Causes of False Memory Formation in Children

False memory formation is a curious and potentially damaging error in memory encoding that seems to be especially more prominent in children. A false memory is a form of retrieval failure, only this failure represents the mistaken recall of some event that has not actually happened (Terry, 2009). In psychological testing, the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) procedure showcased how intrusions of false recall can occur when actual stimuli consist of associated items (Terry, 2009). For example, in one test, recall of the word “sleep” occurred between thirty and forty percent of the time when participants worked with a list of associated words such as “snooze” and “slumber” (Terry, 2009, p. 315). Later research showed this percentage to be as high as fifty percent (Terry, 2009). False retrieval is one thing, since it’s relatively easy to see how a list of related words in an abstract test setting can produce such an effect as thinking a different related word was presented, but this also forms a basis for researching and possibly understanding detailed false memory formation (i.e. recalling entire events as memories even though they did not actually occur).

False memories are a step up from simple false recall. Beyond simply not remembering if something was said or imagined, it’s also possible to firmly believe that a particular memory actually happened when, in fact, it did not. The most famous case in psychological circles comes from the pioneer of developmental psychology: Jean Piaget (Boyd & Bee, 2009). Up until he was fifteen years old, Piaget firmly believed, and vividly remembered, a person attempting to kidnap him from a nearby park on a sunny day when he was two years old (Boyd & Bee, 2009). A legendary tale of the family, Piaget confirmed that despite his age at the time, he remembered not only the face of his would-be attacker, but the valiant fight that his nanny put up to save him (Boyd & Bee, 2009). When he was fifteen, however, the nanny – having experienced a religious awakening and seeking out forgiveness because of guilt – sought out the family to tell them that the kidnapping had never actually happened, but was, in fact, completely made up (Boyd & Bee, 2009). From then on, Piaget became fascinated with the human mind and led him on a path of exploration in cognitive functioning and development (Boyd & Bee, 2009). It’s easy to see why. Memories are something that we use to form our identities from, and to be presented with the possibility of false memories is enough to question the process of memory formation and the risks that may make children and adults more susceptible to such false memory formation.

Significance

Understanding and researching false memory formation is important in order to understand how and why memories form in a certain way, why a child’s mind would want to store a false memory, and how to prevent such occurrences from happening. For example, some studies have shown that the mere usage of recognition tests on children can actually create false memories (Brainerd & Reyna, 1996). An understanding of the parameters for false memory formation is also paramount in preventing false memory formation in adults, including during such practices as hypnosis, and during deep-rooted introspection in psychoanalytic therapy. Of particular importance is determining whether or not there are differences in the way children and adults form memories (specifically false ones), or as Metzger et al. (2008) state in the title to their paper: do children “DRM” like adults do? It could also be a simple matter of the presentation of the information at hand. Ghetti, Qin and Goodman (2002) focus on the “distinctiveness” of information to single out possible reasons behind false memory formation. These are all important ideas to examine in the course of understanding memory and false memory formation.

Additionally, research in the area of false memory formation is also important to the fields of law and criminology, as children are often impressionable and can exhibit false memories whether covering for an adult during an investigation, or accusing another person of a crime that they may not have committed, despite a child’s vivid recollection of said crime.

Research Findings

False memory formation seems to be particularly harrowing in children. To expand upon the aforementioned Brainerd and Reyna (1996) study, it was noted in the research that recall tests (i.e. tests that require studied information to be reproduced) helped to inoculate real memories against possible forgetting without the trouble of creating false memories; however, the same cannot be said for recognition tests (i.e. tests that present studied items along with unstudied items to see if previously studied material can be distinguished) (Terry, 2009). Brainerd and Reyna (1996) performed two different experiments with five and eight year old children showing that initial recognition tests actually elevated the likelihood of a false memory response on delayed tests. In their first experiment, false memory formation exceeded the inoculation of real memories in five year old children, producing a cumulative loss in accuracy over time (Brainerd & Reyna, 1996). Meanwhile, in the second experiment, false memory formation exceeded real memory inoculation across both age groups (Brainerd & Reyna, 1996). The differences between the two experiments rested on the exclusion of an initial recognition test until after a determined forgetting interval (Brainerd & Reyna, 1996). These experiments showed not only the differences in recall and recognition when it comes to real memory inoculation, but also how recognition testing alone can elevate the possibility of false memory formation in children.

The differences between recall and recognition testing have shown the possibility of false memory formation in children, but there are many factors beyond testing and forgetting intervals that can impact such a problem. In studying developmental trends associated with DRM, Ghetti, Qin and Goodman (2002) looked at the role of distinctive information (i.e. differences relative to a certain context) in regards to false memory formation, as well as the individual’s subjective experience of the truthfulness or falseness of certain information. In tests of different age-grouped children and adults, it was noted that distinctive information was successful in reducing false memory formation for all age groups, despite the younger children showcasing more susceptibility in producing false memories without the distinctiveness added (Ghetti, Qin & Goodman, 2002). In this particular study, the distinctive information was represented by a picture that accompanied each word in a word list (Ghetti, Qin & Goodman, 2002). Furthermore, younger children who studied distinctive information, as well as older children and adults (regardless of distinctiveness) showed a higher level of confidence in true memories than false memories during later testing (Ghetti, Qin & Goodman, 2002). The importance of this last conclusion lies in examining developmental questions regarding subjective feelings towards certain experiences. By having children make source and confidence judgments on memories, it provides information regarding how children attribute qualities to particular memories (Ghetti, Qin & Goodman, 2002). This brings the DRM task and false memory formation into the realm of developmental study.

In developmental research, the biggest need is to determine if there is a difference between the way children and adults formulate false memories. A recent Wimmer and Howe (2010) study suggested that information encoded at a shallow level produced a different pattern in regards to false recognition than that of older children and adults. Children’s false recognition rates changed when the levels of cognitive processing were manipulated or when divided attention was needed (Wimmer & Howe, 2010). This suggests both qualitative and quantitative changes in false memory rates with age (Wimmer & Howe, 2010). In children, shallow level processing and divided attention affected overall false recognition – something that did not occur in adults.

Everything that has been explored thus far deals with the concept of DRM. Remember that DRM deals with the intrusion of the false recognition of an associated word within a group of studied material. Interestingly enough, studies have shown that such false recognition is negatively correlated to age (Anastasi & Rhodes, 2008). That is, children appear to be less susceptible than adults to the DRM illusion overall. This seems to run counterintuitive to current thought on memory in children; however, the DRM is not indicative of all false memories – just false memories as they relate to studied associated items. In discussing the DRM task, Brainerd, Reyna and Forrest (2002) examined this DRM dilemma through the fuzzy-trace theory and determined that the low levels of DRM issues in children may be a direct result of not-yet-fully-developed gist traces in a child’s memories. False memories occur due to either alternative verbatim traces or gist traces that are evaluated with incorrect data due to the associated material (Brainerd, Reyna & Forrest, 2002). In children, memory retention is still under development; therefore, both verbatim and gist traces are relatively poor (Brainerd, Reyna & Forrest, 2002). Without better developed gist traces in memory, a child is unable to store information as “meaning” and is less likely to encounter a DRM illusion in which an associated word is believed to have been studied. This accounts for younger children doing better with DRM tasks, but alternatively, younger children do worse with general memory tests overall. This can affect verbatim traces and result in the false memory formation that has been a concern of the legal system. With verbatim memory poor, children are likely to take an explicitly suggested event (i.e. “Remember when you ate that hotdog at the baseball game?”) and incorporate it into their memory as their own (Brainerd, Reyna & Forrest, 2002). This suggests that despite relatively accurate memories, a child’s actual retention of events is poorer than those of an older age and ultimately leaves the child more susceptible to false memories from alternative verbatim traces received from those around him or her.

Summary and Conclusion

False memory formation remains an interesting and sometimes baffling psychological event that forces us to ponder the cognitive processes behind memory encoding and retrieval, as well as the effects that such memories have on personal identity. Why do such false memory formations occur? With the list items experiment mentioned in the introduction to this paper, some psychologists believe that it is the notion of spreading activation that is the cause (Terry, 2009). In this notion, activation spreads from the representation of each list item in memory to associated items in memory (Terry, 2009). This is almost like a queueing up of related data for potential recall. Think of Google’s old Web Accelerator program. Internet search giant Google (2008) used to have a piece of functionality in their browser toolbar add-on that sped up page loads by finding links on the current page you were viewing and accessing them ahead of time, caching the results in memory, so that when you do click on one of those links, the page loads faster since it’s coming from the cache. Spreading activation can be thought of in the same way.

Alternatively, there are those that support the fuzzy trace theory as mentioned previously in the study by Brainerd, Reyna and Forrest (2002). This theory suggests that there are two different memory traces that encode presented information (Wimmer & Howe, 2010). The first is a verbatim trace that encodes surface level features, while the second is a gist trace that encodes the overall meaning (Wimmer & Howe, 2010). It is the gist trace that is believed to be responsible for false memories, especially after the fading of verbatim traces (Wimmer & Howe, 2010). As a child gets older, their gist extraction improves, which actually leaves them more susceptible to false memory formation in the context of the DRM (Wimmer & Howe, 2010).

In DRM testing with word lists, children remembered fewer of the list words than adults; therefore, they remembered fewer of the lures that potentially cause false recall and recognition, but as they get older, children show an increase in likely false recall and recognition. An increase in remembering in children is accompanied by an increase in misremembering (Terry, 2009). This isn’t to necessarily suggest that children are more reliable than adults, as overall, children have worse memories and are more susceptible to agreeing with and incorporating alternative events presented by another person (e.g. parents, police officers, etc.). This draws into question the reliability of younger children as eyewitnesses in course cases (Terry, 2009).

As mentioned previously, psychologists have created recommendations for interview questions when dealing with children during criminal and legal investigations. A lot of effort has been going into the development of neutral prompts to help witnesses recall actual events (ScienceDaily, 2008). Furthermore, returning a witness to the scene of a crime or particular event is also deemed as a neutral way to stimulate verbatim memory (ScienceDaily, 2008).

Ultimately, if the fuzzy trace theory is to be believed, we can acknowledge that children and adults do indeed show a difference in false memory formation when it comes to the DRM illusion. Children will ultimately be less likely to exhibit false recall and recognition on DRM tasks than adults due to the lack of development in gist traces; however, the overall poor memory of a child also means a lack of development in verbatim traces making children more susceptible to alternative verbatim traces of events provided to them by adults. This creates false memories that become completely incorporated into the child’s memory and perhaps even identity (e.g. such as Piaget’s false memory). Regardless of the plight of a child, this research has also shown that adults are not exempt from false memory formation, as the reliance of gist traces might produce an accurate recollection of the meaning of an event, but lacks the details often necessary in court cases, and sometimes includes false recall and recognition detrimental to proper justice. Stimulation of the verbatim traces is necessary in order to produce a more accurate detail of the memory in question.

References

Anastasi, J. S., & Rhodes, M. G. (2008). Examining differences in the levels of false memories in children and adults using child-normed lists. Developmental Psychology, 44(3), 889-894.

Boyd, D., & Bee, H. Lifespan development (5th ed.). (2009). Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Brainerd, C. J., & Reyna, V. F. (1996). Mere memory testing creates false memories in children. Developmental Psychology, 32(3), 467-478.

Brainerd, C. J., Reyna, V. F., & Forrest, T. J. (2002). Are young children susceptible to the false-memory illusion? Child Development, 73(5), 1363-1377.

Ghetti, S., Qin, J., & Goodman, G. S. (2002). False memories in children and adults: Age, distinctiveness, and subjective experience. Developmental Psychology, 38(5), 705-718.

Google. (2008). Web accelerator. Retrieved from http://webaccelerator.google.com/support.html

Metzger, R. L., Warren, A. R., Shelton, J. T., Price, J., Reed, A. W., & Williams, D. (2008). Do children “DRM” like adults? False memory production in children. Developmental Psychology, 44(1), 169-181.

ScienceDaily. (2008, March 17). Children’s memory may be more reliable than adults’ in court cases. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080313124445.htm

Terry, W. S. (2009). Learning and memory: Basic principles, processes, and procedures. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Wimmer, M. C., & Howe, M. L. (2010). Are children’s memory illusions created differently from those of adults? Evidence from levels-of-processing and divided attention paradigms. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 107(1), 31-49.