Good interrogation is a difficult skill. It's easy to 'lead' witnesses without even realizing it; sometimes, it's possible to lead witnesses deliberately. This is especially problematic when it comes to children, who are more suggestible than adults. A failure to appreciate this can have horrible consequences.

In the January / February 2006 Skeptical Inquirer, Martin Gardner writes about the still-simmering debate over recovered or repressed memories about childhood sexual abuse:

Many recent investigations have established how easily children can be led by inept therapists to imagine events that never happened. This was amusingly demonstrated by a simple experiment reported by Daniel Goleman in his article “Studies Reflect Suggestibility of Very Young Witnesses” (New York Times, June 11, 1993). A boy was falsely told he had been taken to a hospital to treat a finger injured by a mousetrap. In his first interview he denied this had happened. By the eleventh interview he not only recalled the event, but added many details.

In fact, only extremely rarely are memories of traumatic events repressed until years later, only then emerging under suggestive therapy. On the contrary, it is far more common for victims to try vainly to forget a traumatic incident.

There is a prejudice among many people that says we should believe what children tell us — especially when it comes to terrible events, like reported abuse. No one wants to say that kids are lying or could possibly lie about such things.

The problem is, we shouldn’t assume that the only choices are lying or telling the truth. There is also this third option: sincerely believing the truth of something that never actually happened. It’s much easier than most people realize for false memories to be created, especially given the right circumstances. Most people simply don’t understand how the human memory works.

 

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