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

Children’s production and comprehension of politeness in requests: Relationships to behavioural adjustment, temperament and empathy

This qualitative study was concerned with exarnining the first language of young Mexicano bilinguals who had already learned enough English to work in all-English classrooms. In order to capture natural language usage within the school setting, five focal children were chosen, observed and audiotaped throughout their school day, for a period of roughly four months. This research presents data on the functions that Spanish continued to serve in the lives of these developing bilinguals. Additionally, it describes the competence they showed in their Spanish. Throughout their school day, in different roles, and in distinct contexts, the children used Spanish in varied and complex ways: (a) to provide information and assistance with school work; (b) to seek explanations, information and clarification; (c) to provide their own self-talk which helped them think through problems, plan strategies and assess their own work; d) to establish and maintain a variety of social relationships, juggling changes in friendships and group tensions; (e) to integrate their out-of-school worlds into their school world through narrativeS, commentary, play and imagination; and (f) to negotiate and maintain participation in on-going conversations. These descriptions and analyses of naturally-occurring Spanish language interactions have contributed to a more detailed picture of the young bilingual’s first language in contact situations.

This study examines the teaching and learning of writing for secondary school students as it occurs in the interactive context of teacher-student writing conferences-that is, private teacher-student conversations about the students ' writing or writing process. Following ethnographic procedures, the study examines naturally-occurring conferences in a ninth-grade English class for six case study students. Covering an observation period of six weeks, collected data include audio and video tapes of conference talk, audio and video tapes of all other class activities, observational field notes, interviews with teacher and focal students, and all drafts of focal student writing. A descriptive quantitative discourse analysis of conference,talk across students and descriptive qualitative case study analyses within students show the writing conference to occasion a kind of teacher-student collaboration in which the teacher assumes a special leadership role; collaboration is seen as a shifting process shaped not only by conference participants but by the rhetorical circumstances of their talk; and collaboration is described along a continuum, varying both across students and within students at different times. Author's Note