Children's Use of Memory Editing Strategies to Reject Source Misinformation

Abstract

This is the first reported study of children's use of two metacognitive strategies, recollection rejection and diagnostic monitoring, to reject misinformation. Recollection rejection involves the retrieval of details that disqualify an event, whereas diagnostic monitoring involves the failure to retrieve expected details. First (n = 56, age 7 years) and third graders (n = 52, age 9 years) witnessed a staged classroom interaction involving common and bizarre accidents, were presented with misinformation about the source of these events, and took a memory test. Both age groups used recollection rejection, but third graders were more effective. There was little evidence that diagnostic monitoring influenced responses for bizarre events, potentially because these events were not sufficiently bizarre in the context of the stereotype induction.

A closer look at children’s metacognitive skills: The case of the distinctiveness heuristic

“…However, while the recall-to-reject process appears to remain effective when items are presented in a mixed-list design, the distinctiveness heuristic does not. This dissociation between memory (i.e., "recall-to-reject" strategy) and metacognitive (i.e., distinctiveness heuristic) retrieval processes is interesting because it extends the findings of Moore et al (Moore, Lampinen, Gallo, Adams, et al, 2017; indicating that children's retrieval strategies based on high-quality memories or on expectations about high-quality memories are influenced differently by the context and the task's characteristics. In the same vein, the fact that children's ability to discriminate between studied items and lures increases with age, especially in Experiment 2 where the larger number of stimuli makes the recognition task more difficult, suggests that the use of the "recall-to-reject" strategy improves with age.…”

“…These findings are important because they suggest that, even though the distinctiveness heuristic is applied from age 4 onward, its use still improves with age. Interestingly, this might explain why the distinctiveness effect had previously been shown to be smaller in young than in older children (e.g., Ghetti & Alexander, 2004;Howe et al, 2000;Moore, Lampinen, Gallo, Adams, et al, 2017;. Moreover, age-related differences were found in response bias scores in Experiment 2; specifically, 6-and 9-year-old children responded more conservatively than 4-year-old children to both pictures and words when items were presented within the same list.…”

“…This pattern makes it difficult to decide whether metacognitive processes (creation of retrieval expectations leading to the use of the distinctiveness heuristic), memory processes (enhancement of memory traces allowing for the use of a recall-to-reject strategy), or both influenced children's recognition performance in the above-described study, insofar as each of these processes is anticipated to reduce participants' false recognition rate. In two recent studies, Moore and colleagues (Moore, Lampinen, Gallo, Adams, & Bridges, 2017; examined the developmental trajectory of both the distinctiveness heuristic and the recall-to-reject strategy in 7-and 9-year-old children. They found that these two retrieval strategies improved differently with age, suggesting that their influence on the rejection of misinformation can potentially be differentiated.…”

Lie for Me: Developmental Trends in Acquiescing to a Blatantly False Statement

“…Children may make statements about events they initially know to be false if the statements are suggested by adults who hold a priori beliefs about their authenticity. Adults may signal their beliefs through methods such as repeating specific misinformation during questioning (e.g., Warren et al, 1991 ; Leichtman and Ceci, 1995 ; Poole and Lindsay, 2001 ; Moore et al, 2018 ), offering praise, bribes or threats of punishment (Garven et al, 1998 ; Schreiber et al, 2006 ), rejecting or ignoring children's denials (White et al, 1997 ; Garven et al, 1998 ), and selectively reinforcing their incorrect statements (Zaragoza et al, 2001 ). Such social pressure can cause a child to make statements that, while consistent with the belief of the interviewer, are inconsistent with the child's actual perceptual experience (for a review see Ceci and Bruck, 1998 ; Bruck et al, 2006 ).…”

“…Such social pressure can cause a child to make statements that, while consistent with the belief of the interviewer, are inconsistent with the child's actual perceptual experience (for a review see Ceci and Bruck, 1998 ; Bruck et al, 2006 ). Even mild forms of suggestion can increase inaccurate reports by children, such as descriptions of events by parents (e.g., Thompson et al, 1997 ; Poole and Lindsay, 2001 ), visualization inductions (Ceci et al, 1994 ) being informed that co-witnesses have made a disclosure (Principe and Ceci, 2002 ), stereotypes (Leichtman and Ceci, 1995 ; Moore et al, 2018 ), or even naturally-occurring conversations with parents and peers (Bruck et al, 1999 ; Principe and Schindewolf, 2012 ; Kim et al, 2017 ).…”