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We examined children's ability to translate their preverbal memories into language following a period of substantial language development. Children participated in a unique event, and their memory was assessed 6 months or 1 year later. At the time of the event and at the time of the test, their language skills were also assessed. Children of all ages exhibited evidence of verbal and nonverbal memory. Their language skills also improved over the delay. By the time of the test, children of all ages had acquired most of the vocabulary necessary to describe the target event. Despite this, they did not translate preverbal aspects of their memory into language during the test. In no instance did a child verbally report information about the event that was not part of his or her productive vocabulary at the time of encoding. We conclude that language development plays a pivotal role in childhood amnesia.

Three experiments with three- and five-year-old children affirmed the notion that children's false memory responses are less likely to be forgotten than true-memory responses. This is according to the fuzzy-trace theory, which states that false memories persist across intervals compared with true memories. This is attributed to the unstable verbatim traces which support initial true-memory responses and the stable gist of events which support false-memory responses.

Autobiographical memory is a function which may develop during a specific point in childhood. It begins when a child learns to relate memories with others and forms a representational system based on exposure to social linguistic formulations. The child develops a certain degree of acumen in memory recounting after using another person's language representation of a similar experience. Once children share their experiences more with others, they will be able to properly relay cultural knowledge acquired at home and in the outside worrld.

This study examined how an erroneous rumor circulated among preschoolers can influence their memory. One fourth of the children overheard a rumor from an adult conversation in which it was alleged that an event the children had not experienced themselves had occurred. A second fourth were the classmates of those who overheard the rumor. A third group had no exposure to the rumor. The remaining children actually experienced the event suggested by the rumor. One week later, the children were interviewed in either a neutral or a suggestive manner. Results from a second interview after a 2-week delay revealed that under both interview conditions, children who overheard the rumor, either from the adult conversation or during naturally occurring interactions with classmates, were as likely to report experiencing the rumored but nonexperienced event as were those who actually experienced it. Most reports of the rumored but nonexperienced event were in children's free recall and were accompanied by high levels of fictitious elaboration.

The role of inhibition in children's (5-, 7-, and 11-year-olds') false memory illusions in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm was examined using a list-wise directed-forgetting procedure. Children studied either a single DRM list (control) or two DRM lists in succession with a directed-remembering instruction or a directed-forgetting instruction between list presentations. The findings indicated that, like adults, children effectively suppressed the output of true memories when given a directed-forgetting instruction. Unlike adults, whose false memories are not attenuated in directed-forgetting conditions, children suppressed false memories at recall in the directed-forgetting condition. Because recognition data indicated that the children did generate false memories regardless of instruction, it appears that although adults' false memories are generated automatically and do not become part of their conscious experience, children's false memories are produced with greater effort and conscious processing, and as a result are easier to suppress at output.

Prospective studies of adults' memories of documented child sexual abuse (CSA) reveal that the majority of individuals remember their victimization. However, the accuracy of these memories has rarely been investigated scientifically. The present study examined predictors of memory accuracy and errors 12 to 21 years after abuse ended for individuals with legal experiences resulting from documented CSA. Severity of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptomatology was positively associated with memory accuracy. However, individuals nominating CSA as their most traumatic life event exhibited relatively accurate memory regardless of indicators of PTSD. Predictors of memory errors were also identified (e.g., less maternal support). These results indicate that, in addition to understanding the role of traditional cognitive factors, understanding an event's traumatic impact is important for predicting the accuracy of long-term memory for reported CSA.

Memory illusions in children of three age groups (5-, 8-, and 11-year-olds) were investigated using a modified version of the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) procedure. Children from each age group falsely recalled nonpresented items related to the study lists. However, the nature of the intrusions varied across the different groups. The 5-year-olds were more likely to falsely recall words that rhymed with the studied items than to recall unrelated items, whereas the 11-year-olds were more likely to falsely recall words that were semantically related to the list theme than to produce either rhyming or unrelated intrusions. Intrusions made by the 8-year-olds were equally likely to be semantic, rhyming, or unrelated to study items. The results are consistent with the notion of a developmental shift from phonological to semantic associations, leading to qualitatively different memory distortions in children of different ages.

The extent to which young children monitor and use the truth of assertions to gauge the reliability of subsequent testimony was examined. Three- and 4-year-old children were presented with two informants, an accurate labeler and an inaccurate labeler. They were then invited to learn names for novel objects from these informants. The children correctly monitored and identified the informants on the basis of the truth of their prior labeling. Furthermore, children who explicitly identified the unreliable or reliable informant across two tasks went on to demonstrate selective trust in the novel information provided by the previously reliable informant. Children who did not consistently identify the unreliable or reliable informant proved indiscriminate.