For Specialists

How memory works – relevant aspects for hearing of children victims of abuses

Knowledge of how the memory works and how the mnezic processes are affected during the traumatic events are aspects that investigators need to consider when interviewing child victims of abuses, so that they can adjust their expectations of what children can remember, according to the characteristics of their developmental level and use best practices.

The memory is currently understood as a 3-step process:

Encoding – Storage – Refreshing

In the first stage, information is taken from our experiences and transformed into memory as a code. Depending on the attention that we pay to our environment we may encode more or less, and this influences how much information we store in memory. Experiences are initially retained in short term memory where they undergo conscious mental processing, and later some of this information may be stored in long term memory where it can be accessed (refreshed) when needed.

It is more likely to retain experiences that are meaningful to us and information about the events which can be associated with other experiences that we had. These issues have important implications when talking about hearing child witnesses. Younger children may not be able to store some information that are inexplicable to them, such as situations of abuse that are beyond their level of understanding. Also, children have had fewer life experiences than adults and can therefore make fewer associations and therefore retain less information.

Memory formation is directly linked to language development. When children learn to speak, they become able to store memories as they use words to name experiences. This explains why, as adults, we don’t have memories from our early years. However, 3-year-olds and even infants can remember past experiences, but by adulthood they are more likely to forget them. Research involving infants (Hayne, 2004 apud Lamb, 2011) has shown that memory actually begins to develop before language acquisition.

Childhood amnesia can occur with both positive and negative or stressful events. In a study involving stressful experiences for children aged between 2 and 7 years, it was shown that 2 to 3 year olds were unable to recall the events later (Quas et al, 1999 apud Lamb, 2011).

Thus, it is important for investigators to keep in mind that if they ask older children or adults to report events that took place before the age of 3-4 years, their statements will most likely be reconstructions based on conversations with other people, photographs or vague memories reinterpreted and mixed with current information and beliefs. They may also be more easily influenced by suggestions from investigators.

So age is the most important factor when it comes to children’s mnesic abilities. The more they develop, the longer they are able to remember their own experiences. While 3-6 year olds are able to remember details of certain experiences after one year, 5-6 year olds can remember details even after 2 years.

The amount of information children manage to retain is much less than we realize and depends on:

  • The length of time that has elapsed from the moment of storage to the moment of retrieval. For example, in a study (La Rooy et al., 2005 apud Lamb, 2011) involving 5-year-old children, the following was observed: when children were asked about an event immediately after it happened, they were able to recall 25% of the details, whereas when they were asked again 6 months later, they could only recall 13% of the details;
  • the significance of our experiences. Compared to children who only see or hear about what others have been through, those who are directly involved in the events are more likely to provide more accurate and complete reproductions of what happened.

Memory decreases over time, which means that forgetting is very fast shortly after the event, but as time passes, the rate of forgetting decreases. Unfortunately, with forgetting, errors also occur in the remaining memories, which means that the accuracy of recall is higher shortly after an event. However, there are studies (Ornstein et al., 1992; Peterson, 1999; Ackil et al., 2003; Fivush et al., 2004; apud Lamb, 2011) that show that events that were meaningful to children remained in their memories with high accuracy. This may be explained by the fact that there may have been multiple opportunities to talk about these events and thus memory was practiced and memories consolidated. A problem that arises in this situation is that opportunities to talk about past experiences may bring with them the possibility of contamination from others, resulting in memories incorporating false information.

The process of updating is a dynamic one, which means that we do not remember everything that is stored in our memory when we are first asked, but we can recall many new and correct details later, even years later. The implications of this for the hearing of minors relate to the suspicion with which new statements are viewed, which include information that is sometimes contradictory to the original testimony and thus tend to be discredited. However, it is important for investigators to remember that such inconsistencies are a normal function of memory.

Memories are reconstructed over time, because we forget and retrieve information repeatedly. Because of this, memories may contain errors and be vulnerable to outside influences. Pressure can cause children to give incorrect information when the questions or information they are given are highly suggestive. However, more than half of young children are not influenced by investigators’ suggestions.

Children tend to agree to new information when they have little knowledge about what they are being asked about or when there is an imbalance of power between them and the person asking the questions. It is therefore recommended that investigators do not introduce information into the interview that children have not mentioned.

Another way children can be influenced when giving statements is by repeating the same questions. In such a situation, children tend to focus on previous answers instead of focusing on reactualizing events. One study estimated that 88% of children changed at least one answer to repeated questions (Howie et al, 2004 apud Lamb, 2011).

 

We can recall elements of our lived experiences through refreshing or recognition. Re-actualization involves a free search in memory, without direction or cues from the investigators. Recognizing is a rather externally guided process, in which interviewees are invited to choose from response alternatives offered by the investigators. This procedure limits the response possibilities and increases the risk of error in that the correct answer may not be among the alternatives offered. A middle way between free recall and acknowledgment would be to use questions beginning with ‘what, when, how’, whereby more freedom is given to respond, focusing attention on details of aspects that the child has previously mentioned. The quality of information obtained through open-ended questions is much higher than that obtained through closed questions, which invite speculation and increase the risk of inaccurate or contradictory answers.

Studies show that recall is facilitated when the context in which the events occurred is primed (Pipe and Wilson, 1994; Priestley et al, 1999; Wilkinson, 1988; Horowitz, 1988; Hershkowitz et al, 1998; Orbach et al, 2000; apud Lamb, 2011). For example, by reconstructing the original context in which an abuse happened, children can provide additional information about the event because they benefit from certain cues that can help them more easily recognize elements that facilitate recall compared to a situation in which they would be asked to freely re-enact the event without the benefit of this framework. This is explained by the principle of encoding specificity, according to which every encoded detail about the event or the context in which it took place can serve as a cue for the recall of other details.

Memories of traumatic events can be forgotten as easily as memories of ordinary experiences, even if the former are traumatic.

There are situations in which, although people claim to accurately recall relevant aspects of traumatic events, in reality the information they provide with such confidence turns out not to be in agreement with reality. This phenomenon is recognized as flashbulb memories.

Memories involving stress at the time of encoding may enhance the refreshing of certain concrete aspects of the event. Other theories argue that stress may affect children’s attention to the central aspects of traumatic events, and thus their memorization and recall.

Compared to adults, children have much more difficulty remembering. Young children need cues and prompts from investigators to refresh information stored in memory.

 

Bibliography

Michael E. Lamb, David J. La Rooy, Lindsay C. Malloy, Carmit Katz (2011). Mărturia copilului. Cercetare psihologică și practică judiciarăEditura ASCR, Cluj-Napoca, 2018

 

Article by Diana Munteanu, clinical psychologist & psychotherapist