The Research On The Developmental Characteristics Of 3-5 Year-old Children's Suggestibility And Its Relationship With Inhibitory Control

"Suggestibility" means the individual's susceptibility or resistance to misleading information. In recent years, the suggestibility of child eyewitness is paid attention to by forensic investigators, so suggestibility research of children has developed from the case study to the system study. From the late 20th century to the early 21th century, psychologists have gradually developed a series of scales to assess the suggestibility of children, to further provide reference for the child eyewitness. Although it has been gradually recognized that the impacts of exogenous factors and cognitive factors on the suggestibility of children are equally important, most studies of the previous partly have examined the effects on suggestibility of individual differences and the researches that combined exogenous factors and cognitive factors together were relatively poor. Therefore, some endogenous factors and exogenous factors which have important influences on suggestibility were chosen in the present study. Meanwhile, the research on the developmental characteristics of children's suggestibility and the related researches in the context of our social culture were essential to the construction of developmental theory for children's memory, judicial practice and educational practice.The present study'procedures were as follows:from the literature analysis to proposing research questions and hypothesis, and to designing and implementing research programs, then to analyzing results and confirming hypothesis. The developmental characteristics of 3-5 year-old children, the relationship of suggestibility and inhibitory control, and the regulatory role of inhibitory control between social pressure and suggestibility were examined. In order to check the developmental characteristics of 3-5 year-old children, the reason of suggestibility and the effects of exogenous factors on suggestibility, immediate misinformation acceptance paradigm and delayed retrieval errors paradigm were used; the relationship of suggestibility and inhibitory control was examined by using inhibitory control tasks, including the hand game, "day/night" experimental task and "rabbit/wolf experimental task; by means of setting different levels of situational stresses in the course of interview, the main effect of social pressure on suggestibility was analyzed, and since inhibitory control was seen as a regulatory variable, the regulatory role of inhibitory control between social pressure and suggestibility was examined by hierarchical regression.The following conclusions were obtained in the present study:(1) The suggestibility of children decreased significantly among the 3-5 year-old, but the gender differences of suggestibility were not significant.(2) The main reason for 3-5 year-old children's suggestibility was to meet the expectations of interviewers, and the main effect of age was not significant.(3) Some exogenous factors, including the questioning ways, the styles of objective incidents and the time interval affected children's suggestibility significantly.(4) Delayed retrieval errors paradigm for examining young children's suggestibility was not suitable enough, compared to immediate misinformation acceptance paradigm.(5) Children's cold inhibitory control, hot inhibitory control and total inhibitory control were all significantly related to suggestibility, and after controlling age variable, hot inhibitory control and total inhibitory control were still significantly related to suggestibility, but the correlation of cold inhibitory control and suggestibility was not significant; children'hot inhibitory control could negatively predict suggestibility.(6) The level of social pressure affected children'suggestibility, and the greater social pressure was, the stronger suggestibility became.(7) Inhibitory control had significant regulatory role on the relationship between social pressure and suggestibility. With the level of inhibitory control rising, Social pressure's impact on the suggestibility of children was diminishing. For those children with low-level's inhibitory control, the social pressure could positively predict children's suggestibility; but for those children with high-level's inhibitory control, the social pressure couldn't significantly predict children's suggestibility.