False Memories in Children Created through a Series of Interviews. Who Took a Boy Away?

Abstract

In this paper, the authors demonstrate how false eyewitness testimonies were created through a joint remembering between children and adult interviewers. Jen five-year-old children participated in an event at their kindergarten: a three-year-old boy came to the kindergarten and played with them, but left while they were watching a video. A week later, three pairs of interviewers interviewed children on the event. They repeated the interview five times on different days. The interviewers were misinformed beforehand that Taka, a female adult familiar to the children, took the boy away. Actually, however, the boy was taken away by a teacher. Although the interviewers conducted a fair interview without using leading question, false information was created. The interviewers seemed to pick up the information which was consistent with their knowledge. Also, children's testimonies changed in response to the interviewers' questions and responses. Furthermore, children filled in the gap using their own schema and script.