Promote Children's False Memories

Background: The famous McMartin case study had encouraged researchers to look into how children create false memories of implausible events. Mazzoni et al suggested that three steps to how false memories are formed. Firstly, event has to be conceivable, secondly, believe that the event happened and lastly interpreted images and thoughts as memory details. Previous studies have suggested that prevalence information makes people believe that the false event actually occurred (Hart & Schooler 2006; Mazzoni et al).
Aim: This study aimed to look whether prevalence information (details about the frequency) promotes children’s false memories for implausible and plausible events. To look at developmental variations within the development of false
Younger children are more expected to develop false memories than older children.
Method:
Participants: 91 primary school children from two different age groups (44 7-8 year olds & 47 11-12 year olds).
Materials: Several pieces of stimulus material were used;
• True narratives describing each Childs first day at school obtained via parents. This acted as a control.
• False narratives, which were developed in a pilot study. 49 children rated the likelihood of an event occurring to them on a 7-point smiley face scale. Depending on the most popular ratings, two events were chosen: almost choked on a candy (plausible) and abducted by UFO (implausible).
• False newspaper articles to act as prevalence information describing either the true narrative or false narrative depending on the condition.
Design: Independent groups design (between-subjects design). The different conditions were:
• Younger children (7-8) vs. older children (11-12)
• Event type: plausible vs. implausible
• Prevalence information: yes vs. no.
Children were randomly assigned to the event type and prevalence
For example, one 8-year-old child said, “it really did happen.”
• True events: The children remembered 97% of the true events at interview 1 and 98% of true events during Interview 2.
• False events: At Interview 1, 33% of the children developed a false memory. At Interview 2, 36% of the children developed a false memory.
• Prevalence information: Prevalence information improved the development of 7–8 year old children’s false memories but not 11–12 year old children’s false memories, and this effect occurred at Interview 1, but not at Interview 2. (Otgaar et al., 2009). 7–8 year old children who received prevalence information were approximately two times more likely to report false memories at Interview 1 than their 7–8 year old counterparts who did not receive prevalence information.
• Plausibility: The plausibility of the false event did not affect the development of false memories. That is, both younger and older children were equally likely to report false memories of choking on a candy and being abducted by a UFO.
• Age: The younger children were more likely to report false memories than the older children at Interview