The abilities of children with mental retardation to remember personal experiences: Implications for testimony

Investigated the abilities of children with mental retardation to remember the details of a personally experienced event. A simulated health check was administered to 20 children with mental retardation and 40 normally develo ping children, half matched on mental age (MA) and half matched on chronolo gical age (CA) with the children with mental retardation. The children's me mory was assessed immediately after the health check and 6 weeks later. Ove rall, the children with mental retardation accurately recalled the health c heck features, provided detail, and resisted misleading questions about fea tures that did not occur. The group with mental retardation performed simil arly, to the MA matches on virtually all of the memory variables. The child ren with mental retardation performed worse than the CA matches on most of the memory variables, although they were able to recall a similar number of features. The findings are discussed in terms of the ability of children w ith mental retardation to provide accurate testimony.