THE INCREDIBLE (AND SOMETIMES INCREDULOUS) CHILD WITNESS - CHILD EYEWITNESSES SENSITIVITY TO SOURCE CREDIBILITY CUES

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.