How Parents Can Shape What Children Remember: Implications for the Testimony of Young Witnesses

Forensic investigations involving children carry heavy consequences and often present immense challenges. Most child maltreatment allegations first occur in an informal setting, where young witnesses discuss legally relevant information with parents before official interviews. After decades of developmental research on how various qualities of formal interviews can shape children's forensic reports, a growing body of work examining parent-child memory-sharing exchanges demonstrates that informal conversations with others outside of investigative interviews are a powerful source of mnemonic influence. Not only can suggestions offered by parents intrude into children's later independent accounts, they also can lead children to make novel and elaborate reports of nonoccurring events. Despite the potency of parental conversations on children's recollections, children typically fail to recognize parents as the source of memory errors. We offer suggestions for future research and legal practice. General Audience Summary Memory-sharing conversations among parents and children have received much research attention among developmental scientists. Such exchanges play a central role in the development of autobiographical memory and in the growth of children's broader social and cognitive skills. Parents scaffold young children's narratives, teaching them the structure and function of recounting life's experiences with others. In the present article, we review a growing body of work focused on the role of parent-child conversations about past events. Extant studies demonstrate that, regardless of their accuracy, when parents hold beliefs about what their children experienced, parents are prone to mold their conversations to elicit reports from their children consistent with those beliefs. Parents who exert greater structure and control in these exchanges tend to intensify false reports in their children. Compared to their everyday conversations, when parents are motivated to elicit accurate accounts, they paradoxically produce more false information from their children. The influence of parents' contributions is evident not only during parent-child discussions but also later during formal interviews with children by an unfamiliar person who employs neutral open-ended questioning strategies. Importantly, children may recall little about the initial parent-child conversations, even if the conversations were highly suggestive. Young children are unlikely to recognize the