A COMPARISON OF THE EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS OF DEAF AND HEARING CHILDREN

Children with hearing impairments have been found to suffer a high rat e of physical and sexual victimization relative to children in general . The purpose of this investigation was to compare the amount and accu racy of the information contained in the eyewitness accounts of deaf a nd hearing children. Fifteen deaf and 11 hearing children, aged 8 to 1 0 years, individually witnessed a series of slides depicting a wallet theft. Their recall was then tested by using the Step-Wise Interview ( Yuille, Hunter, Joffe, & Zaparniuk, 1993) consisting of a free recall component followed by increasingly directive questions. Separate 2 x 2 (deaf/hearing x question type) between-within factorial ANOVAs were c onducted on the amount and accuracy of the information in the accounts (A = .025). Results indicated no main or interaction effects for amou nt recalled. However, a main effect for question type and an interacti on effect were evidenced in the analysis on accuracy. Although the acc uracy scores of the two groups did not differ in free recall, the deaf children provided much less accurate responses to directive questions whereas the accuracy of the hearing children declined only slightly. Implications for criminal investigations are discussed.