The production of spontaneous false memories across childhood.
We found evidence that the usual developmental trends in children's spontaneous false memories were eliminated using novel stimuli containing obvious themes. That is, children created more false memories than adults when scenes needed to be remembered. In Experiment 1, 7- and 8-year-olds had higher false memory rates than adults when using visual scenes. Experiment 2 showed that gist cuing could not account for this effect. In Experiment 3, children and adults received visual scenes and story contexts in which these scenes were embedded. For both types of stimuli, we found that children had the highest false memory rates. Our results indicate that the underlying theme of these scenes is easily identified, resulting in our developmental false memory trend.
Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands. Electronic address: henry.otgaar@maastrichtuniversity.nl.
Henry
H
Otgaar
Department of Psychology, City University London, London EC1V 0HB, UK.
Mark L
ML
Howe
Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands.
Maarten
M
Peters
Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands.
Tom
T
Smeets
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, D-20246 Hamburg, Germany.
Steffen
S
Moritz
D002648:Child; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D002666:Psychology, Child; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D055815:Young Adult
DRM; Development; False memory; Memory; Spreading activation; Suggestion