When Young Children are Better Eyewitnesses than Older Children and Adults: Developmental Reversals in Susceptibility to Misinformation

A common perception in the legal psychological field is that young children are poorer witnesses than older children and adults because of their increased susceptibility to misinformation. Here, we show that the opposite can be engendered: In two experiments, suggestion-induced false memories increase with age when participants focus on the underlying meaning of an event. Using an adapted misinformation procedure, we presented participants (children and adults) with a video of a bank robbery containing associatively-related details. They then received misinformation preserving the meaning of the event either in an eyewitness account or through being interviewed. One day later, participants received a recognition test. Using this novel approach, we found that older children (Experiment 2) and adults (Experiment 1) were the most prone to the formation of false memories. These results counter the default assumption that young children, because of their suboptimal memory functioning, are necessarily poorer eyewitnesses. Instead, we show that older children and adults are more vulnerable to suggestion and false memories than younger children.