Rumor mongering and remembering: How rumors originating in children’s inferences can affect memory

Children's suggestibility for neutral arbitrary actions in the context of norm violations

This study investigated children's false memories for neutral arbitrary actions. Five- to six-year-olds (N = 32) were taught four arbitrary actions, each following specific rules. The children then watched a televised adult performing eight actions: the four familiar actions while violating one aspect of each rule script and four unfamiliar actions. Suggestive and non-suggestive questions about all witnessed actions were asked, followed by forced-choice test questions to measure the false memory effect. The likelihood of forming false memories was higher in the suggestive condition than in the non-suggestive condition. There was no effect of previously acquired knowledge about the rules of the actions and no interaction between rule knowledge and suggestion. The results are discussed in light of previous findings in related fields of false memory research.

Digital media and misinformation: An outlook on multidisciplinary strategies against manipulation

This review discusses the dynamic mechanisms of misinformation creation and spreading used in social networks. It includes: (1) a conceptualization of misinformation and related terms, such as rumors and disinformation; (2) an analysis of the cognitive vulnerabilities that hinder the correction of the effects of an inaccurate narrative already assimilated; and (3) an interdisciplinary discussion on different strategies for coping with misinformation. The discussion encompasses journalistic, educational, governmental and computational viewpoints on the topic. The review also surveys how digital platforms handle misinformation and gives an outlook on opportunities to address it in light of the presented viewpoints.

Developmental reversals in false memory: Development is complementary, not compensatory

We report the 1st example of a true complementarity effect in memory development-a situation in which memory for the same event simultaneously becomes more and less accurate between early childhood and adulthood. We investigated this paradoxical effect because fuzzy-trace theory predicts that it can occur in paradigms that produce developmental reversals in false memory, which are circumstances in which adults are more likely than children to remember new events as old. The complementarity prediction is this: If subjects separately judge whether those same events are new but similar to old ones, adults will be more accurate than children, even though adults are less accurate when they judge whether the items are old. We report 4 experiments in which children (6- and 10-year-olds), adolescents (14-year-olds), and adults encoded the modal developmental reversal materials: Deese-Roediger-McDermott lists. Then, they responded to memory tests on which half the subjects judged whether test items were old and half judged whether the same items were new-similar. The paradoxical complementarity effect was detected in all experiments: The tendency to falsely remember new-similar items as being old increased with development, but so did the tendency to correctly remember them as being new-similar. (PsycINFO Database Record

The malleability of developmental trends in neutral and negative memory illusions

Among many legal professionals and memory researchers there exists the assumption that susceptibility to false memory decreases with age. In 4 misinformation experiments, we show that under conditions that focus on the meaning of experiences, children are not always the most susceptible to suggestion-induced false memories. We begin by presenting a short overview of previous developmental false memory studies, the majority of which have found that the susceptibility to misinformation decreases with age. In Experiment 1, 6/7-year-olds, 11/12-year-olds, and adults received a video and were confronted with misinformation about related but nonpresented details. Older children and adults had higher misinformation acceptance rates than younger children. In Experiment 2, we replicated this finding adding a younger child group (4/6-year-olds). In Experiments 3 and 4, we used new material and again found that susceptibility to misinformation increased with age. Together, these experiments show that children's memory accuracy is not necessarily inferior to that of adults.'

When Children are the Least Vulnerable to False Memories: A True Report or a Case of Autosuggestion?

In this case report, a legal case revolving around the reliability of statements given by a 6-year-old girl is described. She claimed to have witnessed her mother being murdered by her father. Two psychological experts provided diametrically opposed opinions about the reliability of her statements. One expert, a clinician, opined that the girl's statements were based on autosuggestion whereas the other expert, a memory researcher, stated that autosuggestion was unlikely to have played a role. This case and the analysis of the experts' opinions illustrate what may happen when experts in court are unaware of the recent literature on (false) memory. That is, recent studies show that autosuggestion is less likely to occur in young children than in older children and adults. The current case stresses the importance and implications of relying on memory experts in cases concerning the reliability of eyewitness statements.

Fuzzy-Trace Theory and Lifespan Cognitive Development

Fuzzy-trace theory (FTT) emphasizes the use of core theoretical principles, such as the verbatim-gist distinction, to predict new findings about cognitive development that are counterintuitive from the perspective of other theories or of common-sense. To the extent that such predictions are confirmed, the range of phenomena that are explained expands without increasing the complexity of the theory's assumptions. We examine research on recent examples of such predictions during four epochs of cognitive development: childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, and late adulthood. During the first two, the featured predictions are surprising developmental reversals in false memory (childhood) and in risky decision making (adolescence). During young adulthood, FTT predicts that a retrieval operation that figures centrally in dual-process theories of memory, recollection, is bivariate rather than univariate. During the late adulthood, FTT identifies a retrieval operation, reconstruction, that has been omitted from current theories of normal memory declines in aging and pathological declines in dementia. The theory predicts that reconstruction is a major factor in such declines and that it is able to forecast future dementia.

Developmental Reversals in False Memory

Classic research that was initiated in response to heavy reliance on children’s evidence in certain types of criminal cases showed that the incidence of false memories declines steadily between childhood and young adulthood. This developmental decline pattern became the centerpiece of much expert testimony, and it has been treated as settled science in court rulings. It is not settled science. A large number of studies have recently appeared on developmental reversals, an opposite pattern in which false memories for events that preserve the gist of experience increase dramatically between early childhood and young adulthood. Developmental reversals challenge the forensic principle that children’s evidence is inherently more infected with false memories than adults’ evidence.

Children's natural conversations following exposure to a rumor: linkages to later false reports

Previous research has shown that children naturally propagate overheard false rumors and that the circulation of such information can induce children and their peers to wrongly recall actually experiencing rumored-but-nonexperienced events. The current study extends this work by recording 3- to 6-year-olds' naturally occurring conversations following exposure to an erroneous rumor. Results indicate that, compared with children who overhear rumors spread by adults, those who pick up rumors from peers during natural interactions engage in deeper and more inventive rumor mongering. Moreover, the degree and originality of rumor propagation was linked with various qualities of children's subsequent recollections at both 1-week and 4-week delayed interviews. Furthermore, compared with 3- and 4-year-olds, 5- and 6-year-olds naturally transmitted more novel and coherent embellishments of the rumor to their peers, and more of their false narrative reports during the interviews overlapped with their own and their peers' utterances transmitted soon after the rumor was planted.

Reliability of Children's Testimony in the Era of Developmental Reversals

A hoary assumption of the law is that children are more prone to false-memory reports than adults, and hence, their testimony is less reliable than adults'. Since the 1980s, that assumption has been buttressed by numerous studies that detected declines in false memory between early childhood and young adulthood under controlled conditions. Fuzzy-trace theory predicted reversals of this standard developmental pattern in circumstances that are directly relevant to testimony because they involve using the gist of experience to remember events. That prediction has been investigated during the past decade, and a large number of experiments have been published in which false memories have indeed been found to increase between early childhood and young adulthood. Further, experimentation has tied age increases in false memory to improvements in children's memory for semantic gist. According to current scientific evidence, the principle that children's testimony is necessarily more infected with false memories than adults' and that, other things being equal, juries should regard adult's testimony as necessarily more faithful to actual events is untenable.

Natural Conversations as a Source of False Memories in Children: Implications for the Testimony of Young Witnesses

Research on factors that can affect the accuracy of children's autobiographical remembering has important implications for understanding the abilities of young witnesses to provide legal testimony. In this article, we review our own recent research on one factor that has much potential to induce errors in children's event recall, namely natural memory sharing conversations with peers and parents. Our studies provide compelling evidence that not only can the content of conversations about the past intrude into later memory but that such exchanges can prompt the generation of entirely false narratives that are more detailed than true accounts of experienced events. Further, our work show that deeper and more creative participation in memory sharing dialogues can boost the damaging effects of conversationally conveyed misinformation. Implications of this collection of findings for children's testimony are discussed.

Peer influence on event reports among adolescents and young adults

When two or more people witness an event together, the event report from one person can influence others' reports. In the current study we examined the role of age and motivational factors on peer influence regarding event reports in adolescents and young adults. Participants (N=249) watched a short video of a robbery then answered questions with no co-witness information or with information believed to be from a co-witness. Public and private response conditions were included to explore motivations for peer influence. Co-witness information influenced participants' responses, although the effect was equally strong in the private and the public co-witness conditions. Peer influence on event reports was steady across a large age range (11- to 25-year-olds).

Theoretical and forensic implications of developmental studies of the DRM illusion

In the study of false memory, developmental research on the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) illusion has played a pivotal role in theory evaluation and forensic application. The extensive developmental DRM literature (55 experiments published in English-language journals) provided the first clear evidence that false memories can increase dramatically from early childhood onward, whereas traditional ideas about cognitive development predict steady declines. Similar increases have recently been reported in false memory for complex, realistic life events, using forensically oriented paradigms. Age improvements in the ability to connect meaning across words have been found to be necessary and sufficient for developmental increases in the DRM illusion. When the data of developmental DRM studies are combined with parallel findings from forensically oriented paradigms, the result is an existence proof that a principle used by the law to evaluate children's evidence is mistaken. According to that principle, children's versions of events are always more likely to be infected with false memories than those of adults, and hence, juries should give more weight to adults' versions of events.

False rumors and true belief: memory processes underlying children's errant reports of rumored events

Previous research has shown that overhearing an errant rumor--either from an adult or from 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-but-nonexperienced 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 rumored-but-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 (relative to when they were planted by an adult).