Discriminating Between Children's Accounts of True and False Events

本研究考察了几种有效性评估技术的效用，以区分儿童对真实和虚假事件的描述。已经开发了几种技术来评估人们对事件的描述的有效性，但是这些技术中的大多数(a)是为成人而不是儿童开发的，(b)没有在儿童身上进行广泛的测试，(c)没有纳入认知发展的相关原则。这个项目测试了一个假设，即对于儿童，效度评估技术在区分熟悉事件和不熟悉事件的叙述比区分真实事件和虚假事件的叙述更成功。将进行两项研究，以测试几种效度评估技术在区分真实和虚假事件以及儿童熟悉或不熟悉的事件方面的效用。在第一项研究中，回忆的事件是实验性地介绍给参与者的。在第二项研究中，回忆的事件与法医相关——每个参与研究的孩子都经历过或没有经历过的有压力和侵入性的医疗程序。这项研究将有助于认知发展理论的发展，这些理论适用于日常认知过程中操作的广泛记忆任务。更直接的是，拟议中的研究将帮助研究人员、法律专业人士和社会服务机构区分儿童对真实世界事件的描述，这些事件确实发生过，而那些没有发生过。

This research examines the utility of several validity assessment techniques for differentiating between children's accounts of true and false events. Several techniques have been developed to assess the validity of people's accounts of events, however most of these techniques (a) have been developed for use with adults and not children, (b) have not been extensively tested with children, and (c) do not incorporate relevant principles of cognitive development. This project tests the hypothesis that with children, validity assessment techniques are more successful at discriminating between accounts of familiar versus unfamiliar events than between accounts of true versus false events. Two studies will be conducted to test the utility of several validity assessment techniques for discriminating between true and false events with events that are familiar or unfamiliar to children. In the first study the event recalled is one experimentally introduced to the participants. In the second study the event recalled is a forensically relevant one -- a stressful and invasive medical procedure that has been experienced by each participating child or not. This research will contribute to the development of theories of cognitive development that apply to a wide range of memory tasks that operate during every-day cognition. More immediately, the proposed research will help researchers, legal professionals, and social service agents discriminate between children's accounts of real-world events that did occur versus those that did not occur.