Individual differences in children's and adults' suggestibility and false event memory

The Curious Case of the Arabic–English Bilingual Speaker with Substantial Rote Rehearsal Practice

The main goal of the present study was to determine whether the probability of correct and illusory recall of word lists varies with participants’ frequency of memorization and recitation practice. The ancillary goal was to determine whether the concurrent presentation of Arabic words and English translations would influence correct and illusory recall rates relative to monolingual presentation. The words in each list were selected to gravitate around a theme word, which was never presented. In this procedure, recall of the theme word was considered prima facie evidence of an illusory memory. Participants were Arabic–English bilingual speakers from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). No effects of bilingual presentation on correct and illusory recall were observed in Experiment 1, which relied on lists developed in the United States for monolingual English speakers, and in Experiment 3, which relied on culturally appropriate lists. However, bilingual presentation reduced generic semantic intrusions in Experiment 1. Participants’ illusory recall rates were lower than those of published norms gathered from English-speaking monolingual participants. In Experiment 1, generic semantic intrusions declined as the breadth of participants’ recitation practice increased. No other significant correlations were found between memory indices and performance or sentiment measures of rote rehearsal. The implications of the finding that a didactic and religious practice taught to KSA students from an early age has little impact on the retention of verbal information are discussed.

How children remember the Strange Situation: The role of attachment

This study tested predictions from Bowlby's attachment theory about children's memory and suggestibility. Young children (3-5years old, N=88; 76% Caucasians) and their parents took part in the Strange Situation Procedure, a moderately distressing event and "gold standard" for assessing children's attachment quality. The children were then interviewed about what occurred during the event. Children's age and attachment security scores positively predicted correct information in free recall and accuracy in answering specific questions. For children with higher (vs. lower) attachment security scores, greater distress observed during the Strange Situation Procedure predicted increased resistance to misleading suggestions. In addition, for children who displayed relatively low distress during the Strange Situation Procedure, significant age differences in memory and suggestibility emerged as expected. However, for children who displayed greater distress during the Strange Situation Procedure, younger and older children's memory performances were equivalent. Findings suggest that attachment theory provides an important framework for understanding facets of memory development with respect to attachment-related information and that distress may alter assumed age patterns in memory development.

Parent-Child Agreement on Parent-to-Child Maltreatment

Parent-child agreement on child maltreatment was examined in a multigenerational study. Questionnaires on perpetrated and experienced child maltreatment were completed by 138 parent-child pairs. Multi-level analyses were conducted to explore whether parents and children agreed about levels of parent-to-child maltreatment (convergence), and to examine whether parents and children reported equal levels of child maltreatment (absolute differences). Direct and moderating effects of age and gender were examined as potential factors explaining differences between parent and child report. The associations between parent- and child-reported maltreatment were significant for all subtypes, but the strength of the associations was low to moderate. Moreover, children reported more parent-to-child neglect than parents did. Older participants reported more experienced maltreatment than younger participants, without evidence for differences in actual exposure. These findings support the value of multi-informant assessment of child maltreatment to improve accuracy, but also reveal the divergent perspectives of parents and children on child maltreatment.

Fuzzy-Trace Theory and Lifespan Cognitive Development

Fuzzy-trace theory (FTT) emphasizes the use of core theoretical principles, such as the verbatim-gist distinction, to predict new findings about cognitive development that are counterintuitive from the perspective of other theories or of common-sense. To the extent that such predictions are confirmed, the range of phenomena that are explained expands without increasing the complexity of the theory's assumptions. We examine research on recent examples of such predictions during four epochs of cognitive development: childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, and late adulthood. During the first two, the featured predictions are surprising developmental reversals in false memory (childhood) and in risky decision making (adolescence). During young adulthood, FTT predicts that a retrieval operation that figures centrally in dual-process theories of memory, recollection, is bivariate rather than univariate. During the late adulthood, FTT identifies a retrieval operation, reconstruction, that has been omitted from current theories of normal memory declines in aging and pathological declines in dementia. The theory predicts that reconstruction is a major factor in such declines and that it is able to forecast future dementia.

Attachment and suggestion-related phenomena

This study uses a new classification of suggestion-related phenomena and investigates the relationship between attachment styles and reaction to suggestion. The authors used 3 traditional experimental tasks: a stimulus-misinformation task, an inkblot perception task, and a subjective estimation of a nonexistent difference task. A measure of adult attachment was also taken. Participants with a high attachment insecurity as opposed to those with a low one were less influenced by suggestions in the recall phase of the memory task. Results are discussed within the framework of suggestion models, the dual models of social behavior, and the adult attachment model. Implications of findings are limited to simple suggestion rather than the more complex set of responses related to hypnotizability.

False accusations in an investigative context: differences between suggestible and non-suggestible witnesses

False sexual abuse allegations have spurred research on suggestibility, on the assumption that leading questions may produce false accusations. Most researchers, however, have not measured the likelihood that those who respond to suggestive questioning will take the next step and make a formal (false) accusation. The present study incorporates both aspects of abuse investigations: suggestibility (i.e., responsiveness to questions in a leading interview) and false accusations (i.e., signing a formal complaint against an innocent suspect). Participants (N = 129) were observed in a laboratory session and then interviewed twice about their experiences by an interviewer who suggested that the laboratory assistant had behaved inappropriately. Although only 17% of the participants were suggestible, 39% agreed to sign the complaint. Suggestible participants were significantly more likely to make a false accusation than were non-suggestible participants. However, because of the low rate of suggestibility, most false accusations were made by non-suggestible participants. Implications for the legal system are discussed.

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.

Autobiographical memory development from an attachment perspective: the special role of negative events

The authors propose a novel model of autobiographical memory development that features the fundamental role of attachment orientations and negative life events. In the model, it is proposed that early autobiographical memory derives in part from the need to express and remember negative experiences, a need that has adaptive value, and that attachment orientations create individual differences in children's recollections of negative experiences. Specifically, the role of attachment in the processing of negative information is discussed in regard to the mnemonic stages of encoding, storage, and retrieval. This model sheds light on several areas of contradictory data in the memory development literature, such as concerning earliest memories and children's and adults' memory/suggestibility for stressful events.

Developmental reversals in false memory: Effects of emotional valence and arousal

Do the emotional valence and arousal of events distort children's memories? Do valence and arousal modulate counterintuitive age increases in false memory? We investigated those questions in children, adolescents, and adults using the Cornell/Cortland Emotion Lists, a word list pool that induces false memories and in which valence and arousal can be manipulated factorially. False memories increased with age for unpresented semantic associates of word lists, and net accuracy (the ratio of true memory to total memory) decreased with age. These surprising developmental trends were more pronounced for negatively valenced materials than for positively valenced materials, they were more pronounced for high-arousal materials than for low-arousal materials, and developmental increases in the effects of arousal were small in comparison with developmental increases in the effects of valence. These findings have ramifications for legal applications of false memory research; materials that share the emotional hallmark of crimes (events that are negatively valenced and arousing) produced the largest age increases in false memory and the largest age declines in net accuracy.

A influência do traço de personalidade neuroticismo na suscetibilidade às falsas memórias

As falsas memórias são lembranças de eventos que na realidade nunca ocorreram. Porém, a pergunta que surge é quais características e traços de personalidade poderiam influenciar na suscetibilidade a esse tipo de distorção de memória. A fim de investigar as diferenças individuais e falsas memórias, o presente estudo testou em 150 estudantes universitários o efeito do traço de personalidade neuroticismo (baseado no modelo dos Cinco Grandes Fatores) na suscetibilidade às falsas memórias. Para isso foram utilizados como instrumentos a Escala Fatorial de Ajustamento Emocional/Neuroticismo e a versão brasileira do procedimento das Listas de Palavras Associadas, contendo palavras de cunho neutro e emocional (positivo e negativo). Os resultados mostraram que pessoas com alto neuroticismo apresentaram maior número de falsas memórias e uma melhor lembrança para palavras de valência emocional negativa.

Interviewing former 1- and 2-year olds about medical emergencies 5 years later

Five years earlier, 1- and 2-year-old children who had been injured seriously enough to require hospital ER treatment had been recruited from the ER. For this study, as many of these children as could be found participated. The majority of former 1-year olds recalled nothing about these highly stressful events, whereas most former 2-year olds recalled a great deal. For those former 1-year olds who did recall the target events, quality of recall was problematic. In particular, they made considerable source confusions or intrusions into their accounts of details from other related events, producing an account that amalgamated various events into one recollection. Forensic implications are discussed.

The effects of prior knowledge on children’s memory and suggestibility

In this study, 5- and 6-year-olds were read a story and asked to recall its details. Two independent factors-prestory knowledge and poststory suggestions-were crossed to examine the effects on children's story recall. The results indicated that prestory social knowledge about the story protagonist as well as academic knowledge relating to the content of the story influenced the accuracy of children's recall immediately after the story presentation. Following the suggestive interview, children reported interviewer-provided social and academic misinformation to a greater extent when the misinformation was consistent with their prior knowledge. In contrast, children were more likely to refute misinformation that contradicted their academic knowledge. These findings are discussed in terms of the mechanisms underlying the knowledge-memory and knowledge-suggestibility linkages.

Theory of mind, inhibitory control, and preschool-age children's suggestibility in different interviewing contexts

The current study examined the relations among 3- to 5-year-olds' theory of mind, inhibitory control, and three measures of suggestibility: yielding to suggestive questions (yield), shifting answers in response to negative feedback (shift), and accuracy in response to misleading questions during a pressured interview about a live event. Theory of mind aided in the prediction of suggestibility about the live event, and inhibitory control was a moderator variable affecting the consistency of children's sensitivity to social pressure across situations. The findings indicate that theory of mind and inhibitory control predict children's suggestibility about a live event above and beyond yield, shift, and age and that the construct validity of shift may improve as children's inhibitory control develops.

What's in a Name for Memory Errors? Implications and Ethical Issues Arising From the Use of the Term "False Memory" for Errors in Memory for Details

The term "false memories" has been used to refer to suggestibility experiments in which whole events are apparently confabulated and in media accounts of contested memories of childhood abuse. Since 1992 psychologists have increasingly used the term "false memory" when discussing memory errors for details, such as specific words within lists. Use of the term to refer to errors in details is a shift in language away from other terms used historically (e.g., "memory intrusions"). We empirically examine this shift in language and discuss implications of the new use of the term "false memories." Use of the term presents serious ethical challenges to the data-interpretation process by encouraging over-generalization and misapplication of research findings on word memory to social issues.

A Missing Link in Suggestibility Research: What Is Known About the Behavior of Field Interviewers in Unstructured Interviews With Young Children?

Despite suggestibility researchers' focus on adult behaviors that distort children's reports, whether behaviors examined in experimental work are used in the field is unknown. The current study presents a mutually exclusive and exhaustive hierarchical coding system that reflects interview questioning behaviors of concern in experimental work. The study examined 80 unstructured interviews conducted by 41 field interviewers with 40 children ages 3 to 7 about known events. Data on the use of leading and neutral questions are presented and include distinctions between accurate and inaccurate suggested information. In addition, analyses show that interviewers are consistent in their style of questioning and that a preinterview measure of interviewers' preference for a qualitative versus a quantitative interviewing style predicted the introduction of novel information into the interview.

Children's memory for trauma and positive experiences

Characteristics of children's memory for a trauma and for a positive event were compared and relationships of memory characteristics to trauma symptoms examined in 30 children who experienced a traumatic event. Results revealed that memories for trauma tended to have less sensory detail and coherence, yet have more meaning and impact than did memories for positive experiences. Sexual traumas, offender relationship, and perceived life threat were associated with memory characteristics. Few relationships between memory characteristics and trauma symptoms were found. Therapist ratings of child memory characteristics were correlated with some child trauma memory characteristic reports. These results are consistent with other studies. Possible explanations include divided attention during the traumatic event and cognitive avoidance occurring after the event.

Individual differences in children's event memory reports and the narrative elaboration technique

Children between 7 and 8 years old took part in a staged event at school and 1 week later were assessed using a short form of the Wechsler Intelligence scale for children (third edition) and measures of metamemory, narrative ability, and socioeconomic status. Two weeks following the event, children either received narrative elaboration training (NET; K.J. Saywitz & L. Snyder, 1996) and were prompted with the four NET cue cards at interview; received verbal prompts corresponding to the cue card categories, but without prior training; or were presented with the cards at interview without prior training. Children given verbal labels as prompts recalled as much information as children who received NET training and cue cards. Measures of intelligence were predictive of amount recalled for cards-only children but not for the other 2 groups, indicating that differences in recall between low- and high-IQ groups were attenuated when recall was supported by NET training or verbal prompting.

The role of attachment and cognitive inhibition in children's memory and suggestibility for a stressful event

There has been increasing interest in children's abilities to report memories of and resist misleading suggestions about distressing events. Individual differences among children and their parents may provide important insight into principles that govern children's eyewitness memory and suggestibility for such experiences. In the present study, 51 children between the ages of 3 and 7 years were interviewed about an inoculation after a delay of approximately 2 weeks. Results indicated that parents' attachment Avoidance was associated with children's distress during the inoculation. Parental attachment Anxiety and the interaction between parental Avoidance and children's stress predicted children's memory for the inoculation. Cognitive inhibition was also a significant predictor of children's memory errors and suggestibility. Theoretical implications concerning effects of stress and individual differences on children's eyewitness memory and suggestibility are discussed.

Fuzzy-trace theory: dual processes in memory, reasoning, and cognitive neuroscience

Fuzzy-trace theory has evolved in response to counterintuitive data on how memory development influences the development of reasoning. The two traditional perspectives on memory-reasoning relations--the necessity and constructivist hypotheses--stipulate that the accuracy of children's memory for problem information and the accuracy of their reasoning are closely intertwined, albeit for different reasons. However, contrary to necessity, correlational and experimental dissociations have been found between children's memory for problem information that is determinative in solving certain problems and their solutions of those problems. In these same tasks, age changes in memory for problem information appear to be dissociated from age changes in reasoning. Contrary to constructivism, correlational and experimental dissociations also have been found between children's performance on memory tests for actual experience and memory tests for the meaning of experience. As in memory-reasoning studies, age changes in one type of memory performance do not seem to be closely connected to age changes in the other type of performance. Subsequent experiments have led to dual-process accounts in both the memory and reasoning spheres. The account of memory development features four other principles: parallel verbatim-gist storage, dissociated verbatim-gist retrieval, memorial bases of conscious recollection, and identity/similarity processes. The account of the development of reasoning features three principles: gist extraction, fuzzy-to-verbatim continua, and fuzzy-processing preferences. The fuzzy-processing preference is a particularly important notion because it implies that gist-based intuitive reasoning often suffices to deliver "logical" solutions and that such reasoning confers multiple cognitive advantages that enhance accuracy. The explanation of memory-reasoning dissociations in cognitive development then falls out of fuzzy-trace theory's dual-process models of memory and reasoning. More explicitly, in childhood reasoning tasks, it is assumed that both verbatim and gist traces of problem information are stored. Responding accurately to memory tests for presented problem information depends primarily on verbatim memory abilities (preserving traces of that information and accessing them when the appropriate memory probes are administered). However, accurate solutions to reasoning problems depend primarily on gist-memory abilities (extracting the correct gist from problem information, focusing on that gist during reasoning, and accessing reasoning operations that process that gist). Because verbatim and gist memories exhibit considerable dissociation, both during storage and when they are subsequently accessed on memory tests, dissociations of verbatim-based memory performance from gist-based reasoning are predictable. Conversely, associations are predicted in situations in which memory and reasoning are based on the same verbatim traces (Brainerd & Reyna, 1988) and in situations in which memory and reasoning are based on the same gist traces (Reyna & Kiernan, 1994). Fuzzy-trace theory's memory and reasoning principles have been applied in other research domains. Four such domains are developmental cognitive neuroscience studies of false memory, studies of false memory in brain-damaged patients, studies of reasoning errors in judgment and decision making, and studies of retrieval mechanisms in recall. In the first domain, the principles of parallel verbatim-gist storage, dissociated verbatim-gist retrieval, and identity/similarity processes have been used to explain both spontaneous and implanted false reports in children and in the elderly. These explanations have produced some surprising predictions that have been verified: false reports do not merely decline with age during childhood but increase under theoretically specified conditions; reports of events that were not experienced can nevertheless be highly persistent over time; and false reports can be suppressed by retrieving verbatim traces of corresponding true events. In the second domain, the same principles have been invoked to explain why some forms of brain damage lead to elevated levels of false memory and other forms lead to reduced levels of false memory. In the third domain, the principles of gist extraction, fuzzy-to-verbatim continua, and fuzzy-processing preferences have been exploited to formulate a general theory of loci of processing failures in judgment and decision making, cluminating in a developmental account of degrees of rationality that distinguishes more and less advanced reasoning. This theory has in turn been used to formulate local models, such as the inclusion illusions model, that explain the characteristic reasoning errors that are observed on specific judgment and decision-making tasks. Finally, in the fourth domain, a dual-process conception of recall has been derived from the principles of parallel verbatim-gist storage and dissociated verbatim-gist retrieval. In this conception, which has been used to explain cognitive triage effects in recall and robust false recall, targets are recalled either by directly accessing their verbatim traces and reading the retrieved information out of consciousness or by reconstructively processing their gist traces.

The Video Suggestibility Scale for Children: how generalizable is children's performance to other measures of suggestibility?

This study explored the generalizability of the Video Suggestibility Scale for Children (VSSC), which was developed by Scullin and colleagues (Scullin & Ceci, 2001; Scullin & Hembrooke, 1998) as a tool for discriminating among children (aged three to five years) who have different levels of suggestibility. The VSSC consists of two subscales; Yield (a measure of children's willingness to acquiesce to misleading questions) and Shift (a measure of children's tendency to change their responses after feedback from the interviewer). Children's (N = 77) performance on each of the subscales was compared with their performance using several other measures of suggestibility. These measures included children's willingness to assent to a false event as well as the number of false interviewer suggestions and false new details that the children provided when responding to cued-recall questions about an independent true-biased and an independent false (non-experienced) event. An independent samples t-test revealed that those children who assented to the false event generated higher scores on the Yield measure. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that Yield was a significant predictor of the number of false details reported about the false activity, but not the true-biased activity. There was no significant relationship between the Shift subscale and any of the dependent variables. The potential contribution of the VSSC for forensic researchers and practitioners is discussed.

The role of accuracy motivation on children's and adults' event recall

To examine the role of accuracy motivation in event recall, 6-, 7-, and 8-year-old children and adults were shown a short video about a conflict between two groups of children. Three weeks later, participants were asked a set of unbiased specific questions about the video. Following A. Koriat and M. Goldsmith's (1994) distinction of quantity- and quality-oriented memory assessments, and based on their model of strategic regulation of memory accuracy (1996), accuracy motivation was manipulated across three conditions. Participants were (a) forced to provide an answer to each question (low accuracy motivation), (b) initially instructed to withhold uncertain answers by saying "I don't know" (medium accuracy motivation), or (c) rewarded for every single correct answer (high accuracy motivation). When motivation for accuracy was high, children as young as 6 were to withhold uncertain answers to the benefit of accuracy. The expected quality-quantity trade-off emerged only for peripheral items but not for the central items. Participants who were forced to provide an answer gave more correct answers but also high numbers of incorrect answers than participants who had the option to answer "I don't know." The results are discussed in terms of the underlying model as well as in terms of forensic interviewing.

Children's eyewitness reports after exposure to misinformation from parents

This study examined how misleading suggestions from parents influenced children's eyewitness reports. Children (3 to 8 years old) participated in science demonstrations, listened to their parents read a story that described experienced and nonexperienced events, and subsequently discussed the science experience in two follow-up interviews. Many children described fictitious events in response to open-ended prompts, and there were no age differences in suggestibility during this phase of the interview. Accuracy declined markedly in response to direct questions, especially for the younger children. Although the older children retracted many of their false reports after receiving source-monitoring instructions, the younger children did not. Path analyses indicated that acquiescence, free recall, and source monitoring all contribute to mediating patterns of suggestibility across age. Results indicate that judgments about the accuracy of children's testimony must consider the possibility of exposure to misinformation prior to formal interviews.

Remembering and reporting by children: the influence of cues and props

Until recently nonverbal props received little experimental attention in spite of the wide use of props such as toys and drawing in child clinical contexts. This article reviews research investigating the effectiveness of props as means of facilitating children's recall and reporting of past events. In the first section, developmental and theoretical considerations influencing effectiveness of various kinds of props as aids to the retrieval and communication of information are outlined. Thereafter, findings of empirical research are reviewed for real props from the event, toys including dolls, drawing, context reinstatement, and photographs. Research findings suggest that a range of factors influence the extent to which props facilitate children's reports of past events, including specificity of the information provided by the prop, the way the prop is presented during the interview, delay between the event and interview and, critical to these factors, the age of the child. Areas requiring future theoretical and research attention are identified.

Dissociating automatic and intentional processes in children's eyewitness memory

Two experiments investigated the contribution of automatic and intentional memory processes to 5- and 8-year-old children's acceptance of misinformation. Children were presented with a picture story followed by misleading postevent details that either were read to participants or were self-generated in response to semantic and perceptual hints. Children were then given a recognition test under 2 instructional conditions. In the inclusion condition children reported whether they remembered items from either of the previous phases. In the exclusion condition children were instructed to exclude postevent suggestions. Children were more likely to accept misled-generate items compared to misled-read items in the inclusion condition, but the opposite was the case under exclusion instructions. Both automaticity and recollection (cf. L. L. Jacoby, 1991) influenced misinformation acceptance, but the role of automatic processes declined with age.

Fuzzy-trace theory and children's false memories

Fuzzy-trace theory's concepts of identity judgment, nonidentity judgment, and similarity judgment provide a unified account of the false-memory phenomena that have been most commonly studied in children: false-recognition effects and misinformation effects. False-recognition effects (elevated false-alarm rates for unpresented distractors that preserve the meanings of presented targets) are due to increased rates of similarity or false identity judgment about distractors or to decreased rates of nonidentity judgment. Misinformation effects (erroneous acceptance of misleading postevent information and erroneous rejection of actual events) are also due to variability in rates of similarity, identity, and nonidentity judgment. Two experimental paradigms are presented, one for false recognition (conjoint recognition) and one for misinformation (conjoint misinformation), that allow investigators to tease apart the contributions of these processes to children's false-memory reports. Each paradigm is implemented in a mathematical model that provides numerical estimates of the processes.

Fuzzy-trace theory and false memory: new frontiers

We describe the origins of fuzzy-trace theory, including Piagetian, interference, information-processing, and judgment and decision-making influences. The contrasting properties of gist and verbatim memory serve as its foundation and, in recent models of spontaneous and implanted false memories, explain seemingly contradictory developmental trends, such as reverse developmental findings, differential time courses for true and false memories, and conflicting effects of trace strength. However, approaches that integrate fuzzy-trace theory with neurological, social, emotional, and motivational perspectives are needed. A method for accomplishing this integration, using the recent models, is introduced and new research that spans these perspectives is discussed. Relations to other contemporary theories, especially source-monitoring and dual-process theories, are also explained. We conclude by rejecting the notion that spontaneous false memories are actually "true" and distinguish gist and verbatim senses of the term "true" that have different consequences in real life.