Student Review:

The authors of this article sift through psychological research in an attempt to draw conclusions about the ability of a child
to provide accurate and believable eyewitness testimony. Unfortunately, the limited empirical data is far from conclusive
thereby limiting the article to raising awareness of potential reliability problems when using children as eyewitnesses, but the
analysis of how jurors react to children as witnesses provides useful knowledge for an attorney to use in court.

The first half of the article outlines the human memory process concentrating on areas where a child's developing memory
may not equal the reliability of a mature adult. Wherever the research shows that the memory process differs from an
adult, the analysis speculates on how the differences might negatively influence the reliability of a child's testimony.
Interesting reading for a psychology major, but a lawyer would be more intrigued with findings from the studies where
mock jurors responded to children as witnesses.

Initially, adult testimony was found to be more credible than a child. However, a confident child who was articulate and
told a consistent story was found to equal or surpass the credibility of an adult witness. Therefore, coaching or rehearsing
testimony with a child appears to lead to higher credibility with the jury. One specific example where children are instantly
more credible witnesses than adults is sexual abuse cases where the child was the victim. Finally, overall mock jurors were
more likely to convict a defendant when the victim was a child instead of an adult.

Article Summary by: Ron Skufca