Are children's memory illusions created differently from those of adults? Evidence from levels-of-processing and divided attention paradigms

"I can't skip it": does free report improve accuracy in false memories?

Strategic monitoring of recognition memory by children and adults was examined using a semantic DRM procedure. Children (7- and 10-year-olds) and adults (overall N = 393) studied lists of semantically related words either incidentally or intentionally and were tested with old items, new items and critical lures to judge as old or new. Participants either made a decision about every item they saw (forced report), or they had the opportunity to withhold answers they were uncertain about (free report). Children were less likely to withhold an answer than adults. However, 7-year-olds were more able to resist false memories when given the opportunity to withhold an answer compared to 10-year-olds or adults. In contrast, adults were unable to improve false memory accuracy. These data suggest that once semantically induced false memories have been encoded they are amenable to strategic monitoring at retrieval in children but not adults.

Is it all in the details? Description content and false recognition errors

In three experiments, we examined the effect of embellished content on memory errors for thematically related items as well as whether an encoding manipulation, specifically instructions to visualize content, further affects those errors. Using a modified Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm, participants listened to subsets of DRM items embedded within scene descriptions. Some descriptions embellished item connections, weaving them into cohesive scenes. Other descriptions only made general reference to scenes, mentioning the items in list-like format. Listening to more detailed descriptions, compared to general scene references, elicited higher false recognition errors (Experiments 1 and 3). However, when description details varied within the same encoding series, as expected, false recognition errors did not differ significantly (Experiments 2 and 3). Results further suggest that more detailed content was more vividly imagined, providing one possible mechanism for increases in false recognition (Experiment 3). Implications for theoretical discussions of encoding task effects on false recognition errors are discussed.

The inhibition process underlying correct rejection of lures under different attentional states: an event-related potential study

This study explored the effects of different attentional states on correct rejection of lures (CRL) by studying event-related potentials. Healthy college students were recruited to complete a study-test task. Results showed that CRL processing was regulated by participants' attentional states. Under focused attention, CRL was confirmed using subsequent diagnostic monitoring. Under distracted attention, lures were identified using early-familiarity processing; in addition, subsequent processes of CRL under distracted attention might reflect subjects' confidence in making rejection judgments. Time-frequency results indicated that a top-down inhibition process from the frontal cortex to the hippocampus supported by theta oscillation might play an important role in CRL. These findings provide new inspiration and directions for future research on CRL neural mechanisms.

The malleability of developmental trends in neutral and negative memory illusions

Among many legal professionals and memory researchers there exists the assumption that susceptibility to false memory decreases with age. In 4 misinformation experiments, we show that under conditions that focus on the meaning of experiences, children are not always the most susceptible to suggestion-induced false memories. We begin by presenting a short overview of previous developmental false memory studies, the majority of which have found that the susceptibility to misinformation decreases with age. In Experiment 1, 6/7-year-olds, 11/12-year-olds, and adults received a video and were confronted with misinformation about related but nonpresented details. Older children and adults had higher misinformation acceptance rates than younger children. In Experiment 2, we replicated this finding adding a younger child group (4/6-year-olds). In Experiments 3 and 4, we used new material and again found that susceptibility to misinformation increased with age. Together, these experiments show that children's memory accuracy is not necessarily inferior to that of adults.'

What factors underlie children's susceptibility to semantic and phonological false memories? investigating the roles of language skills and auditory short-term memory

Two experiments investigated the cognitive skills that underlie children's susceptibility to semantic and phonological false memories in the Deese/Roediger-McDermott procedure (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995). In Experiment 1, performance on the Verbal Similarities subtest of the British Ability Scales (BAS) II (Elliott, Smith, & McCulloch, 1997) predicted correct and false recall of semantic lures. In Experiment 2, performance on the Yopp-Singer Test of Phonemic Segmentation (Yopp, 1988) did not predict correct recall, but inversely predicted the false recall of phonological lures. Auditory short-term memory was a negative predictor of false recall in Experiment 1, but not in Experiment 2. The findings are discussed in terms of the formation of gist and verbatim traces as proposed by fuzzy trace theory (Reyna & Brainerd, 1998) and the increasing automaticity of associations as proposed by associative activation theory (Howe, Wimmer, Gagnon, & Plumpton, 2009).

Reliability of Children's Testimony in the Era of Developmental Reversals

A hoary assumption of the law is that children are more prone to false-memory reports than adults, and hence, their testimony is less reliable than adults'. Since the 1980s, that assumption has been buttressed by numerous studies that detected declines in false memory between early childhood and young adulthood under controlled conditions. Fuzzy-trace theory predicted reversals of this standard developmental pattern in circumstances that are directly relevant to testimony because they involve using the gist of experience to remember events. That prediction has been investigated during the past decade, and a large number of experiments have been published in which false memories have indeed been found to increase between early childhood and young adulthood. Further, experimentation has tied age increases in false memory to improvements in children's memory for semantic gist. According to current scientific evidence, the principle that children's testimony is necessarily more infected with false memories than adults' and that, other things being equal, juries should regard adult's testimony as necessarily more faithful to actual events is untenable.

Test-induced priming increases false recognition in older but not younger children

The effect of test-induced priming on false recognition was investigated in children aged 5, 7, 9, and 11 years using lists of semantic associates, category exemplars, and phonological associates. In line with effects previously observed in adults, nine- and eleven-year-olds showed increased levels of false recognition when critical lures were preceded by four studied items. This pattern was present with all three list types. In contrast, no effects of test-induced priming were observed in five- or seven-year-olds with any list type. The results also support those of previous studies in showing a developmental shift from phonological to semantic false memories. The findings are discussed in terms of current theories of children's false memories.

Theoretical and forensic implications of developmental studies of the DRM illusion

In the study of false memory, developmental research on the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) illusion has played a pivotal role in theory evaluation and forensic application. The extensive developmental DRM literature (55 experiments published in English-language journals) provided the first clear evidence that false memories can increase dramatically from early childhood onward, whereas traditional ideas about cognitive development predict steady declines. Similar increases have recently been reported in false memory for complex, realistic life events, using forensically oriented paradigms. Age improvements in the ability to connect meaning across words have been found to be necessary and sufficient for developmental increases in the DRM illusion. When the data of developmental DRM studies are combined with parallel findings from forensically oriented paradigms, the result is an existence proof that a principle used by the law to evaluate children's evidence is mistaken. According to that principle, children's versions of events are always more likely to be infected with false memories than those of adults, and hence, juries should give more weight to adults' versions of events.

A brighter side to memory illusions: false memories prime children's and adults' insight-based problem solving

Can false memories have a positive consequence on human cognition? In two experiments, we investigated whether false memories could prime insight problem-solving tasks. Children and adults were asked to solve compound remote associate task (CRAT) problems, half of which had been primed by the presentation of Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) lists whose critical lures were also the solutions to the problems. In Experiment 1, the results showed that regardless of age, when the critical lure was falsely recalled, CRAT problems were solved more often and significantly faster than problems that were not primed by a DRM list. When the critical lure was not falsely recalled, CRAT problem solution rates and times were no different from when there was no DRM priming. In Experiment 2, without an intervening recall test, children and adults still exhibited higher solution rates and faster solution times to CRAT problems that were primed than to those that were not primed. This latter result shows that priming occurred as a result of false memory generation at encoding and not at retrieval during the recall test. Together, these findings demonstrate that when false memories are generated at encoding, they can prime solutions to insight-based problems in both children and adults.