False rumors and true belief: Memory processes underlying children’s errant reports of rumored events

Abstract

Previous research has shown that overhearing an errant rumor-either from an adult or peers-about an earlier experience can lead children to make detailed false reports. This study investigates the extent to which such accounts are driven by changes in children's memory representations or merely social demands that encourage the reporting of rumored information. This was accomplished by a) using a warning manipulation that eliminated social pressures to report an earlier-heard rumor and b) examining the qualitative characteristics of children's false narratives of a rumored-butnonexperienced event. Findings indicated that overheard rumors can induce sensory and contextual characteristics in memory that can lead children to develop genuine false beliefs in seeing rumoredbut-nonexperienced occurrences. Such constructive tendencies were especially likely among 3-and 4-year-olds (relative to 5-and 6-year-olds) and when rumors were picked up from peers during natural social interactions than when they were planted by adults. KeywordsMemory; Suggestibility; Rumor; Children; Source Monitoring; Eyewitness Testimony Several decades of research on memory and suggestibility has established that children's reports of their experiences can be contaminated by errant postevent information contained in a range of sources, such as co-witness reports (e.g., Candel, Memon, & Al-Harazi, 2007;Principe & Ceci, 2002), storybooks (Poole & Lindsay, 2001;2002), and interview questions (e.g., Bruck, Ceci, & Hebrooke, 2002;Roberts & Powell, 2006). A growing body of work shows that rumors also can taint children's accounts of the past, inducing high levels of false reports of rumored-but-nonexperienced events. For instance, Principe, Kanaya, Ceci, and Singh (2006) had some preschoolers within the same classrooms overhear an adult allege a fictitious rumor that a certain event occurred in their school. The remaining children in each classroom did not overhear the adult, but instead interacted freely with their classmates who did. A third group, who had no contact with the first two groups, actually experienced the event suggested by the rumor. When later questioned, those children who were exposed to the rumor, either directly from the adult or secondhand from their classmates, were as likely to report experiencing the rumored occurrence as those who actually did. Further, most reports of the rumored event were generated by open-ended prompts and embellished with rich elaborative detail. Related studies have demonstrated that rumors that conflict with the past (Principe, Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Gabrielle F. Principe, Department of Psychology, Ursinus College, PO Box 1000, Collegeville, PA 19426-1000; Phone: 610-409-3670; Fax: 610-409-3633; gprincipe@ursinus.edu. Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, type...

Children's memory distortions following social contact with a co-witness: Disentangling social and cognitive mechanisms

“…This suggests that children really came to believe that these details were experienced, even though they had been given two opportunities to retract this information. Similar false beliefs have been reported for 3Á4-year-old children who were given a warning to ignore false rumours (Principe, Haines, Adkins, & Guiliano, 2010). The implications for this are worrying, since they suggest that collaborative recall with a co-witness can encourage distortions based on integration of non-experienced detail into memory.…”

Children’s natural conversations following exposure to a rumor: Linkages to later false reports

“…A consistent pattern in studies of rumor and memory (Principe et al, 2006; Principe, Haines, et al, 2010) is that children who hear a false rumor from peers are more likely than those who hear it from an adult to report seeing rumored information and to generate more elaborate false narratives describing the rumor. 1 This heightened peer suggestibility is in contrast to the typical result in laboratory paradigms that children more often comply with postevent suggestions planted by adults than those made by peers (Ceci, Toglia, & Ross, 1990).…”

“…Research focusing on children’s autobiographical memory demonstrates that such exchanges can change the way that experienced events are represented and remembered, particularly when conversational partners differ in their renderings of the event. For instance, talking with co-witnesses who experienced a slightly different version of the same event (e.g., Candel, Memon, & Al-Harazi, 2007; Principe & Ceci, 2002), who overheard errant information about a shared event (e.g., Principe, Kanaya, Ceci, & Singh, 2006; Principe, Haines, Adkins, & Guiliano, 2010), or who generated erroneous inferences about the past (Principe, Guiliano, & Root, 2008) can distort children’s recollections in ways consistent with their conversational partner’s experiences. Despite the growing number of demonstrations of the mnemonic effects of memory exchanges on children’s event recall, little is known about the content of such conversations and which specific qualities of these discussions are linked to later errors in remembering.…”

“…Compared to children for whom the false information was suggested in a highly coercive interview, those exposed to the rumor gave more errant reports, were more likely to wrongly recall actually seeing (as opposed to merely hearing about) the suggested event, and embellished their accounts with a generous degree of fictitious detail in line with the suggestions. Further, cross-study comparisons show that various forms of rumor (e.g., Principe, Tinguely, & Dobkowski, 2007; Principe, Haines, et al, 2010) can lead to error levels higher than those typically produced by misleading interviews (Bruck, Ceci, & Hembrooke, 2002; Roberts & Powell, 2006) or other commonly-examined sources of suggestion, such as parental coaching (Poole & Lindsay, 2001), stereotype induction (Leichtman & Ceci, 1995), or visualization (Ceci, Huffman, Smith, & Loftus, 1994). …”

Natural conversations as a source of false memories in children: Implications for the testimony of young witnesses

“…To examine this issue, we used a warning manipulation that minimized social pressures to report an overheard rumor about an experienced event and we examined the qualitative characteristics of children’s false narratives prompted by the rumor (Principe, Haines, Adkins, & Guiliano, 2010). Three- to 6-year-olds watched a magic show in their schools and we replicated the Overheard, Classmate, and Control procedures from our rumor original study.…”