Inviting witnesses to speculate: effects of age and interaction on children's recall.
Inviting speculation has been found to increase children's false recall. In this study, kindergartners and third graders saw a clown perform actions alone or in interaction with a child. Two weeks later, the speculation group recalled all actions and was asked to speculate on half the actions. The control group recalled all actions without speculating. Four weeks after the show, all children recalled all actions again. The speculation group gave more false answers to the speculated items than the control group. Surprisingly, older children tended to report as many if not more false responses than younger children, regardless of speculation. In the speculation group, there were fewer false answers for interactions than actions, but false answers did not differ across observation types in the control group. Finally, speculation did not affect free and cued recall differentially.
Schreiber
Nadja
N
Department of Psychology, Florida International University, Miami, FL 33199, USA. nschreiber@med.miami.edu
Parker
Janat F
JF
D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D002649:Child Abuse; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D012094:Repression, Psychology