The field of children's testimony is in turmoil, but a resolution to seemingly intractable debates now appears attainable. In this review, we place the current disagreement in historical context and describe psychological and legal views of child witnesses held by scholars since the turn of the 20th century. Although there has been consistent interest in children's suggestibility over the past century, the past 15 years have been the most active in terms of the number of published studies and novel theorizing about the causal mechanisms that underpin the observed findings. A synthesis of this research posits three "families " of factors—cognitive, social, and biological—that must be considered if one is to understand seemingly contradictory interpretations of the findings. We conclude that there are reliable age differences in suggestibility but that even very young children are capable of recalling much that is forensically relevant. Findings are discussed in terms of the role of expert witnesses. Since the turn of the century, psycholegal scholars have examined the suggestibility of children's testimony in an effort to determine whether they would be credible witnesses. A major issue in this research concerns the degree to which heightened

In this article, three experiments examine how memory distortion and temporal change affect the evolution of hedonic product evaluations. The results show that, contrary to intuition, characteristics of a picture given after the purchase decision can systematically affect how mental representations and satisfaction evolve, resulting in a change in the level of satisfaction at delivery. The results also indicate that the effect persists over time and influences behavior, as evidenced by word of mouth and repeat purchase. 2 There’s many a slip ’twixt cup and lip. — English Proverb. Imagine that a consumer decided to purchase a headboard for her bed. After searching the Internet and catalogs, finally she found a headboard style that she liked. She then chose to have the headboard made in pine and wrought-iron. After purchasing the product, she was told that the headboard would be delivered in about six weeks. While waiting for delivery, she often watched a the television show that contained a headboard that was very similar to the one which she had ordered, so whenever she saw

Can people comprehend assertions without believing them? Descartes (1644/1984) suggested that people can and should, whereas Spinoza (1677/1982) suggested that people should but cannot. Three experiments support the hypothesis that comprehension includes an initial belief in the information comprehended. Ss were exposed to false information about a criminal defendant (Experiments 1 and 2) or a college student (Experiment 3). Some Ss were exposed to this information while under load (Experiments 1 and 2) or time pressure (Experiment 3). Ss made judgments about the target (sentencing decisions or liking judgments). Both load and time pressure caused Ss to believe the false information and to use it in making consequential decisions about the target. In Spinozan terms, both manipulations prevented Ss from "unbelieving " the false information they automatically believed during comprehension. This article was written while Daniel T. Gilbert was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced

This study sought to extend research on false memories by examining the influence of confidence ratings immediately following forced confabulation and memory implantation on subsequent free recall. All participants were asked a series of false-event questions, for some of these questions an experimenter provided a response (memory implantation), for others participants were forced to generate a response (forced confabulation). Half of the participants rated their confidence in their implanted and confabulated answers, thereby reflecting upon the misinformation, the balance did not rate their confidence. The results demonstrated that participants were more likely to falsely recall an implanted or confabulated false-event item than to spontaneously falsely recall these items. Whereas, the confidence condition did not have any statistically significant results, it showed an interesting trend suggesting that reflection led to a higher rate of false recall only for implanted items. False Memories 3 False Memories: The effect of confidence ratings on free recall tests