Recollection rejection: how children edit their false memories.
A new methodology is presented for studying children's ability to suppress memory reports of false-but-gist-consistent events, one that measures children's use of a specific editing operation (recollection rejection) that suppresses false reports by accessing verbatim traces of true events. Children make memory reports under 2 instructional conditions, verbatim and gist, and the data are analyzed with fuzzy-trace theory's conjoint-recognition model. Application of the new methodology in studies of children's false memory for narrative events revealed that (a) false-memory editing increases dramatically between early and middle childhood, (b) even young children spontaneously edit their false memories, (c) measures of children's false-memory editing react appropriately to experimental manipulations, and (d) developmental reductions in the incidence of false-memory reports are primarily due to developmental improvements in verbatim memory ability (rather than to decreases in the formation of false memories). Implications for child forensic interviewing are discussed.
Brainerd
C J
CJ
Department of Special Education, Rehabilitation, and School Psychology, College of Education, University of Arizona, Tucson 85721, USA. brainerd@u.arizona.edu
Reyna
V F
VF
D002648:Child; D006801:Humans; D008016:Life Change Events; D011939:Mental Recall; D008960:Models, Psychological; D009042:Motivation; D011582:Psychological Theory; D012094:Repression, Psychology; D013313:Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic / Q000523:psychology