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Credit: Image courtesy of University of Hertfordshire
Children can easily be led to remember incorrect information through
misleading gestures from adults, according to researchers from the
University of Hertfordshire.
12 comments:
I found this article very interesting. Often times, a child could be playing in the street when there is a robbery, be shot at, and still be the only witness, and then when they went into be interrogated, they would be traumatized, and then later they could be confused about what they saw if the adult had to put on a pair of glasses or point at a chart. This is very important research that may be able to take down the number of crimes that are unpunished because of confused child witnesses.
I think this blog is a great blog because it goes into great depth. I like that they used examples that helped explain what is happening. A good example was when after showing children a film of a woman wearing a hat, the researcher asked them what was the lady wearing. while performing an action similar to putting on a hat. When they made a gesture of a hat, then the children said hat. When they made a gesture of glasses, the children forgot about everything in the video and said hat. I think that if we have a child witness, then we should just be calm and let the child say whatever it wants, and we should listen. I also find it bad that people can trick children after they have experienced a bad event to thinking that nothing happened. This might also be good though because then we might be able to make the child happier. I would rate this article a 10 out of 10 because I like all the examples they had, and I like all the information and how engaging they were.
I once watched a TED Talk by a woman named Elizabeth Loftus, a memory psychologist. It talked about how after a crime scene, a witness could be misled by the interviewers' suggestions. I think that this is a very similar case. Because of the fact that you must repeat to remember for short term memory (see Brain Rules), the people who have not gone over it aloud many times before the interview, the memory is not set.
You should watch the Elizabeth Loftus "False Memory" TED Talk.
I think that this was a very interesting article. I agree that children can be easily mislead, especially by adults because children trust adults. However, I am not entirely certain that the hat test worked. After all, the children may have not been paying attention or forgotten. A hat may not seem very important to them. If they were clueless as to what it was, then they may think that the researcher was trying to give them a clue to what it was. So being mislead might be consciously thinking that the researcher was trying to help them, not something in the back of the mind. The article never explained whether younger or older children were more easily mislead. However, I think younger children would be more easily mislead because they trust adults more. One other article I read stated something interesting. They wrote that children have their thoughts easily swayed by adults because they are used to looking at them for information they may have forgotten. I also think it is interesting what Juliet said. What if an interrogater of a child witness to a crime scene had to put on glasses? This study shows that the child might actually be lead into thinking that the criminal was wearing glasses. If there is only a child witness for a crime, how do we know what they say is true and how do we prevent them from being mislead by adults? I also wonder what the society that they are presenting this to will be doing about it. Overall, this was a great article and it makes you think about how we use our hands and what false conclusions people may draw from them.
I think this was an interesting article, but I thought it could use a little more details. I think the article should have explained why the mind mimics what an adult does even if they just saw a video doing something completely different. Maybe children copy what adults mimic because the children think the adults are giving them hints. The article said 93% children said what the adult was doing. I wonder why the other 7% did not give the same answer.
I found this article very interesting. I agree with the article in that kids trust what adults are saying and just want to follow that. When the adults ask the children questions, what they do influences the response. Connecting to the witness thing, I agree with Angela that they could have forgotten what they have seen during the crime. Another article I looked at said that we use gestures when speaking, without noticing it. So a subtle gesture from an interviewer could completely throw of a child. It also says that kids are looking at adults to interpret strange events, so they will just go along with what they say. I found Juliet's comment very interesting in that it could be a confused child who makes a innocent person go to jail. But I also think because of a confused child witness, the criminal could go free. It is always better to have an adult witness or security footage. Overall, I found this article very interesting though it could have had some information.
I really enjoyed this article and I have to agree with Juliet. If a child witnesses some sort of crime and then they are brought into interrogation and the interviewer does a motion, the kid might disregard everything they saw and think that that motion that the detective did is what they saw. This is something that detectives should know so that when they interrogate a child, they do not mislead them.
I thought that this article was very interesting. It is suprising that us kids get so easily confused by subtle gestures like a nod of the head. This is very good research, becuase at crime sceens the only witness may have been a child and he probably is giving the person who is interveiwing him/her false information, and you could convict an innocent person just based on the word of a misleaded child.
This article was very intriguing. When my sister was a toddler, she was always taking things. When I asked if she had put it under the bed, she said yes. When I saw that it wasn't there, I asked her if she had put it somewhere else. She said yes to wherever I asked it was. I think they are saying that very young kids are an unreliable source for interviews and also as witnesses. I wonder how much better adults are. If somebody was convicted of a crime based on the testimony of a 4 year old, I wonder how reliable the testimony is.
I know it might not sound original (at all, because everybody opens their comment with this phrase), but I thought this article was really interesting. As I read it, I kind of wanted to think, "I would've been smart enough to give the correct answer" but then realized that I was probably wrong. You'd think that it would be so easy, but when you're in the moment being asked the questions, sometimes you feel stressed and under pressure (and even when you don't feel that way it can happen), and instead of thinking, you decide to go with what's being given to you. And this can happen in any kind of scenario. Overall, it's good that we're able to learn these things about children, and, like it mentioned in the article, this can be useful to know when children are being interviewed as crime scene witnesses.
I know it's a VERY common phrase, and not very original at all to open my comment with, but I have nothing else to say, except for "This article was definitely very interesting". As I was reading the article, I was thinking "I could've answered the questions correctly". However, the truth is, I probably wouldn't be able to. When you're nervous and under a lot of stress (or even just the fact that you're taking a test) it can really effect how you answer questions, and sometimes instead of thinking, you'll go with what's given to you, because you just can't think straight. Like the article mentioned, this is important to know for when a child is being interviewed as a witness for a crime scene, because if they're influenced, they might just go for the "misleading gesture".
This is very interesting article. I remembered that when I was little people would ask me questions, and I would probably answer them wrong. I think that this shows that if you are going to interview someone that was a witness of a crime scene or something, you probably wouldn't have it be a kid.
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