Age differences in the contribution of recollection and familiarity to false-memory formation: a new paradigm to examine developmental reversals

Representational Dissimilarity of Faces and Places during a Working Memory Task is Associated with Subsequent Recognition Memory during Development

Nearly 50 years of research has focused on faces as a special visual category, especially during development. Yet it remains unclear how spatial patterns of neural similarity of faces and places relate to how information processing supports subsequent recognition of items from these categories. The current study uses representational similarity analysis and functional imaging data from 9- and 10-year-old youth during an emotional n-back task from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development Study 3.0 data release to relate spatial patterns of neural similarity during working memory to subsequent out-of-scanner performance on a recognition memory task. Specifically, we examine how similarities in representations within face categories (neutral, happy, and fearful faces) and representations between visual categories (faces and places) relate to subsequent recognition memory of these visual categories. Although working memory performance was higher for faces than places, subsequent recognition memory was greater for places than faces. Representational similarity analysis revealed category-specific patterns in face-and place-sensitive brain regions (fusiform gyrus, parahippocampal gyrus) compared with a nonsensitive visual region (pericalcarine cortex). Similarity within face categories and dissimilarity between face and place categories in the parahippocampus was related to better recognition of places from the n-back task. Conversely, in the fusiform, similarity within face categories and their relative dissimilarity from places was associated with better recognition of new faces, but not old faces. These findings highlight how the representational distinctiveness of visual categories influence what information is subsequently prioritized in recognition memory during development.

Normative developmental vs. reverse developmental trends in memory distortion: a framework to investigate the impact of internal and external influences on memory and their relevance to legal decisions

There are two opposing positions regarding the development of memory: the normative developmental position, and the reverse developmental position. The normative position, which has long been the default presupposition, supports the notion that susceptibility to memory distortion, including false memories, decreases with age. In contrast, the concept of "developmental reversals" supports the notion that susceptibility to memory distortion and false memories increases with age. Each perspective finds support from existing theories as well as from research on endogenous and exogenous sources of influence. In a legal context, having an accurate understanding of the developmental course of false memory can contribute on the one hand to mitigating wrongful convictions and, on the other hand, to appreciating the accuracy of children's statements when warranted. This review aims to integrate the existing literature regarding these seemingly opposite developmental courses and construct a framework outlining the conditions under which we may observe one age trend over the other. This entails an examination of the paradigms that have been invoked to support these competing positions, specifically developmental responses to internal vs. external sources of distortion.

The effect of feedback and recollection rejection instructions on the development of memory monitoring and accuracy

Recollection rejection (a form of memory monitoring) involves rejecting false details on the basis of remembering true details (recall to reject), thereby increasing memory accuracy. This study examined how recollection rejection instructions and feedback affect memory accuracy and false recognition in 5-year-olds, 6- and 7-year-olds, 8- and 9-year-olds, and adults. Participants (N = 336) completed three study-test phases. Instructions and item-level feedback were manipulated during the first two phases, with the third phase including a test containing no instructions or feedback to evaluate learning effects. As predicted, in the younger children, as compared with the older children and adults, we found reduced accuracy scores (hits to studied items minus false alarms to related lures), reduced recollection rejection to related lures, and increased false recognition scores. We also found that, in the third phase, prior feedback reduced false recognition scores, potentially by improving monitoring, and typical developmental differences in false recognition were eliminated. However, there were mixed findings of instructions and feedback, and in some conditions these interventions harmed memory. These findings provide initial evidence that combining instructions and feedback with repeated task practice may improve monitoring effectiveness, but additional work is needed on how these factors improve and sometimes harm performance in young children.

Self-enhanced False Memory across the Life Span

OBJECTIVES

The role of self in veridical memory has been extensively studied, but what is the role of self in false memory development across the life span? The current study examined the impact of self-reference on associative false memory in children, younger adults, and older adults, and further investigated possible mechanisms concerning how self-reference might impact false memory in different age groups.

METHOD

Combining a self-reference manipulation with the Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm, children, younger adults and older adults encoded DRM word lists as paired with their own name, another person's name, or a red square. Later their true and false recognition memory as well as recollection and familiarity were measured.

RESULTS

A self-enhanced false memory effect was found in all age groups. That is, participants generated more false memories in the self-reference condition relative to the other-reference and neutral conditions. Furthermore, when examining its underlying memory mechanisms, we found that self-reference mainly increased false recollection in younger adults but facilitated familiarity of critical lures in older adults.

DISCUSSION

Although self-reference increases false memory in both younger and older adults, the underlying mechanisms are different in that older adults have more self-relevant false familiarity while younger adults generate more self-relevant phantom recollection. The current study also has implications for eyewitness reports, suggesting that the self-relevance of memory may be one relevant factor to consider when evaluating potential risk factors of false memory.

Reversible Verbal Memory Integration Deficits in Obstructive Sleep Apnoea

When presented with novel but semantically related elements after learning verbal material, healthy participants tend to endorse these items as previously learned. This reflects the normal integration and association of novel verbal information into long-term memory. How obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) negatively impacts verbal memory performance, and whether deficits are reversible following positive airway pressure (PAP) treatment, remain elusive. We investigated immediate and delayed OSA- and PAP treatment-related effects on verbal memory integration, using a false memory paradigm. Twenty-three patients with OSA learned lists of words semantically related to target non-presented words (1) at baseline after a polysomnography diagnosis night, (2) after a consecutive polysomnography night under PAP titration, and (3) after three months of compliant PAP treatment. At each session, participants learned 10 different lists of words, each list comprising 15 semantically related items. They had then to recognize 15 minutes later (after an intermediate vigilance task) previously learned words within a list including studied words (learned), unstudied but semantically related items (lures), and non-related unstudied items (controls). Sleep quality and fatigue questionnaires, and psychomotor vigilance tests (PVT) were administered at each session. PAP treatment led to OSA remission and improvement in objective and subjective sleep quality. Crucially, recognition of learned and lure words increased after the first night under treatment and remained stable three months later, suggesting successful memory integration and restoration of semantic processes. No treatment-related outcome was found on PVT performance. OSA exerts a detrimental but PAP-reversible effect on verbal learning and semantic memory integration mechanisms underlying the acquisition of novel memory representations.

Inferential false memories for emotional events in older adults

Emotional events have been shown to protect individuals against false memory when remembering scripted material. Whether the same is true also for older adults, however, is unclear, and it has been investigated in the present study. Seventy-six older adults (age range 65-89 years) were presented with a series of photographs depicting scripted events. Each event included the consequence of an action whose corresponding cause was not presented; the consequence was either neutral, negative, or positive. False recognitions of unseen causes of the consequences (i.e., 'causal errors') were calculated. A Bayesian inferential approach was adopted in order to include evidence from previous studies and to use it as a benchmark for newly collected information. Older adults showed enhanced false memories and lower accuracy than previously reported in studies on young adults. Compared to neutral ones, both negative and positive events were associated with fewer false memories in older adults. The emotional false memory 'profile' of older adults was very similar, in terms of the effect size, to the one previously found in young adults, although the overall chances of older adults incurring errors were higher. Results are discussed considering both cognitive and socioemotional hypotheses on emotional memory in late adulthood.

Who Is the Better Eyewitness? Sometimes Adults but at Other Times Children

Suggestibility is regarded as a major issue when children testify in court. Many legal professionals and memory researchers view children as inferior witnesses. Although differences in suggestibility exist between children and adults, they are much more complex than is usually assumed. We show that under certain conditions, adults are more susceptible than children to suggestion and false memories. We provide evidence that age-related shifts in suggestibility and false memory appear contingent on how quickly and automatically children and adults make associations when experiencing events. Specifically, when confronted with suggestive information about a related but nonexperienced detail, adults more frequently automatically generate links between items experienced and those already in memory, making them more susceptible to suggestion than children.

Developmental reversals in false memory: Development is complementary, not compensatory

We report the 1st example of a true complementarity effect in memory development-a situation in which memory for the same event simultaneously becomes more and less accurate between early childhood and adulthood. We investigated this paradoxical effect because fuzzy-trace theory predicts that it can occur in paradigms that produce developmental reversals in false memory, which are circumstances in which adults are more likely than children to remember new events as old. The complementarity prediction is this: If subjects separately judge whether those same events are new but similar to old ones, adults will be more accurate than children, even though adults are less accurate when they judge whether the items are old. We report 4 experiments in which children (6- and 10-year-olds), adolescents (14-year-olds), and adults encoded the modal developmental reversal materials: Deese-Roediger-McDermott lists. Then, they responded to memory tests on which half the subjects judged whether test items were old and half judged whether the same items were new-similar. The paradoxical complementarity effect was detected in all experiments: The tendency to falsely remember new-similar items as being old increased with development, but so did the tendency to correctly remember them as being new-similar. (PsycINFO Database Record

Positive events protect children from causal false memories for scripted events

Adults produce fewer inferential false memories for scripted events when their conclusions are emotionally charged than when they are neutral, but it is not clear whether the same effect is also found in children. In the present study, we examined this issue in a sample of 132 children aged 6-12 years (mean 9 years, 3 months). Participants encoded photographs depicting six script-like events that had a positively, negatively, or a neutral valenced ending. Subsequently, true and false recognition memory of photographs related to the observed scripts was tested as a function of emotionality. Causal errors-a type of false memory thought to stem from inferential processes-were found to be affected by valence: children made fewer causal errors for positive than for neutral or negative events. Hypotheses are proposed on why adults were found protected against inferential false memories not only by positive (as for children) but also by negative endings when administered similar versions of the same paradigm.

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.'

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.

When Children are the Least Vulnerable to False Memories: A True Report or a Case of Autosuggestion?

In this case report, a legal case revolving around the reliability of statements given by a 6-year-old girl is described. She claimed to have witnessed her mother being murdered by her father. Two psychological experts provided diametrically opposed opinions about the reliability of her statements. One expert, a clinician, opined that the girl's statements were based on autosuggestion whereas the other expert, a memory researcher, stated that autosuggestion was unlikely to have played a role. This case and the analysis of the experts' opinions illustrate what may happen when experts in court are unaware of the recent literature on (false) memory. That is, recent studies show that autosuggestion is less likely to occur in young children than in older children and adults. The current case stresses the importance and implications of relying on memory experts in cases concerning the reliability of eyewitness statements.

Emotional false memories in children with learning disabilities

Research has shown that children with learning disabilities (LD) are less prone to evince associative illusions of memory as a result of impairments in their ability to engage in semantic processing. However, it is unclear whether this observation is true for scripted life events, especially if they include emotional content, or across a broad spectrum of learning disabilities. The present study addressed these issues by assessing recognition memory for script-like information in children with nonverbal learning disability (NLD), children with dyslexia, and typically developing children (N=51). Participants viewed photographs about 8 common events (e.g., family dinner), and embedded in each episode was either a negative or a neutral consequence of an unseen action. Children's memory was then tested on a yes/no recognition task that included old and new photographs. Results showed that the three groups performed similarly in recognizing target photographs, but exhibited differences in memory errors. Compared to other groups, children with NLD were more likely to falsely recognize photographs that depicted an unseen cause of an emotional seen event and associated more "Remember" responses to these errors. Children with dyslexia were equally likely to falsely recognize both unseen causes of seen photographs and photographs generally consistent with the script, whereas the other participant groups were more likely to falsely recognize unseen causes rather than script-consistent distractors. Results are interpreted in terms of mechanisms underlying false memories' formation in different clinical populations of children with LD.

Developmental Reversals in False Memory

Classic research that was initiated in response to heavy reliance on children’s evidence in certain types of criminal cases showed that the incidence of false memories declines steadily between childhood and young adulthood. This developmental decline pattern became the centerpiece of much expert testimony, and it has been treated as settled science in court rulings. It is not settled science. A large number of studies have recently appeared on developmental reversals, an opposite pattern in which false memories for events that preserve the gist of experience increase dramatically between early childhood and young adulthood. Developmental reversals challenge the forensic principle that children’s evidence is inherently more infected with false memories than adults’ evidence.

Developmental trends in different types of spontaneous false memories: implications for the legal field

In an emerging area of memory research, it is becoming apparent that one particular type of false memory, called spontaneous false memory, follows a developmental trajectory that is the opposite of what is commonly assumed in false memory research - that is, spontaneous false memories are more likely to occur in adults than in children. The present study focused on developmental trends of different types of spontaneous false memories. Specifically, in the current study, 6-8 year-olds, 10-12 year-olds, and adults were presented with two methods to induce spontaneous false memories: (i) semantically related word lists that are commonly used to evoke spontaneous false memories [i.e, Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm]; and (ii) a video in which related details were not shown but were presented during a recognition task. The results showed that children were more likely to form false memories than adults in the video false memory paradigm, whereas DRM false memories were more evident in adults than in children. Furthermore, we found that on a general level, DRM false memories were positively related to video spontaneous false memories. We explain that stimuli that contain obvious themes attenuate or even reverse developmental trends in spontaneous false memories.

Inferential false memories of events: negative consequences protect from distortions when the events are free from further elaboration

The present experiment was conducted to investigate whether negative emotionally charged and arousing content of to-be-remembered scripted material would affect propensity towards memory distortions. We further investigated whether elaboration of the studied material through free recall would affect the magnitude of memory errors. In this study participants saw eight scripts. Each of the scripts included an effect of an action, the cause of which was not presented. Effects were either negatively emotional or neutral. Participants were assigned to either a yes/no recognition test group (recognition), or to a recall and yes/no recognition test group (elaboration + recognition). Results showed that participants in the recognition group produced fewer memory errors in the emotional condition. Conversely, elaboration + recognition participants had lower accuracy and produced more emotional memory errors than the other group, suggesting a mediating role of semantic elaboration on the generation of false memories. The role of emotions and semantic elaboration on the generation of false memories is 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.

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.

The relationship between mother narrative style and child memory

Background

The question of whether children and infants have memory capabilities similar to adults has long been of interest. Until recently, it was thought that compared to adults, infants have very limited memory processing abilities. Knowledge about factors affecting a child's memory abilities can help families (specifically mothers) behave in a manner that best benefits their children in language and memory skills. The present study examines one factor that may underlie a child's memory capabilities; namely the mother's narrative style.

Methods

Convenience sampling was used to select participants. Forty healthy children (mean age of 31.55 months, range 25-37 months) and their mothers were entered into the study. All participants were native Turkish speakers, from similar socioeconomic status backgrounds. Memory was assessed by a modified version of the Magic Shrinking Machine. Narrative style was assessed by the mother "reading" a Frog Story; a picture book with no words in it. Children were then grouped according to their mother's level of narrative style. Children's language skills were measured via the Turkish form of the CDI (Communicative Development Inventory) which was translated to Turkish as TIGE.

Results

To explore the relationships between mothers' narrative styles and children's memory and language skills and between children's language skills and memory capabilities, linear regressions were run. There were no significant correlations among any comparisons (P > 0.05).

Conclusions

Children's language skills do not improve according to their mothers' narrative styles, and children do not show better memory abilities when mothers use more words and longer sentences. In order to have a better understanding of these relationships, future research that includes several more variables is needed.

Keywords

Child; Mother; Memory; Narrative style

Children's episodic memory

Episodic memory develops during childhood and adolescence. This trajectory depends on several underlying processes. In this article, we first discuss the development of the basic binding processes (e.g., the processes by which elements are bound together to form a memory episode) and control processes (e.g., reasoning and metamemory processes) involved in episodic remembering. Then, we discuss the role of these processes in false-memory formation. In the subsequent sections, we examine the neural substrates of the development of episodic memory. Finally, we discuss atypical development of episodic memory. As we proceed through the article, we suggest potential avenues for future research. WIREs Cogni Sci 2011 2 365-373 DOI: 10.1002/wcs.114 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.