17 - Memory talk and testimony in children

Summary

Crimes, traffic accidents, street fights, and school bullying: there are many situations in which children are involved and later required to report what happened. They could be victims, bystanders or offenders, but in whichever case, they are typically interviewed by adults (parents, teachers, and police officers) and, in extreme cases, are required to testify before a judge. Such situations yield a rich field where real-world concern and psycho- and sociolinguistic interest meet. From the real-world viewpoint, it is urgent to establish formal guidelines for interviewing children as well as procedures for assessing the reliability of testimony. From the psycho- and sociolinguistic viewpoint, the circumstances raise a range of questions on how children describe their past experience, what linguistic factors affect the amount and accuracy of testimony, how children cope linguistically with interrogation and crossexamination, and what the nature of adult–child communication is like.

The aim of this chapter is to provide readers with an up-to-date account of Japanese studies on how children talk about past events in daily life and in court. We will first show the studies on memory talk in general, and then studies conducted in a forensic context, including studies on witness testimony. In doing so, we will show that children's competence in remembering and describing past events, an important aspect of verbal ability, is embedded in a sociolinguistic context.