Psychological Bulletin Vol. Young children are considerably more susceptible than are adults to incorporating misleading information into their reports. In other instances, child subjects reported as accurately or even more accurately than adult counterparts. In general, it appears that children will report unusual, somewhat stressful experiences like witnessing a mock theft or having a medical examination more accurately than ordinary, relatively unimportant experiences like a -play session or seeing a video. However, since no experiment can approximate the stress level children experience when they are abused or when they witness abuse of a loved one, we know very little about how accurately children report these kinds of events or about how easily adults can influence these kinds of memories.
Young children are less likely to recall information without an adult providing some trigger points.
In that regard, an open ended question is likely to elicit less spontaneously recalled information from a young child than from an older child or from an adult. Refrain from using suggestive techniques like leading questions, hypnosis, visually guided imagery, fantasy indications and role playing. Go to our form to respond to this article.