Research Interests & Grant Projects

Research Interests and Supervision

My research focus is on aspects of metacognitive and social influences on children's event memory reports, with application to children's eyewitness testimony. I am currently conducting a research program on social influences on children’s responses to repeated questions, with funding from an ARC Discovery grant, and I am involved in collaborative research with Prof. Claudia Roebers at the University of Bern, Switzerland, on the development of accurate confidence judgments in event memory reports, which has been funded by the German Research Foundation. I also have an interest in individual differences and developmental progression in children’s source monitoring, and have carried out research in collaboration with Dr Roslyn Markham and Dr Sabina Kleitman, developing child measures of imagery vividness across different modalities, and relating these measures to source monitoring for memories of events. My interest in these phenomena lies in the theoretical implications for understanding cognitive development, as well as in the practical implications for developing appropriate methods of questioning children in forensic and other contexts.

I have supervised Honours and Graduate Diploma in Science projects in a range of areas associated with children’s event memory and metacognitive monitoring. Postgraduate research supervised includes developmental aspects of conduct disorder and its relation to PTSD; children's involvement in decision making in family law proceedings; the stability of bullying and victim behaviours across school, university and work place; humour and social skills in children; and predictors of recidivism in juvenile offenders.

Grants

• 2009: Repeated questions in child eyewitness recall: Testing competing explanations. ARC Discovery Grant
• 2008: Repeated questions in child eyewitness recall: Testing competing explanations. University of Sydney Bridging Support Grant
• 2005-2007: ARC Discovery grant "Optimising recall in children's testimony: The challenge of repeated questions" $175,000
• 2005-2006: University of Sydney Teaching Improvement Fund grant "Development of video footage of children for use in tutorial and WebCT exercises." With Dr D. Livesey. $9,500
• 2005-2006: German Research Foundation (with Roebers)  "Metacognition and event recall"  $122,000
• 2004: University of Sydney Sesquicentenary Near Miss Grant: "Optimising recall in children's testimony: The challenge of repeated questions".
• 2003-4: German Research Foundation Grant (with Prof. C. Roebers, University of Wuerzburg): “Developmental progression in children’s metamemorial judgments”
• 1998: ARC Small Grant (with Dr R. Markham): "A developmental study of imagery and source monitoring in three different modalities" .
• 1996: ARC Small Grant (with Dr R. Markham): "The development of reality monitoring in visual, auditory and audio-visual tasks".
• 1996/7: University of Sydney Research Grant: "Developmental trends in appropriate "don't know" responses in eyewitness memory".
• 1995: University of Sydney Research Grant: "Children's eyewitness testimony: The effects of age and instructions on "don't know" responses to answerable and unanswerable questions".

Recent Publications & Conference Presentations

Recent Publications

• Howie, P.Howie, P., Nash, L., Kurukulasuriya, N., & Bowman, A. (2011). Children's event reports: Factors affecting responses to repeated questions in vignette scenarios and event recall interviews. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, DOI:10.1111/j.2044-835X.2011.02064.x
• Fritz, K., Howie, P., & Kleitman, S. (2010). How do I remember when I got my dog? The structure and development of children's metamemory. Metacognition and Learning, 5(2), 207-28.
• Howie, P., Kurukulasuriya, N., Nash, L., & Marsh, A. (2009). Explaining inconsistencies in children's event recall: The role of age, question format and perceived reason for question repetition. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 14, 311-329.
• Howie. P. & Roebers, C. (2007) Developmental progression in the confidence-accuracy relationship in event recall: New insights provided by a calibration perspective. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 21(7), 871-893
• Roebers, C.,von der Linden, N. & Howie, P. (2007). Favourable and unfavourable conditions for children’s confidence judgements. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 25, 109-134.
• Roebers, C.M., Howie, P., & Beuscher, E. (2007). Can private reports enhance children’s event recall, lower their suggestibility and foster their metacognitive monitoring compared to face-to-face interviews? Computers in Human Behavior, 23 (1), 749-769.
• Roebers, C.M., von der Linden, N., Schneider, W. and Howie, P. (2007) Children's metamemorial judgments in an event recall task. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 97, 117-137.
• Howie, P., Markham, R., & Kleitman, S. (2006). The development of imagery scales for children in three modalities. Journal of Mental Imagery, 30, 39 - 64.
• Dixon, A., Howie, P & Starling, J (2005). Trauma exposure, posttraumatic stress and psychiatric comorbidity in female juvenile offenders. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 44 798-806
• Roebers, C., von der Linden, N. & Howie, P. (in press). Favourable and unfavourable conditions for children’s confidence judments. British Journal of Developmental Psychology.
• Dixon, A., Howie, P & Starling, J (2005). Trauma exposure, posttraumatic stress and psychiatric comorbidity in female juvenile offenders. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. 44, 798-806.
• Howie, P., Sheehan, M., Mojarrad, T. & Wrzesinska, M. (2004). “Undesirable” and “desirable” shifts in children’s responses to repeated questions: Age differences in the effect of providing a rationale for repetition. Applied Cognitive Psychology.18, 1161-1180.
• Roebers, C.M., Howie, P., & Beuscher, E. (2004). Can private reports enhance children’s event recall, lower their suggestibility and foster their metacognitive monitoring compared to face-to-face interviews? Computers in Human Behavior.
• Matthey, S., Kavanagh, D.J., Howie, P., Barnett, B. & Charles, M. (2004). Prevention of postnatal distress or depression: an evaluation of an intervention at preparation for parenthood classes, Journal of Affective Disorders, 79, 113-126
• Dixon, A., Howie, P. & Starling, J. (2004) Psychopathology in female juvenile offenders. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 45, 1150-1158.
• Roebers, C. & Howie, P. (2003) Metacognitive processes in event recall: Developmental progression in the impact of contextual factors. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 85, 352-371.
• Bowen, C. & Howie. P. (2002) Context and cue cards in young children’s testimony: A comparison of brief narrative elaboration and context reinstatement. Journal of Applied Psychology. 87, 1077-1085.
• Erskine, A., Markham, R., and Howie, P. (2002) Children’s script based inferences: Implications for eyewitness testimony. Cognitiv Development, 16, 871-887.
• Tannenbaum, M & Howie, P. (2002) The Association between Language Maintenance and Family Relations: Chinese Immigrant Children in Australia, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 23, 408-424.
• Matthey, S., Morgan, M., Healey, L., Barnett, B., Kavanagh, D, and Howie, P. (2002) Postpartum issues for expectant mothers and fathers. Journal of Obstetrics, Gynaecological and Neonatal Nursing, 31, 428-435.
• White, F. A., Howie, P., & Perz, J. (2000). Predictors of moral thought in two contrasting samples of school aged adolescents. Ethics and Behaviour, 10(3), 199-214.
• Seidler, K. M. & Howie, P. M. (1999). Motivational factors in children’s reporting of events: the influence of age and expected reinforcement contingency. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 20, 101-118.
• Markham, R., Howie, P. & Hlavacek, S. (1999). Reality monitoring in auditory and visual modalities: Developmental trends and effects of cross modal imagery. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 72, 51-70.

Recent Conference Presentations

• Howie, P. , Bowman, A., and Marsh, A. (2006). Children’s inferences when adults repeat questions: A vignette study. In Symposium: “Serving Justice: Obtaining reliable child witness testimony and accurate juror judgments.” XIXth Biennial Conference of the International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development, Melbourne, July 2006
• Howie, P. , & Nash, L. (2006). Inconsistency in child eyewitnesses: Testing competing explanations. In Symposium: “Factors affecting eyewitness memory”. Fourth International Congress on Memory, Sydney, July, 2006.
• Howie, P. Board, C., Chow, C, Singh, A. & Aguierre, C. (2006). Inconsistency in preschoolers’ memory reports: The role of instructions, style of repeated questions, and individual differences. Fourth International Conference on Memory, Sydney, July 2006
• Howie, P. (2005) Shifting to repeated questions in children: The impact of social cognition. International Workshop on Children’s Eyewitness memory and suggestibility: Effects of Social, Cognitive and Metacognitive factors on memory reports. University of Wuerzburg, Germany, July, 2005.
• Rosewell, L. & Howie, P. (2005) Testing a new question format: The influence of question format, question type and age on children’s event recall. Conference of the Australian Psychological Society, Melbourne, September 2005. Abstract published Australian Journal of Psychology, 51 (suppl.), 35-36 .
• Howie, P. (2005) Repeated questions in children’s event recall: The role of age, question format and perceived reason for repetition. Conference of the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, Wellington, NZ, January 2005
• Howie, P. & Roebers, C. (2004) Calibration as new approach for the study of developmental progression in metacognitive monitoring processes during event recall. In Symposium: “Developmental changes in metacognitive processes involved in false memory and false suggestion rejection”. XVIIIth Biennial Conference of the International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development, Ghent, Belgium, July 2004
• Howie, P. & Johnson, R. (2004) Drawing during children's eyewitness recall following misinformation: Does the modality of misinformation delivery matter? XIVth Annual Conference of the European Association for Psychology and Law, Cracow, Poland, July, 2004
• Howie. P. How sure am I about that? The effects of prompting young children to monitor their certainty. In Symposium: “Metacognitive issues in memory and testimony”, Conference of the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, Aberdeen, Scotland, July, 2003.
• Roebers, C. M. & Howie, P. (2003) Social and metacognitive processes in children’s suggestibility: Is there evidence for a general overconfidence effect? In Symposium:“Questioning children", Conference of the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, Aberdeen, Scotland, July, 2003.
• Howie, P., Craft, T. and Evans, E. (2003). Exploring the potential of narrative elaboration procedures: The effect of brief narrative elaboration training after long and short delays. In Symposium: “Interviewing children”, at the International Interdisciplinary Conference on Psychology and Law, Edinburgh, Scotland, July, 2003.
• Perry, L., & Howie, P. (2003) Drawing as a facilitator of children’s event recall: Exploring the role of cues. Eleventh European Conference on Developmental Psychology, Milan, Italy, August 2003
• Hufton, K. & Howie, P. (2002) An examination of the efficacy of mental context reinstatement for enhancing the event reports of child witnesses after delays. Annual Conference of the Australian Psychological Society, Queensland, Australia, September 2002. Abstract published Australian Journal of Psychology, 51 (suppl.), 35-36.
• Howie, P., Barbouttis, F., Schmidhofer, K., Bjelosovic, D., and McInnes, K (2002) "Draw me what happened!”:The effects of drawing and social support on young children's memory for past events. Annual Conference of the Australian Psychological Society: Queensland, Australia, September, 2002. Abstract published Australian Journal of Psychology, 51 (suppl.), 35.

Teaching Responsibilities

Professional Positions & Memberships

School of Psychology Committees and Activities

• Associate Head, Postgraduates
• Convenor, Postgraduate Committee
• Member, Head of School Advisory Committee
• Member, Resources Committee

Memberships of Professional Societies

• Australasian Human Development Association
• Australian Psychological Society
• Cognitive Development Society
• International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development
• Society for the Applied Research in Memory and Cognition