Explicitly Questioning the Nature of Suggestibility in Preschoolers’ Memory and Retention

JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL CHILD PSYCHOLOGY ARTICLE NO.

67, 185–203 (1997)

CH972398

Explicitly Questioning the Nature of Suggestibility in Preschoolers’ Memory and Retention Peter A. Newcombe and Michael Siegal Department of Psychology, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia In research designed to investigate children’s suggestible responses on memory tests, 190 preschoolers were read a short story. The same day or six days later, they were exposed to information that was either consistent with the original story details or inconsistent and misleading. One and seven weeks after hearing the story, the children were tested on two types of recognition tasks that involved a choice either between the original and misleading information or between the original and new information with questions that were either explicit or nonexplicit as to the time of the information to be reported. At the 1-week test, children who were exposed to misleading information were significantly less accurate under nonexplicit questioning in recognizing the original from the misleading information than were children presented with consistent information. With explicit questioning, this difference was not significant. When the choice for the children was between original and new items following exposure to delayed misleading postevent information, explicit questioning resulted in significantly more accurate responses at the 7-week test than did nonexplicit questioning. Children questioned explicitly rather than nonexplicitly were more likely to maintain correct responses on both tests. The results are discussed in terms of conversational processes and competing forms of representation in memory retention. q 1997 Academic Press

It is well established that memory reports for an event can be distorted following exposure to misleading information (Ceci & Bruck, 1993a; Dale, Loftus, & Rathburn, 1978; Duncan, Whitney, & Kunen, 1982; Loftus, 1975; Loftus, Miller, & Burns, 1978). Although several studies have found no significant age differences in vulnerability to suggestion (e.g., Flin, Boon,

The research reported in this article is based on a doctoral thesis by Peter A. Newcombe and was written while Michael Siegal was a visitor in the Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Padua. Some of the results were presented at the 9th Australasian Human Development Conference, Perth, April, 1996. Thanks are due to Jennifer Rutherford and Gabrielle O’Shea for their assistance with the data collection and to the teachers, parents, and children of the participating kindergartens and preschools for their fine cooperation. Requests for reprints should be addressed to: Michael Siegal, Department of Psychology, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, 4072. E-mail: [email protected]. 185 0022-0965/97 $25.00 Copyright q 1997 by Academic Press All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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Knox, & Bull, 1992; Marin, Holmes, Guth, & Kovac, 1979; Rudy & Goodman, 1991; Saywitz, 1987), others indicate that preschoolers are more vulnerable (e.g., Cassel, Roebers, & Bjorklund, 1996; Ceci & Bruck, 1993b; Ceci, Ross, & Toglia, 1987; King & Yuille, 1987; Leichtman & Ceci, 1995). The extent to which young children’s suggestible responses on memory tests reflect their genuine memory impairment or their willingness to defer their reports of original information to the misinformation provided by a second source remains controversial and may be influenced by a variety of factors. The purpose of the study reported in this article was to investigate the influence on preschoolers’ suggestible responses of the explicitness of questioning, the nature of test format, the timing of exposure to postevent information, and the interval between the event and testing. In suggestibility research, a key consideration is how children interpret questions about what they remember. In this connection, children are used to participating in everyday conversations in which adults abide by rules or maxims of conversation that enjoin speakers to speak no more or less than is required for effective communication, be sincere and avoid falsehoods, be relevant and informative, and avoid obscurity and ambiguity (Grice, 1975). Nevertheless, in certain settings, participants in conversations require the mutual knowledge necessary for understanding the conversational implications of messages in which these rules have been set aside (Clark, 1992, pp. 60–77; Clark & Brennan, 1991; Graumann, 1995; Hilton, 1995). In particular, young children are inexperienced with the purpose and relevance of questions in specialized settings such as in experiments in which these rules may be set aside for the purpose of determining what they know. Given this inexperience, their interpretation of questions may differ from that intended by the investigator, and at times they may not necessarily display the depth of their understanding (Siegal, 1996, 1997; Siegal & Peterson, 1994). In the case of experiments on suggestibility, young children may not recognize that the purpose and relevance of the questioning is to determine what they remember about the original details of stories and events. Rather than disclosing what they know on tests of their recognition memory, they may perceive the original details of stories to be unimportant or irrelevant because the experimenter did not bother to get these right in providing the misinformation. They may not follow the conversational implications of the task as intended by the experimenter (e.g., that the speaker has set aside the rule to be sincere and avoid falsehood and has provided misinformation in order to test what children can remember about the original details of stories). Instead, they may believe that they are to report what they have most recently heard about the theme of the story or event and interpret this misinformation to mean that this alternative, or some altogether different one, is an acceptable, or even a preferred test choice in comparison with the original story details. In this regard, suggestibility is reflected in the reporting style of the child on memory tests rather than as evidence for memory impairment. By contrast,

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in choosing the original stimuli on recognition tests, older children and adults are more likely to respond correctly as they share the conversational implications of the task as intended by the experimenter and can block the implication following exposure to misleading information that the original story details are unimportant or irrelevant. By focusing on the relevance of the original story details in conversation, preschoolers may be more likely to avoid suggestibility in their responses on memory tests and to display their original memory of the story details. For example, in the first of a recent series of experiments (Newcombe & Siegal, 1996), children aged 4 and 5 years were read a short picture story about a little girl, Karen, and her first day at school. The next day, a second experimenter provided information that was either consistent or inconsistent and thus misleading about two critical details of the original story. A third group of children did not receive any information about the story. In the testing phase 1 week later, the children were given a recognition task in which they were required to indicate the original details by selecting one of three choices that represented original, misleading, and new items of information. To undermine the relevance of the misleading information, the questions accompanying these tasks were asked in either an explicit format that focused on the time of the information to be reported (e.g., ‘‘Do you remember how Karen was sick when you heard her story for the first time?’’) or a nonexplicit format (e.g., ‘‘Do you remember how Karen was sick when you heard her story?’’). When questioned in the nonexplicit format, many preschoolers gave suggestible responses. However, as predicted, few children answered incorrectly when the questioning was explicit. For those children presented with misleading information, explicit questioning significantly improved response accuracy from 67 to 90% which was no different to the 92% accuracy for the children who had received consistent information. This pattern of results was replicated in subsequent research in which children were tested with the standard (original vs misled items) and modified (original vs novel items) recognition tasks and is similar to the enhancement of performance found on theory of mind tasks in which children are explicitly asked where a story character who has a false belief will look first for a desired object (Leslie, 1994; Siegal & Beattie, 1991; Surian & Leslie, 1995). The finding of superior memory responses following explicit questioning is consistent with the Headed Records model proposed by Morton (1990, 1994; Morton, Hammersley, & Bekerian, 1985) in which memory is depicted as permanent and stored in discrete and independent units called records. Once information is represented in a record, it is not subject to alteration, either by modification or by the addition of new information. Each record has a ‘‘header’’ or a specific access key. To gain access to a particular record, the header must be matched by a description which is formed at the time of retrieval and be adequately detailed to discriminate between possible similar records (e.g., original and postevent information). If a description fits more

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than one header, the matching process can be biased in favor of the more recent header. As a strategic component is necessary to form the description needed to access the appropriate record, the lack of adequate information in the test questions can prevent access to the original information. To form effective descriptions involves the use of components such as temporal modifiers and environmental cues. Asking subjects to recognize original and misleading information without clarifying the order in which they have been exposed to such information is liable to interfere with matches of descriptions to a relevant header which may be more remote in time. It impedes accuracy in responses on memory tests even though memory for the original event has not disappeared but exists in a separate, unretrieved record. This memory can be retrieved when temporal order is restored by explicit questioning. In this connection, the nature of the test format can be critical. For children exposed to misleading information, memory tests can involve either a standard test format consisting of a choice between the original and misled items or a modified test format consisting of a choice between the original and new items. The modified format has often been included in studies of suggestibility to investigate the possibility that exposure to misleading information may not alter or impair an original memory for an event. Rather, a suggestibility effect may better reflect social pressures in agreeing to a second experimenter’s suggestions in a task that consists of a choice between representations of the original and misled information (Ceci et al., 1987; Newcombe & Siegal, 1996; Zaragoza, 1991). As the misleading details are not offered as an alternative, use of the modified test serves to ensure that performance is not the result of a preference for children with memories of both the original and misleading details to select the misleading details owing to their salience and recency. The timing of exposure to misleading information may also play a key role in influencing suggestible responses. According to a source monitoring account of memory and suggestibility (Ackil & Zaragoza, 1995; Ceci, Huffman, Smith, & Loftus, 1994; Lindsay, 1990; Lindsay & Johnson, 1987, 1989), participants remember test items but fail to recognize the time and place at which they originally encountered those items. They err because they misattribute the source of the misleading items to the targeted original event. As each event in memory has a source defined by the conditions under which it was encoded that includes records of perceptual, semantic, and affective information associated with the establishment of the memory (Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993), genuine errors in remembering can occur when the memory from one source is confused with, and thus misattributed to, the memory from another source. By this analysis, the extent to which individuals misattribute the source of memory is likely to be influenced by the timing of exposure to misinformation. Although the evidence is not unequivocal (e.g., Lindsay, 1990), studies have shown that lengthening the delay between an event and subsequent exposure to misleading information produces significantly more suggestibility in the responses of adults (e.g., Belli, Windschitl,

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McCarthy, & Winfrey, 1992; Loftus et al., 1978; Reyna, 1995). Similarly, Lindsay, Gonzales, and Eso (1995) have shown that delaying the presentation of misleading information can increase the likelihood that preschoolers and third graders will recognize suggested items in misleading information as original items on memory tests. Apart from the timing of exposure to misinformation, the time interval from an event to the memory test can affect the prevalence of intrusions into memory reports in important ways (Titcomb & Reyna, 1995). Presentation of an event results in the formation of a trace in memory that decays gradually over time (Howe, 1991; Toglia, Ross, Ceci, & Hembrooke, 1992). As intervals for memory retention increase, the strength of the original trace may fade sufficiently to allow a more complete penetration of a suggestion than would have occurred after a short delay. With increased retention intervals, weakened original traces can be replaced by more recent suggested traces from misleading information embedded in either postevent narratives or questions at the time of testing (e.g., Flin et al., 1992; Oates & Shrimpton, 1991; Ornstein, Gordon, & Larus, 1992; Saywitz, Goodman, Nicholas, & Moan, 1991). Therefore, our investigation was designed to address the effects of explicit questioning, the nature of the test format, timing of exposure to misinformation, and test interval on preschoolers’ suggestible responses. Through the use of explicit questioning, we aimed to provide children with a search plan that would help them access a record that was remote in time. The children in the experiment described here were given a recognition memory test for a story they heard 7 days previously. Consistent or inconsistent and thus misleading information about the story was provided either the same day as the story (i.e., 7 days before the first testing time—immediate exposure condition) or 6 days later (i.e., 1 day before the first testing time—delayed exposure condition). For those children exposed to misleading information, the memory test involved either a choice between the original and the misled items (standard test format) or a choice between the original and a new item (modified test format). The children exposed to consistent information could only choose between original and novel items at test as no new items were included in their postevent information (control test format). Questions that accompanied these tests were varied by either including or not including a temporal clause that was intended to explicitly make the original story the focus of the conversational interaction. All the children were retested 6 weeks after the first test (i.e., 7 weeks after the story). Thus, explicitness of questioning (explicit or nonexplicit), format of memory test (control, standard, or modified test formats), time of exposure to postevent information (immediate or delayed), and time of memory test (1 week and 7 weeks after the story) were systematically varied in a 2 1 3 1 2 1 2 experimental design. We hypothesized that, under explicit questioning, children should be more likely to display their memory and retention for the original details over testing times, particularly in a modified test format in which the misleading

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information is not represented in the choice of alternatives. In this respect, we were especially concerned with stability in children’s responses when they are questioned again after a delay. Moreover, if the timing of exposure to misinformation exerts a major effect on suggestibility, varying the delay interval between the event and exposure to the misinformation should significantly influence the degree to which children provide suggestible responses regardless of explicitness of questioning. However, if explicit questioning powerfully serves to clarify the relevance of the original and misleading information to the task, this should enable children to answer more accurately irrespective of the timing of exposure to misinformation. METHOD

Participants There were 190 children (90 boys, 100 girls; M age Å 4 years 3 months, SD Å 5 months, range Å 3 years 6 months to 5 years 9 months). All the children participated with parental consent and were tested in kindergartens and preschools located in predominantly middle-class areas of Brisbane, Australia. Procedure The procedure consisted of four phases. The story and accompanying pictures were the same as those used by Newcombe and Siegal (1996) and resembled those used by Ceci et al. (1987, Experiment 1). In the first phase, the children in groups of 10–20 were told a short story about a little girl, Karen, and her first day at school. The story was illustrated by seven colored pictures depicting various scenes in the story. Two of the pictures included the critical details of Karen’s breakfast (e.g., eggs) and her subsequent illness (e.g., stomachache) from eating too quickly. As in Ceci et al.’s (1987, Experiment 1) research, only the generic term for breakfast was included in the narrative accompanying the story whereas the specific details of Karen’s illness were presented verbally as well as pictorially. The children were randomly allocated to different versions of the critical details of the story (for breakfast item: eggs or cereal; for type of illness: stomachache or headache) to control for possible idiosyncratic effects of particular stimuli. The story took 3–4 min to present. In the second or postevent phase, the children in groups of 4–6 were met by a second experimenter. They were reminded of the general details of the story together with, depending on which group they had been randomly assigned, either consistent or misleading information about the two critical details (breakfast item, type of illness). For those who received consistent information, the second experimenter’s message contained no specific information about the critical details. The children were simply asked, ‘‘Do you remember the story about Karen who was sick? Her mother reminded her

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that she could go and play at her friend’s house after school. Then she got better and went to school.’’ For those who received the misleading information, the experimenter’s message contained information that was inconsistent with the original story details. In this condition, the child was asked, ‘‘Do you remember the story about Karen? Remember that she ate her cereal so quickly that she got a headache. Her mother reminded her that she could go and play at her friend’s house after school. Then she got better and went to school.’’ Alternate versions reflecting the original story version were administered in this condition. No child claimed that he or she did not remember the story. A number of children spontaneously remarked that the experimenter was incorrect with her story and claimed that Karen had, for example, got a stomachache. When this occurred, the experimenter replied that she was certain that Karen had a headache. Half the children in each of the consistent and misled groups received the postevent information from the second experimenter on the same day as the story presentation (immediate exposure). On average, these interviews were held 2 h after the story presentation. The other half of the children in each group received the postevent information 6 days following the story (delayed exposure). In the third and fourth phases of the study, a third experimenter who had no knowledge of the nature of the information that had been given to the children conducted tests that occurred 1 week and 7 weeks after the story. In each of these phases, the children were given two recognition tasks, one concerning what Karen had eaten for breakfast and the other concerning the type of illness she developed. Following previous research on suggestibility (Ceci et al., 1987; Newcombe & Siegal, 1996), the children were tested in one of three test formats. The children who received the consistent information were tested in a control test format that involved choosing between the original story details (e.g., eggs) and novel stimuli (e.g., toast or cereal). The children who had been exposed to inconsistent, misleading information were randomly allocated to either a standard test format in which they could choose between the original details (e.g., eggs) and the misleading ones (e.g., cereal) or a modified test format in which the choice was between the original details and novel stimuli. The choices for the children in the control group were the same as those in the modified group as children in the control condition had not been exposed to misleading information and thus they could receive only novel alternatives to the original story details. Half the children in each of the 2 (time of exposure to postevent information: immediate vs delayed) 1 3 (test format: control vs standard vs modified) groups were given the recognition tasks accompanied by questions in an explicit question condition. In this condition, the experimenter asked: ‘‘Was Karen sick because she ate her eggs or her cereal (toast) too quickly the first time you heard the story? Was Karen sick with a stomachache or a headache (sore throat) the first time you heard the story?’’ The other half of the children received the questions in a nonexplicit question condition in which the experi-

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TABLE 1 Numbers of Children in the Control, Standard, and Modified Test Formats Exposed to Immediate or Delayed Postevent Information and Correctly Reporting None, One, or Both of the Story Details in the Nonexplicit and Explicit Questioning Conditions at the Two Testing Sessions

Test format Control Nonexplicit Explicit Standard Nonexplicit Explicit Modified Nonexplicit Explicit Totals

Immediate postevent information

Delayed postevent information

1-week test

1-week test

7-week test

7-week test

0

1

2

0

1

2

0

1

2

0

1

2

1 0

3 3

12 13

1 0

7 5

8 11

1 3

4 3

11 9

1 3

6 4

9 8

6 2

7 3

3* 11

3 4

6 4

3 1

10 2

3* 13

5 7

6 5

5* 4*

0 1 11

8 5 29

8 9 56

1 1 10

2 6 30

0 0 8

6 3 28

10 13 60

6 0 22

5 6 32

5* 10 41

7* 8 13 8 55

* Distribution of responses NOT significantly different from chance ( p ú .05).

menter asked: ‘‘Was Karen sick because she ate her eggs or her cereal (toast) too quickly? Was Karen sick with a stomachache or a headache (sore throat)?’’ In all cases, the experimenter pointed to the pictures during questioning. Within each of the two question conditions, the presentation order of the two questions and alternatives were counterbalanced across the children. RESULTS

The numbers of children who responded correctly on neither, one, or both of the items at each testing session are shown in Table 1. Following Pagano (1994, pp. 208–209), the distributions of responses were compared to a chance level under a binomial distribution (correct vs incorrect) for two items (breakfast, illness). At a chance level, 25% of the children at a test time would score incorrectly on both items; 50% would correctly answer only one item; and 25% would score correctly on both items. Therefore, a chance distribution of 16 children in each experimental cell would be 4 correct on neither item, 8 correct on one item, and 4 correct on both items. Children who had received misleading information and were questioned nonexplicitly in the standard test format scored no better than would be expected by chance regardless of the timing of exposure to the postevent information or the time of test, x2’s (2, N Å 16) £ 3.00, p § .20. Moreover, the distribution of responses at the 7-week test following delayed exposure to misleading information was at chance level for those questioned explicitly in the standard test format and those questioned nonexplicitly in the modified test format, x2’s

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TABLE 2 Mean Number (with Standard Deviations in Parentheses) of Correct Recognitions at the 1Week and 7-Week Testing Sessions by the Children Questioned Either Nonexplicitly or Explicitly in the Control, Standard, and Modified Test Formats Following Exposure to Immediate or Delayed Postevent Information Immediate postevent information Test format Control Nonexplicit Explicit Standard Nonexplicit Explicit Modified Nonexplicit Explicit

Delayed postevent information

Test 1

Test 2

Test 1

Test 2

1.69 (0.60) 1.81 (0.40)

1.44 (0.63) 1.69 (0.48)

1.63 (0.62) 1.44 (0.81)

1.50 (0.63) 1.33 (0.82)

0.81 (0.75) 1.56 (0.73)

1.25 (0.77) 1.25 (0.86)

1.00 (0.63) 1.75 (0.58)

1.00 (0.82) 0.81 (0.83)

1.50 (0.52) 1.44 (0.73)

1.75 (0.58) 1.47 (0.64)

1.63 (0.50) 1.81 (0.40)

0.94 (0.85) 1.63 (0.50)

(2, N Å 16) £ 3.38, p § .18. All other groups responded significantly above chance, x2’s (2, N Å 16) § 6.00, p õ .05. The numbers of correct responses to the questions concerning the breakfast and illness details were combined and scored on a 0–2 scale for each child at each testing session. The mean scores and standard deviations are presented in Table 2. As preliminary analyses indicated no significant sex differences in the children’s performance, the scores were analyzed in a 2 (breakfast item: cereal vs eggs) 1 2 (type of illness: stomachache vs headache) 1 2 (question condition: nonexplicit vs. explicit) 1 3 (test format: control vs standard vs modified) 1 2 (time of exposure to postevent information: immediate vs delayed) 1 2 (time of test: 1 week vs 7 weeks) mixed-model analysis of variance with breakfast story, illness story, question condition, test format and time of exposure to postevent information as between-subjects factors, and time of test as a within-subjects factor. (Several significant effects involving breakfast item and type of illness were found; however, none of these concerned test format or question condition or any of the simple interaction effects reported in this article. Details of these results can be obtained by writing to the first author.) This analysis revealed main effects for question condition, F(1,142) Å 4.51, p õ .05, test format, F(2,142) Å 6.06, p õ .01, time of exposure to postevent information, F(1,142) Å 4.75, p õ .05, and time of test, F(1,178) Å 9.72, p õ .01. There was also a significant Question Condition 1 Time of Test interaction, F(1,142) Å 5.61, p õ .05, which was subsumed under a highly significant Question Condition 1 Test Format 1 Time of Test interaction, F(2,142) Å 6.22, p õ .01 (see Fig. 1). As for all significant interactions

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FIG. 1. Mean percentages of correct recognitions in the nonexplicit and explicit question conditions at the 1-week and 7-week test for the children tested in the control, standard, and modified test formats.

reported here, simple effects analyses employed a Scheffe´ correction to guard against Type I errors. Separate 2 (question condition) 1 3 (test format) analyses of variance for each test time indicated that at the 1-week test, there was a significant main effect for question condition, F(1,144) Å 10.38, p õ .01, and a Question Condition 1 Test Format interaction, F(2,144) Å 7.63, p õ .01. For the children questioned nonexplicitly, the accuracy of responses of those tested in the standard format (M Å 0.91, SD Å 0.69) was significantly poorer than those children tested in either the modified (M Å 1.56, SD Å 0.50) or control (M Å 1.66, SD Å 0.60) formats, F(2,72) Å 13.20, p õ .001. When the children were questioned explicitly, no test format differences were observed, F õ 1. Further, among the children who had received misleading information and were tested in the standard format, the responses of those questioned explicitly (M Å 1.66, SD Å 0.65) were more accurate than those questioned nonexplicitly (M Å 0.91, SD Å 0.69), F(1,56) Å 19.60, p õ .001. No such differences were evident in either the control or the modified test formats.

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For the 7-week test, neither the main effects for question condition or test format nor their interaction were significant. However, a planned comparison indicated that, at this test, the responses of the children in the modified test format who received delayed postevent information were significantly more accurate under explicit questioning (M Å 1.63, SD Å 0.50) than under nonexplicit questioning (M Å 0.94, SD Å 0.85), F(1,24) Å 5.44, p õ .05. The difference was confirmed by a two-tailed Kruskal–Wallis test, x2 (1, N Å 32) Å 5.62, p õ .05. Ten of the 16 children questioned explicitly in this condition responded correctly on both test items with the other 6 responding correctly on one of the two items. By contrast, only 5 of the 16 children questioned nonexplicitly in this condition were correct on both items with 5 correct on one item and 6 correct on neither item. Additional planned comparisons indicated no significant differences between the children questioned explicitly and those questioned nonexplicitly in the standard or control test formats at the 7-week test whether the children received immediate or delayed postevent information, F õ 1. There was also a significant Time of Exposure to Postevent Information 1 Time of Test interaction, F(1,142) Å 9.13, p õ .01, as well as a Test Format 1 Time of Exposure to Postevent Information 1 Time of Test interaction, F(2,142) Å 3.34, p õ .05. Separate 2 (time of exposure to postevent information) 1 2 (time of test) analyses of variance were conducted for each test format. For those children exposed to delayed misleading postevent information, accuracy at the 7-week test was significantly inferior to that at the 1-week test (for the standard test format: 1-week test: M Å 1.38, SD Å 0.71; 7-week test: M Å 0.91, SD Å 0.82, F(1,24) Å 6.46, p õ .05; for the modified test format: 1-week test: M Å 1.72, SD Å 0.46; 7-week test: M Å 1.28, SD Å 0.77, F(1,24) Å 23.69, p õ .001). Similar declines in accuracy for children receiving immediate misleading postevent information were not evident, F õ 1. The numbers of children who showed stability across the two testing sessions in their responses to the breakfast and illness questions are shown in Table 3. This table presents stability both across tests as well as within the specific questions and, as such, illustrates stability for perfect memory, for consistent (but not perfect) memory, for perfect memory on only the breakfast questions, for perfect memory on only the illness questions, for perfect memory at the 1-week test only, and for perfect memory at the 7-week test only. Of note, 11 of the 15 children in the standard test format who were correct on both story details at both tests had been questioned explicitly. Further, 4 of the 7 children in the study who were incorrect on both story details at both tests had been questioned nonexplicitly in the standard test format. The number of stable responses that were correct over the two tests was scored on a 0–2 scale for each child (one for each of the breakfast and illness questions that were correct on both tests). The children’s stability scores were then analyzed in a 2 (breakfast item) 1 2 (type of illness) 1 2 (question

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TABLE 3 Numbers of Children in the Control, Standard, and Modified Test Formats Who Showed Stability in Their Responses to the Breakfast and Illness Questions across the Two Testing Sessions in the Nonexplicit and Explicit Questioning Conditions Following Exposure to Immediate (Same Day) or Delayed (6 Days Later) Postevent Information

Test format

Correct on both story details at both tests

Correct on only breakfast detail at both tests

Correct on only illness detail at both tests

Correct on both story details at 1-week test only

Correct on both story details at 7-week test only

Incorrect on both story details at both tests

Others

2 2

0 0

0 0

0 0

2 2

1 1

0 2

3 0

2 1

4 2

5 1

1 0

0 1

0 0

0 2

4 3

0 0

0 1

1 1

0 3

6 2

1 6

0 0

2 0

5 2

2 3

2 0

0 0

0 0

4 1

Immediate exposure to postevent information Control Nonexplicit 7 5 Explicit 11 1 Standard Nonexplicit 3 3 Explicit 7 3 Modified Nonexplicit 7 3 Explicit 7 4 Delayed exposure to postevent information Control Nonexplicit 8 3 Explicit 6 1 Standard Nonexplicit 1 1 Explicit 4 2 Modified Nonexplicit 4 4 Explicit 9 3

condition) 1 3 (test format) 1 2 (time of exposure to postevent information) analysis of variance revealing significant main effects for test format, F(2,144) Å 6.33, p õ .01, and time of exposure to postevent information, F(1,144) Å 6.27, p õ .05, but not for question condition, F(1,144) Å 2.21. The children in the standard test format (M Å 0.77, SD Å 0.81) were not as stable in their correct responses as were the children tested in either the control (M Å 1.33, SD Å 0.76) or the modified (M Å 1.23, SD Å 0.75) test formats. Children receiving immediate postevent information (M Å 1.20, SD Å 0.80) showed more stability in their accuracy across the testing sessions than did those children who received delayed postevent information (M Å 1.02, SD Å 0.81). There was also a significant Question Condition 1 Test Format 1 Time of Exposure to Postevent Information interaction, F(2,144) Å 3.85, p õ .05. Separate 2 (question condition) 1 3 (test format) analyses of variance were conducted for each of the immediate versus delayed exposure to postevent information conditions. These analyses revealed that when the postevent information had been delayed and the children were questioned nonexplicitly, those presented with misleading information (standard test format: M Å 0.56, SD Å 0.63; modified test format: M Å 0.88, SD Å 0.81) showed significantly less stability in their accuracy across the testing sessions than did those

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children presented with consistent information (control test format: M Å 1.44, SD Å 0.63), F(2,36) Å 4.41, p õ .05. When the questioning was explicit, no significant test format differences were evident, F(2,36) Å 2.38. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

As predicted, children who were explicitly asked to recognize the details that they heard when the story was presented for ‘‘the first time’’ were more accurate in their responses than those who were nonexplicitly questioned. This finding replicates that reported in previous studies (Newcombe & Siegal, 1996) and supports the role of conversational processes and the use of temporal modifiers in facilitating memory accuracy (Morton, 1990, 1994; Morton et al., 1985). However, these effects must be qualified with regard to interactions involving the nature of the test format, the timing of exposure to the postevent information, and the time interval between an event and testing. At the 1-week test, there were test format differences under nonexplicit questioning with children in the standard format performing significantly less accurately than those in the control and modified formats. This difference was not evident with explicit questioning where the mean accuracy response rate for all groups was greater than 80%. Moreover, for children tested in the standard format at 1 week, the responses of those questioned explicitly significantly surpassed those questioned nonexplicitly who responded only at a chance level. At the 7-week test, explicit questioning did not significantly improve the performance of the children in the standard test format over those who were questioned nonexplicitly. However, children in the modified test format who had received delayed misleading postevent information answered significantly more accurately at this test when they were explicitly questioned than when they had been nonexplicitly questioned. Even at the 7week test, they responded at a level that was significantly greater than chance. The joint effectiveness of the test format and explicitness of questioning on memory and retention is consistent with related research on preschoolers’ ‘‘theory of mind.’’ For example, Mitchell and Lacohe´e (1991) gave 3-yearolds practice in ‘‘posting’’ a pictorial representation of their predictions of the contents of deceptive boxes. When the posting was relevant to the representation of their initial belief, most children distinguished false beliefs from reality in responding to the test question, ‘‘When you posted your picture in the postbox, what did you think was in here (the deceptive box)?’’ By contrast, when the posting procedure was irrelevant to their initial representation and thus irrelevant to the test question, most did not succeed. Although Mitchell and Lacohe´e interpret this result as demonstrating that children’s understanding of beliefs is dependent on physical representations and that such understanding dissipates when beliefs are not accompanied by a physical counterpart, the relevant posting procedure may have also conveyed to the children the importance of using their initial representation to answer the test question, thus clarifying the relation of the temporal aspect of the question to their

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previous belief and enabling the children to answer correctly. Similarly, in our study, the physical representation of the misled alternative in the standard test format may have conveyed to the children the desirability of choosing this representation at the second test by which time their original memory traces would have been vulnerable to decay. However, when this representation is absent as in the modified test format, explicit questioning remains sufficient to activate the original, albeit possibly somewhat decayed, memory trace and to enable children to choose correctly the original information instead of a novel alternative. A source monitoring framework proposes that source information decays resulting in greater difficulties in identifying original events over time (Reyna, 1995). A decline in performance across delayed retention intervals may be due to a greater difficulty in remembering specific, or verbatim, information associated with each separate event coupled with an increase in general, or gist, recall (Reyna & Brainerd, 1995). In research with adults, improvement in the accuracy of responses may occur by providing a source monitoring procedure that prompts individuals to identify the source of their memories for the test items (Lindsay & Johnson, 1989; Zaragoza & Koshmider, 1989). However, the use of these techniques with children who are inexperienced with the purposes of conversation in experimental settings is far from straightforward. Although source monitoring tests (e.g., Ackil & Zaragoza, 1995) or tests with instructions that inform children that their responses should not be based on anything that a second experimenter has said (e.g., Lindsay et al., 1995) may be seen as potentially aiding retrieval, young children often appear to confuse or misinterpret the task requirements (Poole & Lindsay, 1995). Consistent with the results of previous studies (e.g., Belli et al., 1992; Lindsay et al., 1995; Loftus et al., 1978; Tucker, Mertin, & Luszcz, 1990), there were instances in which misleading information had a greater impact on children’s retention when this information was presented after a long rather than a short delay. After exposure to delayed misleading postevent information, the source of the information attached to the memories of the story details might have been easily discriminated at the 1-week test as this information was presented the day before the test. However, by the time of the 7-week test, the information may have become more salient relative to the original details. Children may have become confused about the sources of their memories for original and postevent details. The misleading information may have undermined their memory for the events heard the first time that they had been given the story. They may respond incorrectly except if questioned explicitly in the modified format in which there was no reference to the misleading information. With this exception, the performance at the 7week test of all groups tested in the standard and modified formats after exposure to delayed information was at a chance level. Similar declines in performance between the 1-week and 7-week tests were not found for children who were exposed to immediate postevent misleading information. By the

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time of either test, the information is not especially salient or recent relative to the original details. In fact, at the 7-week test, the misleading information presented immediately after the original story details may have faded to the extent that there was tendency in our study, albeit nonsignificant, for some children to even better report the original details. Another issue that warrants attention concerns the stability of children’s correct and incorrect responses when they are questioned again after a delay (e.g., Brainerd, Reyna, & Brandse, 1995; Poole, 1995; Poole & White, 1991, 1993). In evidentiary proceedings, instability in responses can lower the credibility of an eyewitness in the eyes of a juror. Testimony with consistent responses is often assumed to be more accurate than testimony with inconsistent responses with the latter presumed to represent lying or weak memory traces (Brainerd et al., 1995). Although improved retention can occur following an initial test or reinstatement opportunity (e.g., Brainerd & Ornstein, 1991; Dent & Stephenson, 1979; Howe, O’Sullivan, & Marche, 1992; Tucker et al., 1990), no improvement in accuracy was noted at the second testing session on the control test format where only consistent information was reported in the postevent narrative. In line with previous research showing that the responses of children who have not been exposed to information do not differ from those who have received consistent information (Newcombe & Siegal, 1996), the first memory test did not appear to provide a retention enhancement opportunity (Brainerd & Reyna, 1988). Nevertheless, as numerous studies have shown, lengthy intervals between an event and reporting that event can have a detrimental effect on the stability of children’s accurate responses on memory tests (e.g., Flin et al., 1992; Oates & Shrimpton, 1991; Ornstein et al., 1992; Poole & White, 1993; Powell & Thomson, 1996). Our results support the efficacy of explicit questioning in promoting stability. Only when the children were questioned nonexplicitly were there test format differences with children exposed to misleading information significantly more likely than those given consistent information to be unstable in their accuracy over time. Mere presentation of an alternative, whether the misled item or a novel item, after a lengthy interval may have served to undermine initially correct answers. In line with predictions from fuzzy-trace theory (Brainerd et al., 1995), the stable responses of those children questioned nonexplicitly in the standard test format were as likely to be consistently incorrect as consistently correct (49% of stable responses were consistently incorrect). However, when the children had been exposed to misleading information, explicit questioning facilitated stability in their responses. Those questioned explicitly were more likely to repeat correct responses than repeat incorrect responses from the first testing session to the second (for the standard test format, 80% of the repeated responses were correct). Further, no test format differences in stability of correct answers over the two test phases were evident when children were questioned explicitly.

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Thus an area in need of further research involves the limits of explicit questioning and contexts as strategies for reinstating accuracy in children’s memory reports. Apart from reiterating the original details of the event as has been done, for example, in efforts to reactivate the memory of infants (Rove´e-Collier, Schechter, Shyi, & Shields, 1992), questioning and contexts can be varied to determine the optimal conditions under which preschoolers report their memories for original story details. In the present study, the same questions and test formats were used for both test phases. However, the explicitness of questioning and the test format could be systematically varied across test phases to determine the extent to which these factors influence memory across retention intervals following distant or recent exposure to misleading information. This design would permit investigation of whether memory accuracy in response to nonexplicit questioning is improved by explicit questioning in a previous test phase or whether responses in a standard test format can be enhanced with the use of a modified test format in a later testing. Regardless of the format, the type of object cues present at the time of testing may exert a critical influence on accuracy and on errors of commission (Gee & Pipe, 1995). As Zaragoza (1987) noted, suggestible responses should be regarded as distinct from memories that have been distorted following suggestions conveyed through exposure to misleading information. Thus research on the effects of explicit questioning can be seen as part of a large program to chart developmental differences in cognitive and social factors influencing different aspects of suggestibility, including the participation of the subjects in recreating a vivid scene of the event (e.g., Goodman, Rudy, Bottoms, & Aman, 1990; Memon, Cronin, Eaves, & Bull, 1993; Zaragoza, Graham, Hall, Hirschman, & Ben-Porath, 1995). In this respect, the test format, the immediacy of exposure to misinformation, and the time that has elapsed since the event took place can all have an impact upon the effectiveness of explicit questioning techniques in children’s ability to display what they can remember. REFERENCES Ackil, J. K., & Zaragoza, M. S. (1995). Developmental differences in eyewitness suggestibility and memory for source. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 60, 57–83. Belli, R. F., Windschitl, P. D., McCarthy, T. T., & Winfrey, S. E. (1992). Detecting memory impairment with a modified test procedure: Manipulating retention interval with centrally presented event items. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 18, 356–367. Brainerd, C. J., & Ornstein, P. A. (1991). Children’s memory for witnessed events: The developmental backdrop. In J. Doris (Ed.), The suggestibility of children’s recollections (pp. 10– 20). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Brainerd, C. J., & Reyna, V. F. (1988). Memory loci of suggestibility development: Comment on Ceci, Ross, and Toglia (1987). Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 117, 197– 200. Brainerd, C. J., Reyna, V. F., & Brandse, E. (1995). Are children’s false memories more persistent than their true memories? Psychological Science, 6, 359–364.

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