ol), and delay ( F (1,101) = 51.04, p < .Ol), but not for interview technique ( F = 0.08).

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In addition, there was significant interaction between the age and delay factors (F (1,101) = 16.33, p < .Ol). On the basis of these results, post hoc Tukey analyses were carried out. These revealed first that there were no differences in overall accuracy among the three age groups when interviewed after one day (adult-six- year-olds, Q = 2.72, n.s. ; adult-nine-year-olds, Q = 0.22, n.s. ; nine-year-olds, Q = 2.5, as.). Secondly, they indicated that the effects of the five-month interval were restricted to the children. The analyses indicated a significant reduction after five months in the accuracy scores of the six-year-olds (Q = 11.6, p < .Ol) and nine-year-olds (Q = 6.07, p < .Ol) but no apparent reduction in the adult samples’ accuracy scores (Q = 0.18, n.s.). Furthermore, not only had the children’s accuracy levels fallen significantly but the six-year-old groups had fallen significantly further than the nine-year-old groups @ = 8.03, p < .Ol). Table 2. Mean number of accurate responses Delay Age 6-year-olds

9-year-olds

Adds

Interview condition Standard Enhanced Control Standard Enhanced Control Standard Enhanced Control

Note. Maximum score = 26; figures in

One-day

Five months

16.6 [66] (4.0) 17.4 [67] (4.6)

9.48 [36] (4.4) 11.8 [45] (4.3) 9.83 [38] (4.0)

19.3 [74] (3.3) 17.4 [67] (3.3)

15.8 [61] 14.2 [54] 14.1 [54] 18.0 [69] 19.0 [73] 16.1 [62]

18.3 [70] (2.5) 18.6 [72] (1.7)

(2.5) (3.4) (2.8) (3.8) (1.5) (2.2)

0 = percentages; figures in () = standard deviations.

Overall inacctlracy. Table 3 shows the mean inaccuracy scores of the six groups interviewed after one day (range 3-9 per cent) and again after five months (range 5-10 per cent). A 3 x 2 x 2 analysis of variance analogous to that conducted for the accuracy scores was also conducted for the inaccuracy scores. The results showed no significant main effects for either age (F (2,101) = 1, a s . ) or interview technique (F (1,101) = 1, a s . ) . However, a main effect for delay was produced (F (1,101) = 5.80, p < .05) the trend of which indicated increased errors over time. In addition, there was a significant interaction between the age and delay variables (F (2,101) = 5.15, p < .Ol). Post hoc Tukey analyses showed that the interaction was founded on static scores between one day and five months for the six-year-old groups (Q = 2.48, a s . ) and adult groups (Q = 1.78, n.s.) but a significant increase in overall inaccuracy scores for the nine-year-old groups (Q = 5.1,p < .Ol). This may be partly attributable to the low inaccuracy scores after one day for the nine-year-olds in the enhanced recall condition.

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Table 3. Mean number of inaccurate responses Delay Interview condition

Age

Standard Enhanced Control Standard Enhanced Control Standard Enhanced Control

6year-olds

9year-olds

Aduh

Note. Figures in

One-day

Five months

1.38 [5] (1.2) 1.80 [7] (1.4)

2.00 [ 81 (1.8) 2.54 [lo] (1.8) 2.08 [ 81 (2.0) 2.57 [lo] (1.8) 2.26 [ 91 (2.3) 2.38 [ 91 (1.9) 1.75 [ 71 (1.0) 1.56 [ 61 (1.1) 1.40 [ 51 (1.1)

1.32 [5] (1.4) 0.89 [3] (0.9) 1.83 [7] (1.6) 2.31 [9] (1.5)

u = percentages; figures in () = standard deviations.

The control group The results of the control groups (i.e. those subjects who were interviewed only once after the five-month retention interval) are considered here in relation to the results of the groups which were also given an interview one day after the event. Specifically, the overall accuracy and inaccuracy scores for the nine groups which were tested after five months were compared in two separate 3 (age) x 3 (interview type) analyses of variance.

Overall accurag Table 2 shows the mean overall accuracy for each group. The analysis of variance of the accuracy scores found both the age and interview technique variables had yielded significant main effects (F (2,168) = 64.43,p < .01; F (2,168) = 3.17,p < .05), with no significant interaction between them. Post hoc Tukey analyses again indicated that overall (i) the adults performed better than the six- and nine-year-old children ('Q = 16.04, p < .01; Q = 6.74, p < .Ol), and (ii) that the nine-year-olds performed better than the six-year-olds (Q = 9.30, p < .Ol). The analyses of the overall means relating to interview techniques showed that the subjects who received no interview after one day achieved lower accuracy scores than those who had received the cognitive interview at stage one (Q = 3.71, p < .05). The groups receiving a cued recall after one day did not differ significantly from either the groups which did not receive an interview dQ = 1.57, n.s.) or the groups receiving an enhanced interview (Q = 2.16, n.s.).

Overall inaccurac_y. Table 3 shows the mean overall inaccuracy for each group. The analysis of variance of the inaccuracy scores found a significant main effect for the age variable (F (2,168) = 3.12, p < .05), but no significant effect for the interview technique variable. Post hoc Tukey analyses indicated that the relatively mild effect for

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age was founded on the nine-year-old groups who overall scored more highly on the overall measure than the adults ('Q = 3.59, p < .05). No significant differences were found between the six-year-old groups and the adults (Q = 2.57, n.s.) or nine-yearolds dQ = 1.01, a s . ) . Subsidiuty measures. The means for the measures taken for the suggestibility scores are displayed in Table 4. They indicate that irrespective of age and the interview technique, the subjects rarely took up suggestions from the interviewer. At immediate test the rates were 4 per cent at six years, 3 per cent at nine years and 0 per cent for adults. After the five-month delay slightly higher rates were observed of 11 per cent at six and nine years, and 2 per cent for adults. The figures for commission errors which are also shown in Table 4 (in parentheses) indicate that it was very uncommon for subjects in any of the groups spontaneously to offer information which was incorrect.

Table 4. Mean number of suggestibility scores (and commission errors) ~~

Delay Age 6-year-olds

9-year-olds

Interview condition Standard Enhanced No interview Standard Enhanced

One day

Five months

0.14 (0.05) 0.10 (0.10)

0.43 (0.24) 0.20 (0.80) 0.37 (0.87) 0.31 (0.47) 0.31 (0.47) 0.42 (0.39) 0.00 (0.17) 0.06 (0.06) 0.07 (0.27)

0.10 (0.47) 0.10 (0.16)

No interview Adults

Standard Enhanced No interview

0.00 (0.00) 0.00 (0.06)

Note. Figures in parentheses denote commission errors; maximum score for suggestibility errors = 3.

Finally, the scores which related to aspects of the event which were of affective significance showed that most subjects recalled more than two of the three possible points, whether tested at one day or after five months (one day - M = 2.23, SD = 1.12; five months - M = 2.16, SD = 1.13).

Discussion This experiment was designed to investigate children's capacity to act as reliable eyewitnesses and two principal factors were examined : (i) the relative performance levels of adults and children in memory accuracy over a long delay; and (ii) the relative effectsof different questioning techniques when interviewing witnesses about real-life events. The experiment was not specifically designed to measure suggestibility, although three leading questions were included in the interview

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schedule and commission errors were also recorded. These points are considered below with reference to children’s evidence in court.

Accuracy levels in children and adults The results indicated that over retention intervals which are of forensic significance in this study five months - children do forget significantly more than adults. Furthermore, after five months there was a significant difference between the overall accuracy scores of the two groups of children, with the six-year-olds performing less well than the nine-year-olds. However, no significant differences were found among the accuracy scores of the three age groups when tested after only one day. This suggests that the younger children were able to understand and encode the event but that their memory faded over the long-term retention interval to a greater degree than the older subjects’ memories. These findings therefore lend support to the recommendations of the Scottish Law Commission and the English Pigot Committee that, where children give evidence in the form of a videotape deposition, that evidence should be taken as early as possible. It is suggested that this recommendation may become increasingly important with a decrease in the age of the child witness concerned. However, while these data suggest that more details which are accurate may be elicited from children at an early interview date than at a later one, it is perhaps the inaccuracy rates which are of greater forensic significance. The results show that while there were modest increases in the levels of inaccuracy over time these increases were only statistically significant for the nine-year-olds. These findings therefore suggest that there is no reason why a child of six years should be more likely to answer direct questions inaccurately after several months than a nine-year-old or an adult witness. This is particularly interesting because as noted above, the courts in England and Wales have long been working on the opposite assumption (Spencer & Flin, 1990). The subsidiary measures on suggestibility, commission errors and affective memory were an attempt to collect pilot data rather than constituting a focal point of the design. Preliminary indications were that suggestibility (or compliance) to the leading questions was very uncommon at immediate test but was apparent to some degree, at the five-month delay. As the questions used to measure this factor were rather similar, no detailed analyses were conducted. However, the results may well be indicative of differential suggestibility effects over long delays, and given current concern over children’s suggestibility (see Ceci & Bruck, 1991) and leading questions (Myers, in press), this issue should be empirically tested. Commission errors (i.e. those which are volunteered spontaneously by the subjects) were very rare and are unlikely to be a significant source of difficulty in the courts where, as noted above, the questioning style is very tightly controlled. In our experience, any attempts by the witness to answer with information relating to other than the precise question asked are almost always met by a reminder to answer the question. Therefore, these data do not support the view that in general young children are more inaccurate than older children, nor that in the short term they are less able to provide accurate details. Furthermore, while there did appear to be differential -

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forgetting rates over time, even the youngest group were able to provide a substantial number of accurate details about an event five months earlier, which would have been useful in collecting all the facts of a case. In conclusion, these data support the view of the Pigot Committee that children should not be disallowed from answering questions on the grounds of their age.

Standard and enhanced interviewing In general, the enhanced interview technique did not appear to offer any advantage over standard cued-recall techniques. However, as noted above, the enhanced interview adopted in this study was a simplified version of the cognitive interview of Geiselman & Fisher (1989) and it is possible that their more involved and sophisticated interview procedures are required to obtain the benefits they claim. There was one suggestion in the findings that the enhanced interview, when given after one day did provide some benefit at retest five months later, relative to the groups who had not received an interview after one day. While it is tempting to attribute this to the consolidation effects of the enhanced interview on memory five months later, the enhanced technique did not offer any advantage over standard cued recall. In view of these findings it is safest to regard the interview technique aspect of this study as a pilot for future research in the area.

Conclusion This study represents the first attempt to measure the memory ability of child and adult witnesses to a staged event following a delay of five months. This delay interval is of particular forensic significance as it corresponds to a typical delay period encountered by child witnesses called to give evidence in criminal trials. The results indicated that while all three age groups, six-year-olds, nine-year-olds and adults, showed a reduction in recall accuracy over this period, there was a significantly greater reduction in performances for the children, particularly the younger group. This is a preliminary finding and obviously requires to be replicated, however the results provide the first empirical support for a long-standing belief frequently voiced by the legal profession that memories of child witnesses are more sensitive to the passage of time than those of adults. The emotional advantages and procedural difficulties of videotaping child witnesses are being debated internationally both in and out of court (Davies & Westcott, 1992; Myers, in press). Developmental psychologists can make a powerful contribution to this debate but their competence as experts is ultimately determined by the forensic credibility of their experiments.

Acknowledgements The views presented in this paper are those of the authors and should not be taken to represent the position or policy of The Scottish Home and Health Department who funded this research.

References Aldridge, J. & Cameron, S. (1989). The evaluation of training in evidential interviewing. In Research into the Use of Video in the Investigation of Child Abuse. West Yorkshire Police.

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Brainerd, C., Reyna, V., Howe, M. & Kingma, J. (1990). Development of forgetting and reminiscence. Monographs ojthe Society for Research in Child Development, 55, 3-4, serial no. 222. Brennan, M. & Brennan, R. (1988). Strange Language, 2nd ed. Murray Institute of Higher Education, Wagga Wagga Australia: Riverina. Ceci, S. & Bruck, M. (1991). The suggestibility of the child witness: An historical review and synthesis. Manuscript submitted for publication. Davies, G. & Westcott, H. (1992). Videotechnology and the child witness. In H. Dent & R. Flin (Eds), Children as Witnesser. Chichester : Wiley. Fajnsztejn-Pollack, G. (1973). A developmental study of decay rate in long-term memory. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 16, 225-235. Flin, R., Bull, R., Boon, J. & Knox, A. (1990). Child witnesses in criminal prosecutions. Report to the Scottish Home and Health Department. Flin, R., Bull, R., Boon, J. & Knox, A. (1992). Children in the witness box. In H. Dent & R. Flin (Eds), Children as Witnesses. Chichester : Wiley. Flin, R., Davies, G. & Tarrant, A. (1988). The child witness. Report to the Scottish Home and Health Depart men t . Geiselman, E. & Fisher, R. (1989). The cognitive interview technique for victims and witnesses of crime. In D. Raskin (Ed.), Psychological Methods in Criminal Investigation and Evidence. New York: Springer. Geiselman, E. & Padilla, J. (1988). Cognitive interviewing with child witnesses. Journal ojPolice Science and Administration, 16, 236-242. Geiselman, E., Saywitz, K. & Bornstein, G. (1990). Cognitive interviewing techniques for child witnesses and victims of crime. Report to the State Justice Institute. Goodman, G., Rudy, L., Bottoms, B. & Aman, C. (1990). Children’s concerns and memory: Ecological issues in the study of children’s eyewitness testimony. In R. Fivush & J. Hudson (Eds), What Young Children Remember and WLy. New York: Cambridge University Press. Home Office (1989). The Use of Video Technology at Trials ojAlleged Child Abusers. London: Home Office. House of Lords Debates (1987). Vol. 185, col. 158, 17 November. Judicial Statistics (1988). Cm 745, p. 68. Memon, A. & Bull, R. (1991). The cognitive interview: Its origins, empirical support, evaluation and practical implication. Journal of Communig and Applied Social Psychology, 1, 291-307. Myers, J. (in press). Legal Issues in Child Abuse and Neglect Practice. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Ornstein, P., Larus, D. & Clubb, P. (in press). Understanding children’s testimony: Implications of research on the development of memory. In R. Vasta (Ed.), Annals of Child Development, vol. 8. London : Jessica Kingsley. Pigot, T. (1990). Women and children first. In J. Spencer, G. Nicholson, R. Flin & R. Bull (Eds), Children’s Evidence in Legal Proceedings :A n International Perspective. Cambridge Law Faculty. Plotnikoff, J. (1990). Delay in child abuse prosecutions. Criminal Law Review, 645-647. Pynoos, R. S. & Nader, K. (1988). Children’s memory and proximity to violence. Journal of American Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 28, 236-241. Scottish Law Commission (1990). Report on the evidence of children and other potentially vulnerable witnesses, SLC No. 125. Edinburgh. Spencer, J. & Flin, R. (1990). The Evidence of Children. The Law and the Psychology. London: Blackstone. Terr, L. (1988). What happens to early memories of trauma? A study of twenty children under age five at the time of the documented traumatic events. Journal of the American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry, 27, 96-1 04.

Received 31 October 1990; revised version received 24 Juh 1991

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Rhona Flin and others Appendix : Questions for cued and enhanced recall

(Additional questions (unscored) for enhanced recall are marked with asterisk)

1. Did you go to see the nurse give her talk yesterday? * Tell me all about it as I was not there. * What were you doing just before you came to the hall? * Did you come along with your friends to the hall? * Who did you sit next to? 2. (i) What was she telling you about? (ii) What was the little boy’s name in the nurse’s talk? 3. (i) Did she ask you to do anything? (ii) What do you have to do to have ‘happy feet’? 4. Did she say anything about what kind of shoes to wear? * What shoes do you like wearing? 5. Can you describe the nurse? 6. Did anything happen before her talk? 7. What happened? 8. Can you describe who was arguing? Details actor 1 Details actor 2 9. Whose fault was it? 10. Did they stay for the nurse’s talk, or did they leave? 11. Did they (Gerry & Theresa) come back after the talk? 12. What did they do? 13. Did you go back to your class after the talk?

Yes (1) (Free recall)

Feet (1) Name (1) Yes (1) Details (4) Details (1) Hair (1)

Clothing (2) Yes (1) Details (2)

Hair (1) Hair (1)

Clothing (2) Clothing (2) Actor (1) Left (1) One returned (1) Said sorry (1) Yes (1)

Affective involvement If the following were mentioned they were scored one point: Argument (1) Blame (1) Anger (1) Suggestibilig questions Integrated into the flow of the interview. (‘Yes’ scores one point) So she picked the nurse’s slides up and gave them back to her, is that right? (i) (ii) Did she just shake hands with her? (iii) She said sorry and gave the nurse a kiss, is that right?