Children's memory

This week we read about memory, and how it develops. I think that this information was the most interesting to me, because there were several examples of children remembering things which had never occurred. I had heard about this happening with adults (particularly with Elizabeth Loftus’s work), but didn’t realize how dangerous the concept is until I was presented with how damaging it could be to children. Children that are exposed to crimes (either as a victim or a witness) are already in a vulnerable position, due to their inexperience with dealing with the information they have been exposed to. Combining that with their impressionability creates a situation even worse than that experienced by adults that witness or are the victims of crime.

The scariest part to me is that there are situations that I think I remember, but now I can’t be so sure about. There’s one specific instance in which I remember sitting in the passenger seat of a car, being driven to a Child Development Center and hanging out with a bunch of other kids, but also having access to watching my mother play tennis. (She was down on a lower level in a gymnasium, while I was on an upper level with a balcony overlooking the gym.) None of this happened. I know that it couldn’t have because I asked my mother about it later on in life. But it’s very clear in my mind still. I just wish I knew where I’d gotten the idea from. On a further note, I believe I’m very lucky not to have ever been exposed to something that could have been damaging to me, either being pressured into falsely accusing someone of misbehavior or having been mistreated and having someone try to talk me out of that idea.

It shocks and amazes me that we’ve been going off testimony that has basically been tampered with for years, without ever realizing that the words these children were saying were not actually their own. The worst part of it is that I don’t think anyone in particular is always at fault for it. The adults that were asking the children leading questions probably didn’t always realize that they were pushing the child to say things that weren’t true. However, I also realize that there are instances where someone does push a child to say something that they know isn’t true (i.e. the example from page 227 in the text). Nor can any blame be placed on the children in these dreadful situations, because it’s not their faults that their memories are easily manipulated. And because they don’t understand a lot of social situations, they just try to please the people they are talking to.

However, part of me wonders how much things like IQ and general memory effectiveness come into play in these situations. I guess I could be considered to have a pretty high IQ, but I have a terrible memory. I have absolutely no capacity to remember dates and times, and I don’t believe I ever have. The only time that I can specifically remember things was when I told myself to remember them. There was a time when I was a kid living in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and two people were killed at the video store just down the street from my house. I remember that when I heard about it, I decided from then on to pay attention to the world around me, in case I ever witnessed a crime, so that I would be able to report it and help put the bad guys in prison. The thing that I realized after trying to do that all the time is that there’s a lot going on in the world, both in reality and in my mind. As a child with a lot of mental processing going on, it’s hard to pay attention to things that could be happening, in addition to things that are relevant in your life.

I suppose this relates back to thinking about children being used for eyewitness testimony. I just wonder if the prosecutors have ever realized how hard it must be for children to sort through everything in their minds. Not only is there so much going on (they’re still learning how to be people, for one thing) but they don’t have the practice that adults have with using the information we contain.