title: The roles of prior experience and the timing of misinformation presentation on young children's event memories.
abstract: The current study addressed how the timing of interviews affected children's memories of unique and repeated events. Five- to six-year-olds (N=125) participated in activities 1 or 4 times and were misinformed either 3 or 21 days after the only or last event. Although single-experience children were subsequently less accurate in the 21- versus 3-day condition, the timing of the misinformation session did not affect memories of repeated-experience children regarding invariant details. Children were more suggestible in the 21- versus 3-day condition for variable details when the test occurred soon after misinformation presentation. Thus, timing differentially affected memories of single and repeated events and depended on the combination of event-misinformation and misinformation-test delays rather than the overall retention interval.
authors.affiliation: Wilfrid Laurier University, Department of Psychology, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. kroberts@wlu.ca
authors.forename: Kim P
authors.initials: KP
authors.lastname: Roberts
authors.forename: Martine B
authors.initials: MB
authors.lastname: Powell
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003210:Concept Formation; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D003469:Culture; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007406:Interview, Psychological; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D011936:Reality Testing; D012153:Retention, Psychology; D013404:Suggestion; D013997:Time Factors