Assessing the Role of Familiarity in Eyewitness Memory and Suggestibility

摘要：在涉及虐待或虐待儿童的法律案件中，被怀疑的人往往是儿童熟悉的人。然而，大多数关于儿童目击者记忆的科学研究都考察了对短暂见过的陌生人的记忆的准确性和暗示性。有重要的理论理由表明，熟悉度和关系因素影响幼儿的记忆和暗示。这个项目将调查儿童准确叙述自己经历的能力，以及他们揭露违规行为的意愿。本项目将研究第一手个人知识和社会情感影响对幼儿目击报告的影响。第一项研究采用实验方法，关注儿童对涉及熟悉的人和陌生人的事件的记忆和暗示。第二项研究将调查儿童对与父亲一起经历的中度压力事件的目击记忆的个体预测因子。在这两个实验中，智力、心理健康、家庭冲突和个性的评估将包括在内，以确定重要的关系。这项研究将为儿童目击者记忆提供新的理论驱动的科学知识，这反过来将告知法律系统如何最好地平衡保护儿童免受受害者和保护成年人免受诬告。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Title: Assessing the Role of Familiarity in Eyewitness Memory and SuggestibilityAbstract: In legal cases involving child victims of abuse or maltreatment, the person under suspicion often is someone with whom the child is familiar. Yet, most scientific studies on child eyewitness memory examine accuracy and suggestibility concerning briefly-seen strangers. There are important theoretical reasons to indicate that familiarity and relationship factors affect young children's memory and suggestibility. This project will investigate children's abilities to recount accurately their experiences and their willingness to reveal transgressions. This project will examine the effects of first-hand person knowledge and socioemotional influences on young children's eye witness reports. Employing an experimental approach, the first study concerns children's memory and suggestibility for an event involving a familiar person versus a stranger. The second study will investigate individual predictors of children's eyewitness memory for a moderately stressful event experienced with their father. For both experiments, assessments of intelligence, mental health, family conflict, and personality will be included to pinpoint significant relations. This research will provide new theoretically driven scientific knowledge about children's eyewitness memory, which in turn will inform the legal system how best to balance protecting children from victimization and protecting adults from false accusations.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.