We conducted two experiments to investigate if college students would create false memories of childhood experiences in response to misleading information and repeated interviews. In both experiments we contacted parents to obtain information about events that happened to the students during childhood. In a series of interviews we asked the students to recall the parentreported events and one experimenter-created false event. In the second experiment we varied the age at which we claimed the false event occurred. In both experiments we found that some individuals created false memories in these circumstances and in the second experiment we found no effect of age of attempted incorporation. In the second experiment we also found that those who discussed related background knowledge during the early interviews were more likely to create a false recall. Generalizations to therapy contexts are discussed.Can adults create false memories of childhood experiences in response to misleading information and the demands of an interview? Psychologists who work with people recovering from childhood abuse and trauma have contended that most memories recovered during therapy are accurate (Bass and Davis, 1988;Fredrickson, 1992;Olio, 1994). Memory psychologists, in contrast, have expressed concern that many recovered memories may be false memories (Kihlstrom, 1993;Lindsay and Read, 1994;Loftus, 1993). Thus investigation of factors that contribute to our understanding of the recovery of childhood memories is important. If adults can create false childhood memories, then therapists will need to exercise caution in their interviews with clients, and the courts may need to view memories recovered through therapy as having been contaminated by potentially biasing influences. Research on false memories may also provide information concerning the processes involved in memory creation-whether memory creation involves integration, source confusion, or some combination of both.The focus on memories of childhood experiences is an old concern in the psychoanalytic tradition (Erdelyi, 1990;Freud, 1957Freud, ,1974. Freud viewed childhood memories as an important source of information about an individual and he emphasized the interpretation of childhood memories. Freud was also interested in childhood, or Correspondence concerning this article should be directed to

Both adoptive and birth mothers and fathers used more problem-focused than emotion-focused strategies. Personality factors, Neuroticism especially, were predictive of coping strategy use. Higher levels of Positive Reappraisal were associated with higher levels of SWB, whereas higher levels of Escape-Avoidance were associated with lower levels of SWB, but only for mothers. Results were consistent with a dispositional model of strategy use in that frequency of use was associated with personality characteristics, was consistent over time, and for different children in the same families. Future research should focus on the persistence of the associations between strategy use and well-being and whether they hold true at different stages of the lifespan when coping contexts may change quite dramatically.

This study examined whether reinforcement can induce children to falsely incriminate themselves. Ninety-nine children in kindergarten through third grade were questioned regarding the staged theft of a toy. Half received reinforcement for self-incriminating responses. Within 4 min reinforced children made 52% false admissions of guilty knowledge concerning the theft, and 30% false admissions of having witnessed it. Corresponding figures for controls were 36 and 10%. Twelve percent of children admitted to participating in the theft, but the effect of reinforcement was only marginally significant. The findings indicate that reinforcement can induce children to falsely implicate themselves in wrongdoing.

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