A face in the crowd: The influences of familiarity and delay on preschoolers’ recognition

Abstract

Preschoolers’ abilities to recognize former caregivers were examined. Participants were 35 children from three preschool classes. Caregivers volunteered in the classes over a 7-week period. At an initial assessment, children were asked to select former caregivers from a line-up of five photographs, and to rank-order the caregivers by personal preference. Recognition was assessed again after 3 months. Although older toddlers performed at chance levels, clear age-related increases in recognition performance were observed, with older preschoolers recognizing 86% of the volunteers at time 2. Younger children responded less consistently over time than older children. Preference for individual caregivers affected recognition performance among younger, but not older, preschoolers. Implications for children's eyewitness testimony are considered.

Keywords:

• Eyewitness testimony
• children's memory
• recognition
• suggestibility
• episodic memory

We gratefully acknowledge the cooperation of the children, parents, staff, and directors of the Campus Child Care Center, Inc., of Raleigh, North Carolina, without whose support this study could not have been conducted. The participation of the practicum students from NC State University is also appreciated. Portions of this work were presented at the Conference on Human Development, Birmingham, Alabama, March 1996. This research was supported in part by a grant from the Professors Emeritus Fund of the Department of Psychology at NC State University to Whitney J. Cain, and by a Faculty Development Grant from NC State University to Lynne Baker-Ward.