The Psychological Evidence

In the past 20 years the number of psychological studies on child witnesses and the competency of them being interviewed as well as the evidence being given by them has grown from very few quality studies to several thousand. Issues such as suggestibility, the effects of individual differences and the effects of long delays on their recall have been brought up and discussed in these studies. (Memon, Vrij & Bull, 2006) Traditionally, most Criminal Justice Systems have been reluctant to accept the testimony of young children, believing that they make less reliable witnesses than adults do. Although in recent years the balance has shifted and the evidence of children is now much more likely to be accepted. (Ainsworth, 1998) All witnesses defined as a child at the date of the trial, and irrespective of the nature of the offence, are automatically classified as vulnerable and this eligible for a range of protective special measures to enable them to give a testimony in court. There special measures include in-court screens, live TV link, removal of wigs and gowns and provision of any necessary aids to communication. (Raitt, 2007)

The issue of children's competency to testify in court has changed from the presumption that no minor is competent to the belief that all children are competent, which also means that a child can be compelled to testify whether voluntarily or not. Donaldson et al (1983, cited in Spencer & Flin, 1993) believed that much of the research carried out in the first half of the century seemed to have been curiously preoccupied with children's incapacities. This traditional assumption of childhood incompetence may have stemmed from a historical tendency to regard infancy and childhood as a general period of weakness and incapacity, and to treat children almost as if they were a different kind of being. (Spencer & Flin, 1993)

Hearsay and gut feelings were what most of the prejudice against children was based on, rather than careful research. Whipple (1911, cited in Ainsworth, 1998) cited some evidence in support of some of these prejudices, reporting on the writing of two doctors who believed that children were the most dangerous of all witnesses and should wherever possible, be banned from courts. Although in contrast, Gross (1910) believed that child witnesses, when healthy, could be as good as adults, especially when recalling simple events. He believed that in some cases children could even be better witnesses than adults as they didn't apportion blame and can control their emotions.

There have been many objections as to why children should not give evidence, some of which have been, for example, the unreliability of children's memories, the fact that children can be highly suggestible and also that they might have difficulty distinguishing fact from fantasy. These objections can again be broken down into separate issues, for example with the unreliability of children's memories, concerns about them having problems with free recall, the responses to the questions and also the effects of long delays have been brought up.

Spencer and Flin, (1993) talk about how that research has shown clearly that the most noticeable age difference in witnesses has been found when the memory test is free recall. Meaning that when the subject was asked to recount everything that they saw, they could do so without prompting. With younger children, they typically reported less information than older children and adults, but more significantly, the information they did recall was more accurate. (Davies et al, 1989, cited in Spencer & Flin, 1993) This therefore appears to show that although there are age differences in the quantity of freely recalled details, there doesn't appear to be much difference with younger children and adults in the quality or accuracy of the details.

With the response to questions, in a forensic context, free recall and very general questions are of limited use as in order to elicit the maximum amount of information, more specific questions are required. With younger children, in this type of interview, they do tend to respond less accurately than older children and adults although some studies have suggested that when child witnesses make errors, the are more frequently errors of leaving certain details out, rather than reporting events that did not occur. (Spencer & Flin, 1993)

A big problem faced by children when giving evidence is that they often have to wait many months between witnessing the crime and being asked to recall the details in court. Both adults and children's memories are highly sensitive to the passage of time. Salmon and Pipe (1997) completed a study using a medical examination of a large teddy by a doctor and found that young children's recall of the event was reduced by the passage of time between the event and the interview, which was 3 days versus a year. Overall the recall accuracy of the 6 year olds was not affected by the 1 year time lag, but that of the 4 year olds dropped from 87 percent to 69 percent, being a statistically significant effect. (Memon et al, 2006) Also Fivush and Schwarz Mueller (1998, cited in Memon, Vrij & Bull, 2006) found that 100 years of research has found that adults have difficulty recalling events that occurred in the first few years of life, but research also demonstrated that 2-3 year old children are able to recall verbally accurate details of their past. Studies done by Goodman et al (1987, cited in Spencer & Flin, 1993) show that three and six year olds have a surprisingly good memory for events and for strangers after several weeks, although three and four year olds remembered less the following day. All three research studies here have shown that although children can remember some details after a period of time, the amount does diminish the longer the period is.

Lawyers seem to believe that children are particularly suggestible as witnesses, with the sense that their evidence can easily become distorted by a leading style of questions. In a set of experiments completed by an American psychologist, Gail Goodman (cited in Spencer & Flin, 1993) she assessed children's suggestibility in situations that were both personally significant and stressful. When the children, who were aged three to eight years old, were a year later asked questions including some suggestive ones, their results showed that even following the delays of a year, the children made more errors of omission than of making things up.

Leichtman and Ceci (1995) completed one of the first studies noting effects on suggestions on free recall performance. They put together a study, using children aged three to six, and examined the effects of repeated interviews with different