Jm. Lampinen et Vl. Smith, THE INCREDIBLE (AND SOMETIMES INCREDULOUS) CHILD WITNESS - CHILD EYEWITNESSES SENSITIVITY TO SOURCE CREDIBILITY CUES, Journal of applied psychology, 80(5), 1995, pp. 621-627
Witnesses who receive misleading postevent information usually perform
more poorly on memory tests than do witnesses who receive only unbias
ed information. This effect is especially pronounced for young childre
n. For adults, the credibility of the source of the misleading informa
tion moderates this effect; misinformation presented by a credible sou
rce impairs performance to a greater degree than does misinformation p
resented by a noncredible source. In the present experiment, preschool
children listened to a story accompanied by several illustrations. La
ter, they watched a videotape of a child, a credible adult, or a discr
edited adult answering questions about the story. For some children, t
he person in the videotape provided misleading information. The childr
en's memory reports were impaired only when misinformation was present
ed by the credible adult, indicating that even young children are sens
itive to source credibility cues.