Recounting the same events again and again: Children's consistency across multiple interviews

Children (2-13 years at time of injury) were interviewed four times about a n injury that required hospital Emergency Room treatment, namely at 1 week, 6 months, 1 year, and 2 years. The consistency of children's reports was a ssessed and all children gave mostly the same information at each interview , although consistency was higher for older children and for injury rather than hospital details. Furthermore, details recalled at every interview wer e virtually always accurate while details that were sometimes omitted were a little less likely to be accurate. New information that was introduced af ter 6 months was more likely to be accurate than inaccurate but new informa tion introduced at 1 or 2 years post-injury was just as likely to be wrong as right (except for 12-13-year-olds). Implications for forensic situations are discussed. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.