Exploring Parent–Child Discussions of Crime and their Influence on Children's Memory

Abstract

When children witness or experience criminal events, the first people they go to are generally parents. Typically, no one else is privy to these conversations, and consequently little is known about their specific content. Research has shown that children can be quite accurate witnesses at times. However, they can also incorporate information from misleading and suggestive questions into their recall, and once their event memory has been changed, children may be unable to provide accurate reports. It is important then to assess parent-child discussions about crime. In the present study, 7- to 10-year-old children watched a video of a theft and talked about it with a parent immediately afterwards, and half had a second immediate interview with a researcher. All were interviewed by a different interviewer 1 week later. Results showed that: parents relied on direct and yes/no questions; children made errors of commission in response to questions; some parents asked leading or misleading questions; children incorporated all correct information from leading questions and nearly 40% of incorrect information from misleading questions; children provided additional information when interviewed by an interviewer 1 week later; and children remained relatively accurate in their descriptions but some were more accurate with parents than with an interviewer 1 week later.

Parental Bias, Parent-Child Discussion, and Children’s Eyewitness Reports

“…First, we were interested in how biasing information influenced parental conversation style. Consistent with previous research (Goodman et al 1995;Principe et al 2013;Warren and Peterson 2014), it was predicted that biased parents would provide more misinformation during the parentchild conversations than parents in the other experimental conditions. It was also expected that parents in the biased discussion condition, due to a reliance on mostly self-produced misinformation, would engage in a more repetitive, close-ended discussion style than parents in the non-biased discussion condition (who would need to rely on i child-generated information).…”

“…However, in direct contrast to the findings from Goodman et al (1995), these findings suggest that parental biases negatively affect young children's eyewitness memory reports. Consistent with Principe et al's (2013) findings, Warren and Peterson (2014) examined conversations between 7-to 10-year-old children and their parents about a crime video. Although Warren and Peterson did not directly manipulate bias, they did find that children incorporated about 40% of the information that parents introduced through misleading and suggestive questions.…”

“…have systematically investigated parent-child discussions of "unshared events" (events that the child experienced without the caregiver; but see Leichtman et al 2000;Sun et al 2016;Warren and Peterson 2014), particularly when caregivers fear a negative event has occurred (Salmon and Reese 2015). Moreover, researchers have just begun to examine how parents discuss an unshared event with their children after receiving biasing information (Goodman et al 1995;Principe et al 2013;Rush et al 2017;Warren and Peterson 2014), or how certain individual differences may influence parents' reactions to biasing information and children's resulting memory performance. The present study aims to expand the scientific literature by examining these vital issues.…”

How parents can shape what children remember: Implications for the testimony of young witnesses.

“…However, questions of these very same forms could have dire consequences in the forensic arena if the information suggested by parents is inaccurate and children later report it as fact. Indeed, studies examining how parents question their children about simulated crimes demonstrate that parents naturally rely on these sorts of probes to elicit recall (Warren & Peterson, 2014), suggesting that even when parents are working to extract the truth, they may use what would be construed as biased questions in the forensic interviewing arena. Thus, given that parents use the kinds of questions that can elicit false reports in both everyday and forensic recall settings, understanding the conditions that can prompt parents to do so and the resulting influences on children's accuracy is a critical issue for the study of children's eyewitness testimony.…”

Individual Differences in Children’s Suggestibility: An Updated Review

“…Our search did not reveal any new studies examining socioeconomic status (SES) and suggestibility, but it did uncover eight studies examining gender differences in suggestibility (Eisen, Goodman, Qin, Davis, & Crayton, 2007;Ghetti, Papini, & Angelini, 2006;Gilstrap & Ceci, 2005;Gudjonsson, Vagni, Maiorano, & Pajardi, 2016;Kim, Kwon, & Ceci, 2017;Uhl, Camilletti, Scullin, & Wood, 2016;Volpini, Melis, Petralia, & Rosenberg, 2016;Warren & Peterson, 2014). Only one found a significant association between gender and suggestibility, such that boys were more likely to acquiesce to misleading questions (Gilstrap & Ceci, 2005).…”