Children’s Eyewitness Memory

This volume grew out of a 1985 American Psychological Association symposium that was devoted to the issue of children's eyewitness testimony. The symposium itself was organized in response to a growing concern among professionals over the limited state of knowledge about the reliability and validity of children's eye- witness and earwitness memory and jurors' implicit beliefs about this. Increas- ingly, the courts are calling upon young children to provide testimony in an ever-widening range of cases, including capital offenses. As state after state aban- dons its rules requiring children's testimony to be corroborated by a third party, the need to learn more about factors that might influence the accuracy of chil- dren's recollections becomes increasingly acute. This volume comprises a collection of chapters that lie at the crossroads of psy- chology and criminal justice. All of the chapters deal with children's recollec- tions, at least in some fashion. Some authors have described research involving children's recollections under emotionally neutral circumstances (e.g.,
Ceci, Ross, and Toglia; King and Yuille; Zaragoza); others have made the most of naturally occurring stressful situations, such as trips to the dentist's office or to the hospital to have blood work done (Peters; Goodman, Aman, and Hirschman).