Age and memory related changes in children's immediate and delayed suggestibility using the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale Gisli Gudjonsson a,b, ⁎, Monia Vagni c , Tiziana Maiorano c , Daniela Pajardi c a King's College London, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, London, UK b Reykjavik University, Iceland c Centre for Education and Research in Forensic Psychology, The Department of Humanities, University of Urbino, Italy abstract article info Article history: Received 24 February 2016 Received in revised form 12 June 2016 Accepted 15 June 2016 Available online 1 July 2016 The main aim of this study was to investigate age, gender and memory effects on ‘immediate’ and ‘delayed’ sug- gestibility among children, and the relationship between immediate and delayed suggestibility. The participants were 1183 children aged between 7 and 16 years, who had been divided into three age band groups (7–9, 10–12, and 13–16 years). All children completed the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale (GSS 2) and a non-verbal IQ test. Delayed suggestibility was measured after a one week delay. There were significant memory and suggestibility effects across the three age groups. Girls had significantly higher immediate and delayed memory scores than boys, but did not differ on suggestibility. Suggestibility predicted age after controlling for immediate recall, indi- cating significant incremental effects. Immediate and delayed suggestibility were significantly correlated in the two older age groups, but the effect sizes were small. The results suggest that immediate and delayed suggestibil- ity are poorly correlated, and the effects of age and immediate recall are largely confined to immediate suggest- ibility, indicating that immediate and delayed suggestibility are underpinned by different processes. What they have in common is poor source monitoring (discrepancy detection), but differ in terms of how the interviewee processes the flawed source monitoring over time. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Key words: Children Source monitoring Immediate and delayed suggestibility Gender Age Memory 1. Introduction Gudjonsson and Clark (1986) define ‘interrogative suggestibility’ as “the extent to which, within a closed social interaction, people come to accept messages communicated during formal questioning, as the re- sult of which their subsequent behavioural response is affected” (p. 84). This type of suggestibility is relevant to the police interviewing of both child and adult witnesses and suspects and is seen as a potential vulner- ability or risk factor when obtaining a reliable account of events (Gudjonsson, 1992, 1997, 2003). There are two complimentary approaches available for assessing suggestibility, originally referred to as the ‘individual differences’ and ‘experimental’ approaches (Schooler & Loftus, 1986). These represent the measurement of ‘immediate’ and ‘delayed’ suggestibility, respec- tively (Ridley & Gudjonsson, 2013). Immediate suggestibility refers to the immediate effects of asking leading questions and applying inter- rogative pressure and is typically measured by the Gudjonsson Suggest- ibility Scales (GSS 1 and GSS 2; Gudjonsson, 1984, 1987, 1997). In contrast, delayed suggestibility measures the extent to which the person incorporates misleading post-event information into their sub- sequent recollection (‘misinformation’ effects) and follows the experi- mental paradigm of Loftus, Miller, and Burns (1978). It is typically comprised of a three-stage misinformation paradigm (Chrobak & Zaragoza, 2013; Ridley & Gudjonsson, 2013): (1) witnessing an event, (2) exposure to misleading post-event information, and (3) a delayed test to see if the misleading post-event information presented earlier leads to a suggestible response. Therefore, unlike immediate suggest- ibility it is measured in a subsequent test to that of the initial suggestion (Chrobak & Zaragoza, 2013; Lee, 2004; Loftus, 1979; Schooler & Loftus, 1986). The central cognitive mechanism that is thought to drive both immediate and delayed suggestibility is faulty ‘discrepancy detection’ (Gudjonsson, 2003; Schooler & Loftus, 1986), also known as source monitoring errors (Chrobak & Zaragoza, 2013). Lee (2004) did not find a significant relationship between immedi- ate suggestibility, using the GSS 2, and a separate misinformation para- digm (delayed suggestibility) with children and adolescents (age range 7 to 17 years). In this study, Lee found that age predicted immediate suggestibility, but not delayed suggestibility. Vagni, Maiorano, Pajardi, and Gudjonsson (2015) measured the rela- tionship between immediate and delayed suggestibility in children (7 to 16 years), using the GSS 2, and found no significant association. Further- more, unlike immediate suggestibility, delayed suggestibility was not found to be related to either immediate or delayed recall on the GSS 2. Personality and Individual Differences 102 (2016) 25–29 ⁎ Corresponding author at: Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, De Crespigny Park, Denmark Hill, London SE5 8AF, UK. E-mail address: gisli.gudjonsson@kcl.ac.uk (G. Gudjonsson). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.06.029 0191-8869/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Personality and Individual Differences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid