The production of spontaneous false memories in childhood

Date

2014

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

Abstract

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 had to be remembered. In Experiment 1, 7/8-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.

Description

Keywords

false memories, children, research

Citation

Otgaar, H., Howe, M. L., Peters, M., Smeets, T., & Moritz, S. (2014). The production of spontaneous false memories in childhood. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 121, 28-41.

DOI