Person description and identification by child witnesses

When children witness crime, they may be asked to describe and identify the persons involved in the event. The information provided by the child witnesses may be used to narrow the search for the suspect and eventually to select foils for the lineup identification task (Luus & Wells 1991). Foils are innocent people placed in the lineup as distractors. Children’s abilities to describe and identify persons are reviewed in this chapter and are contrasted with comparable abilities of adults