Children's Eyewitness Testimony and Event Memory

This Element focuses on children's event memory and what it tells us about when children can be reliable eyewitnesses.

This Element explores children's event memory and considers how potential jurors perceive children as eyewitnesses and how the findings of the research on children's event memory inform best practices for interviewing children.This Element addresses the factors that influence children's accuracy in reporting on events and draws implications for children's ability to serve as reliable eyewitnesses. The following topics are covered: short- and long-term memory for event details; memory for stressful events; memory for the temporal order of events; memory for the spatial location of events; the ways poorly worded questions or intervening events interfere with memory; and individual differences in language development, understanding right from wrong and emotions, and cognitive processes. In addition, this Element considers how potential jurors perceive children as eyewitnesses and how the findings of the research on children's event memory inform best practices for interviewing children.