y not be. Factors such as: emotional dilemmas, physical circumstances, authoritative input, underdeveloped encoding strategies that have not matured yet, childlike familiarity with situations (what situation may be normal for a child, may not be normal for a teenager), and the reporting strategies that children use are no doubtedly different that adults. Thus, suggestion plays a key role when determining what a child is saying, especially during interviewing techniques. This power of suggestion has been used as an anti-child eyewitness testimony force, which has prompted many officials and psychologists to further study this predicament. This suggestibility issue has thrown "a wrench" in the credibility aspects of children on the stand, leading to the depiction of children as liars and misleading witnesses.The bottom line that needs to be addressed with this controversy is that ANYONE, not just children, can be suggested and misled. The importance of retrieval and memory coding strategies can affect all people on the witness stand, leading to the misinterpretaion of a statement that has been made by a witness. Studies have concluded through suggestive interviewing techniques and repeated questioning, people can be led to make untrue statements about central and peripheral details of an event. This often happens with children due to the fact that from a child's point of view, if he/she keeps getting asked certain questions over and over again, they seem to think that they are answering in a wrong way. Interviewer bias (this can be parent, therapist, or investigator) can also effect eyewitness statements as well. When an interviewer believes that they know what really happened during an event, it can be likely that the interviewer will attempt to get the child to confirm this event, ignoring anything that the child says that does not conform with this bias, while encouraging anything that does. Stereotype induction can also oc...
