Citation

Kulkofsky S, Wang Q, Ceci SJ. Appl. Cogn. Psychol. 2008; 22(1): 21-38.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1002/acp.1326

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The present study examines how the quality of children's narratives relates to the accuracy of those narratives. Sixty-one 3- to 5-year-olds played a novel game with a researcher in their schools. Children were questioned in an interview that included an open-ended free recall prompt followed by a series of directed questions. Children's narratives were coded for volume, complexity and cohesion as well as for accuracy. Correlational results showed that overall, narrative skills enable the reporting of more information, while decreasing the proportion of information that was accurate. These results appeared to be driven by a quantity-accuracy trade-off; in an ensuing regression analysis with all narrative variables entered into the model, volume was associated with decreases in accuracy while narrative cohesion was associated with increases in accuracy. We discuss the results in terms of their relationship to the development of autobiographical memory as well as implications for forensic contexts. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Language: en