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Eyewitness Testimony Essay

2508 Words11 Pages

Eyewitness testimony in children (Memory) Eyewitness testimony is something which describes a person’s observations about any event or incident. Remembering something and recalling it later is possible because of memory. So, the ability of an organism to record information about things or events with the facility of recalling them later at will or when asked is memory. Eyewitness testimony in children is a part of their reconstructive memory according to “Elizabeth Loftus”. Reconstructive memory is the act of remembering and it is also influenced by various other factors and cognitive processes as well. While remembering the things or taking them into account for further usage children think that whatever they are seeing or observing will …show more content…

Some children have a greater level of intelligence, some of them have better verbal ability, some of them have suggestibility ability, and some of them have better memory recall while some of them have intelligence disability. These all factors result in different answers from different children regarding memory and eyewitness testimony. Script based Inferences Script based inferences also play an important role while an interviewer is asking questions from children. Scripts help children to organize their thoughts and then answer with help of it. It is usually helpful children but on the same time these scripts can also have effects that are damaging in the retrieval of accurate memories. Scripts can lead people to report details of events that did not happen, even if those details fit with the script of the event. Socially encountered misinformation Another factor that affects eyewitness testimony in children is socially encountered misinformation. That is children are provided with wrong or misleading information which is society led and even if it is wrong then also parents insist them to learn it. So according to ‘Akehurst, Burden, and Buckle’s’ (2009) study of misinformation provided evidence that 9-11 year old children can be susceptible to suggestion and misinformation under the right

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