Should children be allowed to testify in court?

SHOULD CHILDREN BE ALLOWED TO TESTIFY IN COURT?         Over the past ten years, more research has been done involving children's testimony than that of all the prior decades combined. Ceci & Bruck (93) have cited four reasons for this : * The opinion of psychology experts is increasingly being accepted by courts as testimony, * Social research is more commonly being applied to the issues of children's rights, * More research into adult suggestibility in accordance with reason naturally leads …

…rd edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, MA.         Ceci, S & Bruck, M. (1993). Suggestibility of the Child Witness: A Historical Review and Synthesis, Psychological Bulletin. 113, 403 - 439         Lefrancois, G. R. (1992). Psychology, 2nd edition. Wadsworth Publishing Company. California.         Luus, C. A. E., Wells, G. L., & Turtle, J. W. (1995). Child eyewitnesses: Seeing is believing. Journal of Applied Psychology, 80, 317 - 326         Rovee-Collier, C. et al. (1993). Infants Eyewitness Testimony: Effects of Postevent Information on a Prior Memory Representaion, Memory and Cognition, 21, 267 - 279