A brutal crime occurs, and there is a young eye witness of five years old that saw the crime happen. He was small, so he could hide while the crime occurred, and is very scared. The police are in luck that there is an eye witness that can lead them to finding the perpetrator, however, they have to treat the case very carefully as he is so young. There are specific steps the police should take early on in the investigation to improve the child’s recollection of events. Understanding the preoperational stage of development, the immediacy of having the interview, and Interview techniques, can help the police approach the delicate situation in the best way possible. At five years old the child is in the preoperational stage of cognitive thinking. At this age children are limited by egocentrism, and are sometimes confused with appearance verse reality (Kail and Cavanaugh, 2013). Their memory is also in the early stages of cognitive thinking, and can be confused easily when events happen …show more content…
The first technique is time, the longer the child has the memory of what happened the easier he may become confused on the reality of what happened. The child must be interviewed immediately after the crime occurs to receive the most accurate recall of events (Kail and Cavanaugh, 2013). Waiting too long the child may become confused on the details of what happened, and be influenced by speaking with another person. Similar to the game telephone, the more recollection and passing of information through to people, the more the information becomes distorted and influenced by outside sources. A child could say to a family member, “I saw a tall brown haired man stab Mom,” and the family member could say, “that sounds like the neighbor Steve!”, and then the child could become influenced by this, and tell the detective, “I saw Steve stab my