Recollection rejection: how children edit their false memories. Academic Article uri icon

Overview

abstract

  • A new methodology is presented for studying children's ability to suppress memory reports of false-but-gist-consistent events, one that measures children's use of a specific editing operation (recollection rejection) that suppresses false reports by accessing verbatim traces of true events. Children make memory reports under 2 instructional conditions, verbatim and gist, and the data are analyzed with fuzzy-trace theory's conjoint-recognition model. Application of the new methodology in studies of children's false memory for narrative events revealed that (a) false-memory editing increases dramatically between early and middle childhood, (b) even young children spontaneously edit their false memories, (c) measures of children's false-memory editing react appropriately to experimental manipulations, and (d) developmental reductions in the incidence of false-memory reports are primarily due to developmental improvements in verbatim memory ability (rather than to decreases in the formation of false memories). Implications for child forensic interviewing are discussed.

publication date

  • January 1, 2002

Research

keywords

  • Mental Recall
  • Motivation
  • Repression, Psychology

Identity

Scopus Document Identifier

  • 0036365867

PubMed ID

  • 11806698

Additional Document Info

volume

  • 38

issue

  • 1