Deman characteristics in preschool children

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Hello, i'm investigating eye witness testimony and i need a little information on why preschool children are easily suggestible. The ideas i'm coming up with seem more common sense than science, so i was wondering if there was evidence to back it up. Lindsey

-- Lindsey (yesdnil_@hotmail.com), September 21, 2004

Answers

I think you mean "demanD characteristics." There are classic articles reprinted in Badia, Haber, and Runyon's _Research Problems in Psychology_, but that is book is now, out of print. The articles are by Orne (Amer. Psychologist, 1962, 17, 776-783), McGuigan (Psych. Bull., 1963, 60, 421-428), Kintz, et al. (Psych. Bull., 1965, 63, 223-233), and Rosenthal (Psych. Bull., 1964, 51, 405-412).

I don'tthink that any of them deal with the problem of children in particular, however. For that, you'll have to look at Beth Loftus's famous work on eye witness testimony, dating from the 1970s to the present.

-- Christopher Green (christo@yorku.ca), September 21, 2004.


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