Premium
Eyewitness Testimony of Children 1
Author(s) -
Parker Janat Fraser,
Haverfield Elizabeth,
BakerThomas Stephanie
Publication year - 1986
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.1986.tb01141.x
Subject(s) - suspect , witness , psychology , identification (biology) , test (biology) , developmental psychology , criminology , law , paleontology , botany , political science , biology
The effects of age of witness and age of suspect on eyewitness testimony were investigated. Forty‐eight elementary‐school children and forty‐eight college students viewed a slide sequence of a mock crime. This was followed by photo identification of the suspect, descriptive and peripheral objective questions related to the crime, and a second photo identification of the suspect. The results indicated that descriptive questions were answered better than peripheral questions by adults, whereas there was no difference between question types for children. Children and adults were equally accurate in photo identification per se, but children were less stable in their choices from test to retest. There was no evidence of an interaction of age of witness with age of suspect in photo identification.