ABSTRACT
Since the turn of the century, social scientists have examined the topic of children’s suggestibility (see Ceci & Bruck, 1993, 1995, for a historical review). Although there were a few studies carried out in the United States from 1900 until the middle of the 1980s, it is only in the last few years that this topic has attained an important status within the fields of developmental and cognitive psychology. Over the past 5 or so years, social scientists from a number of different disciplines have mounted studies in this field. This flurry of important work has been mainly spurred by an applied issue—children’s ability to give reliable legal testimony. As we show in this chapter, the methodologies as well as the primary issues of many studies address applied concerns rather than theoretical ones; and yet the results of these studies have expanded, and at times challenged, some important theoretical concepts.
