We examined whether typical developmental trends in suggestion-induced false memories (i.e., age-related decrease) could be changed. Using theoretical principles from the spontaneous false memory field, we adapted 2 often-used false memory procedures: misinformation (Experiment 1) and memory conformity (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, 7- to…

The effect of test-induced priming on false recognition was investigated in children aged 5, 7, 9, and 11 years using lists of semantic associates, category exemplars, and phonological associates. In line with effects previously observed in adults, nine- and eleven-year-olds showed increased levels of false recognition when critical lures were…

In two experiments, we investigated the robustness and automaticity of adults' and children's generation of false memories by using a levels-of-processing paradigm (Experiment 1) and a divided attention paradigm (Experiment 2). The first experiment revealed that when information was encoded at a shallow level, true recognition rates decreased for…

The authors examined 284 maltreated and nonmaltreated children's (6- to 12-year-olds) ability to inhibit true and false memories for neutral and emotional information using the Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. Children studied either emotional or neutral DRM lists in a control condition or were given directed-remembering or…

We investigated children's ability to generate associations and how automaticity of associative activation unfolds developmentally. Children generated associative responses using a single associate paradigm (Experiment 1) or a Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM)-like multiple associates paradigm (Experiment 2). The results indicated that children's…

The effects of associative strength and gist relations on rates of children's and adults' true and false memories were examined in three experiments. Children aged 5-11 and university-aged adults participated in a standard Deese/Roediger-McDermott false memory task using DRM and category lists in two experiments and in the third, children…

The effects of within- versus between-languages (English-French) study and test on rates of bilingual children's and adults' true and false memories were examined. Children aged 6 through 12 and university-aged adults participated in a standard Deese-Roediger-McDermott false memory task using free recall and recognition. Recall results showed…

In this commentary, assumptions about the nature and development of children's false memories as described in a recent article by C. J. Brainerd, V. F. Reyna, and S. J. Ceci (2008) are reviewed. Specifically, questions are raised about what drives the development of false memories in fuzzy-trace theory (FTT). Recent studies that challenge a core…

The role of categorical versus associative relations in 5-, 7-, and 11-year-old children's true and false memories was examined using the Deese--Roediger--McDermott (DRM) paradigm and categorized lists of pictures or words with or without category labels as primes. For true items, recall increased with age and categorized lists were better…

Differences in basic memory processes between maltreated and nonmaltreated children were examined in an experiment in which middle-socioeconomic-status (SES; N=60), low-SES maltreated (N=48), and low-SES nonmaltreated (N=51) children (ages 57, 89, and 10-12 years) studied 12 Deese-Roediger-McDermott lists. Using recall and recognition measures,…

The question of whether or not a certain mathematical model is applicable to the paired-associate data of preschool children as well as adults was examined in five experiments. (Author/MP)

Three experiments measured 2.5- and 3.5-year-olds' long-term retention of object-location pairings. The subjects were provided with reinforcing information three weeks after the initial exposure and tested four weeks after initial exposure. It was found that this reinstatement (1) improved children's long-term retention; (2) affected both…

Used path analysis in two experiments to examine possibility that age difference in infants' long-term retention were artifacts of correlated differences in learning rates or learning opportunities. Found that developmental declines in forgetting rates between 12 and 18 months were independent of developmental differences in learning. Age…

Examined effects of interfering information and instructions to forget on preschoolers' and kindergartners' story retention. Found that retroactive interference affected preschoolers' storage- and retrieval-based forgetting rates and kindergartners' storage-based forgetting rates. Intentional forgetting reduced retroactive interference primarily…

Reported an experiment on the effects of taxonomic organization on 7- and 11-year-olds' free and cued recall of two- and four-category lists. Analysis used a stages-of-learning model that simultaneously delivered estimates of the impact of these manipulations on storage and retrieval components of recall. (Author/CB)