ley questioned both the older and younger sibling. The older sibling was asked Who looked after you when your mother was in the hospital (giving birth to the younger sibling)? The younger brother or sister was then asked, Who looked after your older sibling when your mother was in the hospital? The comparison of these two answers can give us an assessment as to the degree that family knowledge is playing in the former response. A larger group of participants who were between the ages of two and three at the time of their siblings birth was used to improve the significance of the results (n=700). Two groups of participants made up of elder and younger siblings were compared with a questionnaire similar to the one used by Usher and Neisser (1993). One group was asked to use their memories as well as their family knowledge to answer the questions (called the report group), whereas the other was instructed to only use actual memories in their responses (recall group). The results of this study suggest several relevant findings. The first is that the pattern of data collected was mostly in line with Usher and Neissers (1993) findings. Approximately 75% of the participants who could recall something about their siblings birth were between the ages of 28 and 35 at that time. The candidates who were between the ages of 24 and 27 months at the time of their siblings birth remembered significantly less than those in the 28 to 35 month range. The data obtained from this procedure led the experimenters to believe the recall group used actual memories as opposed to a combination of knowledge and memory. The degree of error determined by the subjects mother was greater for the report group than for recall, 20% and 13% respectively. The greatest weakness of this experiment was the lack of randomness in choosing the participants. They were all college or university students and likely were above the average intelligence. This could have c...
