Developmental reversals in false memory: A review of data and theory.

Abstract

Can susceptibility to false memory and suggestion increase dramatically with age? The authors review the theoretical and empirical literatures on this counterintuitive possibility. Until recently, the well-documented pattern was that susceptibility to memory distortion had been found to decline between early childhood and young adulthood. That pattern is the centerpiece of much expert testimony in legal cases involving child witnesses and victims. During the past 5 years, however, several experiments have been published that test fuzzy-trace theory's prediction that some of the most powerful forms of false memory in adults will be greatly attenuated in children. Those experiments show that in some common domains of experience, in which false memories are rooted in meaning connections among events, age increases in false memory are the rule and are sometimes accompanied by net declines in the accuracy of memory. As these experiments are strongly theory-driven, they have established that developmental improvements in the formation of meaning connections are necessary and sufficient to produce age increases in false memory.

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

“…According to Fuzzy‐Trace Theory (FTT, Brainerd, Reyna, & Ceci, 2008) and Associative‐Activation Theory (AAT, Howe, Wimmer, Gagnon, & Plumpton, 2009; Otgaar, Howe, Peters, Smeets, & Moritz, 2014), different types of processing are directly linked to the formation of false memories. FTT postulates that when witnessing an event, at least two memory traces are stored in parallel.…”

“…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). …”

“…Thus, retrieval‐enhanced suggestibility is more likely to occur after immediate questioning at the meaning level while an inoculation effect is more likely after immediate questioning on an item‐specific level. Although the ability to extract meaning and item‐specific information undergoes considerable developmental improvements, the former development is more protracted than the latter (Bjorklund, 1987; Brainerd et al, 2008; Howe et al, 2009). Thus, we hypothesized that whereas item‐specific testing should be beneficial for all ages (inoculation effect), meaning testing should affect younger children more than older children, adolescents, and adults increasing their retrieval‐enhanced suggestibility.…”

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

“…Fourth, one might argue that our results have limited practical value because our experiment focused on recognition measures. However, in DRM research, although it is true that for some findings (e.g., the effect of emotion on false memory) recall and recognition results can differ, for other findings (e.g., developmental increases in false memories) the results are the same for recall and recognition (Brainerd et al ., 2008). Furthermore, in legal contexts, it is known that children are often not asked open‐ended recall questions, but are interviewed using closed questions such as the ones we used in our recognition tasks (e.g., ‘Do you remember that your father touched you on your buttocks?’).…”

The Potential for False Memories is Bigger than What Brewin and Andrews Suggest

“…Third, it is remarkable that B&A did not examine false memories induced by misinformation (Loftus, 2005)—a type of false memory that has also been regarded as an implanted false memory (Brainerd, Reyna, & Ceci, 2008). Of course, false memories induced by misinformation are often about small details and do not pertain to entire events.…”