Trauma And Trauma

This literature review and analysis will define the impact of stress/trauma and the positive effect of supportive interviewing for children’s eyewitness identification. The studies done by Rush et al (2014) and Hritz et al (2015) identify the impact of stress on the child, which can be reduced through the supportive guidance of well-informed adult interviewers in the identification of suspect in a line up. These findings provide empirical evidence of the supportive environment that is needed to reduce memory lapses that occur in children that have been exposed to extreme stress and trauma in cases of sexual or physical abuse. More so, McWilliams et al (2014) identifies the empirical findings of cases that correlate trauma and stress that inhibit …show more content…
The methodology of the study processed 31 children between 9-15 years old by having them identify certain memory-based aspects of videos playing positive and negative family experiences (McWilliams et al, 2014, p.712). In the videos watched by the children, the higher rate of commission errors related to positive family experiences defines the loss of memory for traumatized children: “This study confirms previous findings that trauma-related psychopathology may at times be associated with deficits in children’s and adolescents’ memory performance” (p.714). these findings support the underlying contention that stressful and traumatic events can influence poor memorization skills, which can be corrected with a supportive interview process. However, children with a psychopathology of traumatization can be more difficult to induce in correctly identifying a potential suspect from a line up. Hritz et al (2015, Rush et al (2014), and Hritz et al (2014) support the underlying problem of stress and trauma that can effect the correct identification of a suspect in target-present and target-absent lineups in the interview …show more content…
Hritz et al (2015) and Rush et al (2014) identify the positive aspects of supportive interviewing by adult interviewers that has identified more accurate responses from children in studies of target absent lineups of a suspect. These findings provide more evidence of the effect of stress and trauma, which greatly reduces the memory of the child during these intensive periods of eyewitness identification. These findings reiterate the necessity of a correct identification through the support of adults, parents, and/or well-informed children that can assist the child in identifying the correct suspect/offender. Certainly, the unusual way in which Greenstock & Pipe’s (1997) study allow children to interview each other in order to correctly remember an offender can have massive implications for future studies on the eyewitness interview process. Overall, these studies confirm the necessity of understanding the stresses and trauma-related background of the child, which can be identified to help the child recall the correct memories related to a traumatic event. More so, the studies also confirm that supportive interviewing is essential to help the child reduce the effects of the traumatic event and to correctly identify the