We study how children remember, forget, and tell about things in their lives. Our research is used to help adults—such as doctors, lawyers, social workers, and other helping professionals—talk to children about things they’ve experienced.

 

How We  Do It

Families who participate in our studies visit the lab and children help our student assistants with fun and educational activities. We later ask children to recall their experience. This general procedure has been used for decades to understand children's memory.

 

What We Learn
Using this basic procedure we uncover how children's language and cognition interact with various social pressures to influence the reliability of their testimony. With this information, we can determine which strategies for questioning children elicit the most accurate account. 

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How We Share
Our findings are published in peer-reviewed journals and disseminated through conference presentations, webinars, workshops, and invited talks and trainings.

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  How We Help
Across both civil and criminal domains, we regularly consult with various professionals who need to elicit children's testimony or evaluate its reliability. Such professionals include defense attorneys, prosecutors, law enforcement, and child-protection professionals.

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Student Training
The Lab serves as a training space for students who want to learn how to conduct psychological research. Not all of our assistants go on to become researchers, but they all leave the lab with a firm understanding of how science is conducted and a deep respect for how it contributes to society's well-being.

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