The malleability of developmental trends in neutral and negative memory illusions.

Abstract

Among many legal professionals and memory researchers there exists the assumption that susceptibility to false memory decreases with age. In 4 misinformation experiments, we show that under conditions that focus on the meaning of experiences, children are not always the most susceptible to suggestion-induced false memories. We begin by presenting a short overview of previous developmental false memory studies, the majority of which have found that the susceptibility to misinformation decreases with age. In Experiment 1, 6/7-year-olds, 11/12-year-olds, and adults received a video and were confronted with misinformation about related but nonpresented details. Older children and adults had higher misinformation acceptance rates than younger children. In Experiment 2, we replicated this finding adding a younger child group (4/6-year-olds). In Experiments 3 and 4, we used new material and again found that susceptibility to misinformation increased with age. Together, these experiments show that children’s memory accuracy is not necessarily inferior to that of adults.’

Eliminating age differences in children’s and adults’ suggestibility and memory conformity effects.

“…Furthermore, we SUGGESTIBILITY AND MEMORY CONFORMITY 28 have recently used more ecologically valid and forensically-oriented stimuli (negative videos) and have also obtained developmental reversals in false memory rates (Otgaar et al, 2016).…”

The Impact of Testing on the Formation of Children's and Adults' False Memories

“…According to both theories, the witness might erroneously infer that a knife was the weapon used in the robbery. Although earlier research has mainly focused on the formation of spontaneous false memories (see Brainerd et al, 2008 for an overview), newer studies also link AAT and FTT to misinformation induced false memories (Otgaar, Howe, Brackmann, & Smeets, 2016). …”

Maltreatment increases spontaneous false memories but decreases suggestion‐induced false memories in children

“…Also, because the age range was quite broad in our sample, we incorporated age as a covariate as well. As is customary in developmental research on (spontaneous) false memories, scores were corrected for possible response bias, a correction that leads to purer measures of hits and false memory (Otgaar et al ., 2016). To be more precise, scores were transformed using the following two‐high threshold correction ( H  − FA(U)) in which H is the hit rate for presented items and FA(U) refers to false alarms of non‐presented unrelated items (Snodgrass & Corwin, 1988).…”

“…An example of a negative DRM list was as follows: tears, sorrow, laugh, whine, baby, scream, roar, whining, wet, weep, which referred to the critical lure ‘cry’. These DRM lists have been used in previous research and are effective in generating spontaneous false memories (Otgaar et al ., 2016). The DRM recognition task contained 78 words including 40 correct items (e.g., butter, tears), 10 critical lures, 10 non‐presented related items (e.g., deceased, syrup), and 18 non‐presented unrelated items (e.g., rock, bus).…”

“…This video had already been successfully used in previous research (Otgaar et al ., 2016). Misinformation was presented in the form of an eyewitness account, which was audiotaped and presented to the children.…”