At the Zoo and On the Farm: The Effects of an Initial Interview on Pre-Kindergarten Children's Subsequent Recall and Resistance to Retroactive Interference

Abstract

Despite the attention researchers have given to the effects of repeated interviews on eyewitness testimony, relatively few investigations have examined the effects of an initial interview on children's event memory. This study added to the literature by investigating the effects of an initial interview on recall, resistance to retroactive interference, and source monitoring errors. One hundred four-year-old children were engaged in a staged event and were interviewed about this event 4 weeks later. Two between-participant factors, the presence or absence of an initial interview and the administration or lack of administration of a related event during the retention interval, were varied orthogonally. Children in the initial interview group demonstrated greater recall and more elaborations of the target event, regardless of whether or not they had experienced the intervening event. Among the children who were exposed to the intervening event, those who had the initial interview made fewer source monitoring errors than did those who did not have the interview. The findings are interpreted as indicating that an initial interview enhances young children's memory reports by strengthening the memory trace and consolidating the event representation, at least under some conditions.