Improving the accuracy of adult eyewitness testimony: Implications for children

Abstract

Increasingly, children are coming into contact with the legal system, both as witnesses and victims of crime. Such contact has heightened concern over the competency of children to testify, due to the potential vulnerability for leading questions and the incompleteness of information obtained from children. In this paper, recall-enhancement procedures employed with adults are reviewed. Due to the paucity of literature examining the efficacy of such techniques with children, research on the utility of recall-enhancement procedures with adults will be reviewed prior to discussing their applicability to children. Finally, areas of future research concerning recall-enhancement techniques with child witnesses are suggested.