PEDIATRICS Vol. 95 No. 4 April 1995, pp. 479
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STUDIES REVEAL SUGGESTIBILITY OF VERY YOUNG WITNESSES

J. F. L. MD

The testimony of small children has usually been considered truthful unless proved otherwise. Over the past decade such testimony has led to convictions in many child abuse cases, and the younger the child, the less likely psychologists have thought it was that information could have been fabricated. But now a series of recent studies has turned this conventional wisdom on its head.

Researchers have found new evidence that persistent questioning can lead young children to describe elaborate accounts of events that never occurred, even when at first they denied them...

Children Concoct Stories

Certain techniques often used by investigators with young children increase the likelihood of false reports, the findings show. One is persistent, repeated questioning over periods of several weeks. When sexual abuse is suspected, children are typically asked the same questions by case workers, police investigators and to results of a study by Dr. Ceci and colleagues reported last month at a meeting on emotional memory at the University of Chicago.

In the study of children from 4 to 6, parents helped researchers make a list of two events that had occurred in each child's life and eight that had not. In weekly sessions, the researchers reviewed the list with each child, asking for each event, "Has this every happened to you?"...

...By the 11th week, 56 percent of children reported at least one false event as true, and some children reported all the false events as true, Dr. Ceci said.

"The more often you ask young children to think about something, the easier it becomes for them to make something up that they think is a memory," he said.