Thirty 7-year-olds, 30 12-year-olds, and 39 adults were administered the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale, which consists of a story followed by 20 questions, 15 of which are misleading. After subjects were told that their answers were not all correct, the questions were readministered to look for "shifts." Approximately half of the subjects in each age group had been warned that the questions were difficult or tricky and that they should only answer with what they confidently remembered. Results indicated that younger children recalled less of the story and were more likely to acquiesce to leading questions than older children and adults. Children also changed more of their answers upon the second questioning. Recall was negatively correlated with both acquiescence to leading questions and likelihood of changing answers, even within age groups. The warning significantly reduced the effect of misleading questions across all age groups. * We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Jeffery N. Swartwood in analyzing the data and the staff, parents, and students of St. Jude School for their cooperation.

The Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm was used to investigate developmental trends in accurate and false memory production. In Experiment 1, DRM lists adjusted to be more consistent with children's vocabulary were used with 2nd graders, 8th graders, and college students. Accurate and false recall and recognition increased with age, but semantic information appeared to be available to all age groups. Experiment 2 created a set of child-generated lists based on the free associations by a group of 3rd graders to critical items. The child-generated associates were different from those generated by adults; long and short versions of the child-generated lists were therefore presented to 2nd, 5th, and 8th graders and college students in Experiment 3. Second graders exhibited few false memories, whereas 5th graders were similar to adults in low-demand conditions and more similar to younger children in high-demand conditions. Findings are discussed in terms of developmental changes in automatic and effortful processing and the use of semantic networks.

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We compared 42 transcripts of sexual abuse interviews conducted by child protective services personnel in one state to practices currently recommended by researchers on children's testimony. Although the majority of the interviewers attempted to establish rapport, they rarely conducted practice interviews regarding past, neutral events, and rarely informed children that “I don't know,”“I don't understand,” and “I don't remember” are acceptable answers to questions. Further, the majority of the interviewers failed to begin their abuse-related questioning with general, open-ended questions, instead relying primarily on specific, yes/no questions throughout the interview. Finally, interviewers frequently introduced new material not previously disclosed by the children and failed to clarify the sources of new information.

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