Children's recall and source monitoring of a repeated event using a timeline as an interview aid
Journal
Applied Cognitive Psychology
Journal Volume
33
Journal Issue
2
Pages
176-187
Date Issued
2019
Author(s)
Abstract
Investigators sometimes use timelines (visual depictions of time) to help children identify temporal information from experienced events or details from a particular instance of a repeated event. However, little is actually known about the efficacy of this visual aid on children's memories. Six- to 9-year-olds participated in four occurrences of a repeated event and were later interviewed with or without the use of a timeline. Children in the timeline condition were less accurate and made more source-monitoring errors than those in the control condition. For items that appeared consistently throughout the events, a suggestibility effect was more evident for older children who used the timeline than those who did not. Overall, there was no clear evidence in support of the visual aid. Despite its popularity, our findings suggest that timelines should be further examined to establish whether, and under what circumstances, they might be used in investigative contexts. ? 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Subjects
child eyewitness memory; investigative interview; repeated-event memory; source monitoring; suggestibility; timeline; visual aid
SDGs
Other Subjects
accuracy; adolescent; analysis of variance; anatomical variation; Article; child; controlled study; drawing; efficacy parameters; female; forensic medicine; geographic mapping; health care quality; human; interview; knowledge; literature; major clinical study; male; memory; monitoring; photography; preschool child; priority journal; reliability; research; school child; social distance; spatiotemporal analysis; suggestion; temporal artery; verbal behavior
Type
journal article