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...

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