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An eyewitness testimony is a statement given under oath by a person present at an event who can describe what happened.〔http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/eyewitness〕〔http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/eyewitness-testimony.html〕 During circumstances in which a child is a witness to the event, the child can be used to deliver a testimony on the stand. The credibility of a child, however, is often questioned due to their underdeveloped memory capacity and overall brain physiology. Researchers found that eyewitness memory requires high-order memory capacity even for well-developed adult brain.〔Loftus, E., F. (1980). Impact of expert psychological testimony on the unreliability of eyewitness identification. Journal of Applied Psychology, 65(1): 9-15〕 Because a child's brain is not yet fully developed, each child witness must be assessed by the proper authorities to determine their reliability as a witness and whether or not they are mature enough to accurately recall the event, provide important details and withstand leading questions. == Brain development associated with eyewitness testimony == Brain development is an after-forward process; from the occipital lobe (visual), to the temporal lobe (sensory, auditory and memory), to the parietal lobe (motor, pain, temperature, and stress), and finally to the frontal lobe (language, reasoning, planning, and emotion).〔Casey, B. J., Giedd, J. N., Thomas, K. M. (2000). Structural and functional brain development and its relation to cognitive development. Biological Psychology, 54(1-3), 241-257.〕 All of these brain regions work together to build up our eyewitness memory. Generally, infants are born with formed brain systems and their brains develop very rapidly during the first three years.〔Bauer, P. J., & Pathman, T. (2008). Memory and early brain development. Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development, 1-6〕 The size of a newborn brain is approximately 400g and continues to grow to 1100g at the age of three, which is close to the size of an adult brain (1300-1400g).〔Dekaban, A.S., & Sadowsky, D. (1978) Changes in brain weights during the span of human life: relation of brain weights to body heights and body weights. Ann Neurology, 4, 345-356.〕 Although infants are born with a properly formed brain, they are still far away from full development. The glial cells, which play a vital role in proper brain function (e.g. insulating nerve cells with myelin), keep growing to divide and multiply after birth.〔( Neuronscience for kids )〕 However, to have a fully developed eyewitness memory, the development of gray matter, white matter, the denate gyrus and density of synapses are highly necessary. The volume of white matter starts its linear increase from age four to 20, but cortical gray matter is decreases in the parietal, occipital and temporal regions starting from age four, continually changing until after age 12.〔Giedd, J. N., Blumenthal, J., Jeffries, N. O., Castellanos, F. X., Liu, H., Zijdenbos, A., …Rapoport, J. L. (1999) Brain development during childhood and adolescence: a longitudinal MRI study. Nature neuronscience, 2(10), 861-863.〕 The development of the denate gyrus starts forming at 12 to 15 months in the hippocampus, which is essential for the formation of declarative memory in eyewitness testimony.〔 After the formation of the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus, the density of synapses in the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in eyewitness memory, is peaks in its development during 15 to 24 months, changing until the age of adolescence.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Eyewitness memory (child testimony)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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