The Effect of Parental Bias on the Reliability of Children's Event Reports and Children's Memory for Suggestive Parental Questioning

Whether postevent discussions with parents influence children's subsequent reports and how children remember such conversations are critical contemporary questions regarding child witnesses. In the present study, 155 4- to 7-year-olds participated in a staged event and discussed the event with knowledgeable or misled parents prior to a formal interview. The impact of parental bias and child age on parent-child conversations and in children's formal reports were assessed. Young children with misled parents were the least accurate during parent-child conversations. Although recall of the event during formal interviews contained few inaccuracies, misinformation and facilitation effects emerged in children's recognition memory. Children demonstrated limited recall for the content of parent-child conversations and infrequently attributed parents as the origin of misinformation. The findings indicate that postevent discussions with misled parents increase the risk of false reports. Relying on children's recall of parent-child conversations may underestimate the extent of potential parental influence.