Inpsyte

ANNOTATION

Fivush, R. (1993) Developmental perspectives on autobiographical recall. In G.S. Goodman, B.L. Bottoms (Eds.), Child victims, child witnesses: Understanding and improving testimony (pp 1-24). New York: Guilford

The author believes that children's ability to recall must be placed in a developmental perspective in view of the fact that children at different ages have different memory skills. He believes this is important in the evaluation of children's testimony.

Fivush has done extensive research on single, unique events in his study of children and adults involving autobiographical memory. His studies involve both recent and delayed recall. He defines accuracy of memory as "agreement between the individual's recall and either an objective record of the event or social consensus from other participants of the event as to what occurred". (p 2) The author cites several studies involving concentration camp survivors indicate "remarkable consistency" with the exception that often survivors had difficulty recalling such data as names of guards and fellow prisoners. As time between event and interview increased recall decreased but were retrieved with high accuracy when cued, i.e. asked a specific question. Many other studies were included in research involving adult recent and delayed recall of autobiographical memory.

According to Fivush, studies also indicated older children followed the same pattern as adults. Preschoolers, however, required more questions and cues to focus on an event. The preschoolers did not spontaneously recall events unless asked specific questions. Overall, the studies indicated that "even quite young children recall accurate details about personally experienced events over extended periods. Younger children need more social support in the form of specific questions, prompts and cues in order to recall". (p 16) Lastly young children are inconsistent in the information they recall when interviewed on different occasions. Part of the difficulty with young children is that they have not developed the ability to recount, on their own, information in a conventionally narrative form. i.e. who, what, when, where when reporting.

Research indicated that even young children can have high accuracy for recall of an event. The problem, where child testimony is concerned, is not what to remember but "to learn how to remember in adult-guided conversations."(p 16) Research indicated that children recall information in response to specific question and they tend to recall the same information when asked the same question in subsequent interviews. The author also states, "At the same time,it is important to emphasize that children are not incorporating very much information provided by the adult during questioning into their subsequent recall of event." The author does imply during this article that there is a difference between cuing and leading a child for a response.

Fivush believes the single most important finding to come out of his research is that children's autobiographical memory is that children's recall can be quite accurate. Preschooler's can be as accurate as older children and accuracy does not decrease over time. He stresses that in preschoolers, inconsistency does not more inaccuracy. They are dependent on adults' questions, where these are inconsistent from interview to interview you will also see inconsistency on what information the preschooler will choose to recall.

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