Long-term stability of young childrenʹs eyewitness accuracy, suggestibility, and resistance to misinformation

Forty 4-year-olds and 39 6-year-olds participated in a modified misinformation-effects paradigm. At time 1 they reviewed a story and some of the children were asked questions about it in either recall or recognition format. Three weeks later they were given misinformation about some of the story events. The following week they were asked the original questions. Two years later the procedure was repeated with a different story for 31 of the children. Although 4-year-olds overtly disagreed more times than the older children did when misinformation was initially presented, this resistance did not affect their accuracy or suggestibility scores. The 6-year-olds became more resistant to the suggestive effects of misinformation when they were given an immediate recall test or when given the opportunity to disagree with misinformation. Significant test–retest correlations occurred over a two year period for both story accuracy and one of the suggestibility scores.