Preschoolers Remember Sam Stone

How Accurate Children Are at Recognizing Faces

Many criminal investigations rely on eyewitness accounts in order to identify a criminal. Some of these investigations require children to choose from a photograph who they believe the person they saw was. Children (ages 4-7) are less able to recall details of a situation, and are not yet able to descriptively describe events that happened to them. Adults however, are better at recalling than children (given optimal conditions). Misidentification does occur in adults, only having a glimpse of a suspect or only picking out a few details and choosing the person based on those can result in an innocent person being convicted. Memory is a difficult subject to study, and there are many factors that

Leichtman and Stephen J. Ceci titled Preschoolers Remember Sam Stone. They had children assigned to 4 conditions, and had a man come into their day-care classroom, and the day care providers introduce him as Sam Stone. He said hello, commented on something insignificant (such as what they were going over in class) and left the room. Everything was kept the same with each of the groups, and several weeks after the visit the experimenters came back to question the children about the encounter. However, children in the control group were given no information about Sam Stone prior to the visit, the stereotype group received significant information about Sam Stone before the visit unlike the control group, therefore getting an impression him before he arrived. The suggestion group did not have any previous information given about Sam Stone, and the questions they were asked were not neutral (like the other interviews were). The final group of children, the stereotype plus suggestion condition, had both the information about Sam Stone before his visit, and the manipulated questions. The results concluded that older children were more accurate than their younger peers. With the groups, the control group was the most accurate of the four, followed by the stereotype group, suggestion group, and the stereotype plus suggestion

a mall). As the child is walking or waiting in line, a person will walk up to the child, and talk to him/her (The parent will be given a photograph of the confederate who their child will be talking too prior to the encounter).The confederate approaching the child will be the independent variable, the one being manipulated. They will either be someone familiar to the child (a friend or family member) or they will be unfamiliar (a stranger). The confederate will be either male or female, ranging in age from 20-40 (there have been studies which show children are able to recognize people their own age better than people who are older or younger). The topic being discussed with the child will be insignificant, such as what they are wearing (“I like that dinosaur shirt you have on”) or something the child has (“I really like that teddy bear you have there”). The confederate will then walk away, leaving the area so the child cannot see them again. A few hours later, the child will be taken to their classroom and asked a series of questions (with parent present). Questions will be asked such as “Did anyone talk to you in the mall?” and “Do you know who it was that talked to you?” They will be asked to choose a person from a picture of who they believe talked to them. The dependent variable being measured is the accuracy