Improving Children's Recall of an Occurrence of a Repeated Event: Is It a Matter of Helping Them to Generate Options?

Three experiments were conducted to explore whether children's recall of an occurrence of a repeated event could be improved by encouraging them to consider various details that occurred across a series of events prior to making a judgement about which details were included in the target (to-be-recalled) occurrence. Experiment 1 explored whether children's recall of the target occurrence was better after the interviewer presented all the items from the series prior to the child identifying the final item. Experiment 2 explored whether having the children generate all the items facilitated their subsequent recall of the target occurrence. Finally, Experiment 3 directly compared the effectiveness of the above 2 procedures. Regardless of the children's age, the retention interval, or the type of item, children's capacity to identify which details were included in a target occurrence was enhanced when they were initially provided with all the possible details from the series of events. However, without relying on the interviewer to generate the options, the benefit of the technique was directly contingent on the children's ability to generate content details; this was a distinct source of difficulty for the children. Indeed, having children generate options had no beneficial effect on decisions about the temporal position of items unless performance was made conditional on the children's ability to remember the relevant details in the first place. The implications of the findings for the legal setting and for future research are discussed.     

Examination of variation in sternal rib end morphology relevant to age assessment

The morphology of the sternal end of the right fourth rib has been proffered as an accurate age assessor in skeletonized individuals of both sexes. This technique was tested for its applicability on left and right II, III, V-IX. Tests were performed between phase scores obtained from right and left ribs; right rib IV phase scores and scores obtained from the others in the right rib series; and between right rib IV scores and a composite score composed of the average of an individual's phase scores (omitting rib IV). Left ribs IV-IX were found not to vary significantly from their right counterparts. Although only right rib II was found to vary significantly from rib IV, use of the other ribs in the series should be undertaken with caution due to questions concerning their statistical significance. A composite score is therefore recommended for use instead.     

Editor's Preface

Law and Philosophy -