Legal Research

An entry for the blog ScienceDaily explodes some long held assumptions about the reliability of testimony by child witnesses. Researchers now suggest that child witnesses see and recall events differently from adults. According to the article:

"Scientists found that humans exhibit two types of memory. They call one 'verbatim trace,' in which events are recorded very precisely and factually. Children have more 'verbatim trace,' but as they mature, they develop more and more of a second type of memory: 'gist trace,' in which they recall the meaning of an event, its emotional flavor, but not precise facts. 'Gist trace' is the most common cause of false memories, occurring most often in adults. Research shows that children are less likely to produce false memories, because gist trace develops slowly. As a result, children's recollections could be more reliable than those of adults, and this could lead to ramifications in the courtroom".

They compared human memory to the two-faced god Janus and hope that their research will "...reduce the number of false memories in court cases and give more validity to children's testimony."

Click here to link to the full article