Search

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-Mc-Dermott 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Semantic false memories are confounded with a second type of error, overdistribution, in which items are attributed to contradictory episodic states. Overdistribution errors have proved to be more common than false memories when the 2 are disentangled. We investigated whether overdistribution is prevalent in another classic false memory paradigm: source monitoring. It is. Conventional false memory responses (source misattributions) were predominantly overdistribution errors, but unlike semantic false memory, overdistribution also accounted for more than half of true memory responses (correct source attributions). Experimental control of overdistribution was achieved via a series of manipulations that affected either recollection of contextual details or item memory (concreteness, frequency, list order, number of presentation contexts, and individual differences in verbatim memory). A theoretical model was used to analyze the data (conjoint process dissociation) that predicts that (a) overdistribution is directly proportional to item memory but inversely proportional to recollection and (b) item memory is not a necessary precondition for recollection of contextual details. The results were consistent with both predictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disjunction fallacies have been extensively studied in probability judgment. They should also occur in episodic memory, if remembering a cue's episodic state depends on how its State is described on a memory test (e.g., being described as a target vs. as a distractor). If memory is description-dependent, cues will be remembered as occupying logically impossible combinations of episodic states (e.g., as being a target and a distractor). Consistent with this idea, memory disjunction fallacies were repeatedly detected in a series of experiments, at the level of individuals as well as at the level of groups. Disjunction fallacies varied as a function of manipulations that should affect description-dependency, such as type of test cue, immediate versus delayed testing, word frequency, and emotional valence. Response bias, as well as description-dependency, contributed to disjunction fallacies, as predicted by fuzzy-trace theory's retrieval model. The significance of these findings for memory is that a new form of episodic distortion, description-dependent memory, has been added to the 2 traditional forms (forgetting and false memory). The significance for probability judgment is that disjunction fallacies, which have customarily been explained as by-products of memory retrieval, may be wholly or partly due to the uncontrolled influence of response bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

S. Ghetti (2008) and M. L. Howe (2008) presented probative ideas for future research that will deepen scientific understanding of developmental reversals on false memory and establish boundary conditions for these counterintuitive patterns. Ghetti extended the purview of current theoretical principles by formulating hypotheses about how developmental reversals are controlled by the growth of phantom recollection and by the growth of false-memory editing. Some data are available on her hypotheses about phantom recollection, which distinguish phenomenology (vague or vivid) from memory representation (verbatim or gist). Howe introduced alternative theoretical principles that can be traced to the early work of Deese and Underwood. He argued that fuzzy-trace theory is subject to 3 limitations and that his alternative conception makes 3 predictions that contrast with fuzzy-trace theory's predictions. In the current reply, it is shown that the stated limitations do not apply to fuzzy-trace theory, that previously published research runs counter to the 3 predictions, and that the core difference between the 2 approaches is that fuzzy-trace theory is an opponent-processes model whereas the alternative conception is a 1-process model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report the first demonstration that a simple, theory-driven manipulation produces opposite developmental trends in false memory for the same information. When 6-, 10-, and 14-year-olds studied lists containing exemplars of familiar taxonomic categories, false memory for the same unpresented items (category exemplars and labels) increased with age if list items were semantically related but decreased with age if semantic relations could not be formed among list items. A control experiment ruled out the hypothesis that these results were due to young children having generic deficits in forming relations among list items. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our research was focused on a false-memory editing operation that is posited in fuzzy-trace theory—recollection rejection. The main objectives were (a) to extend model-based measurement of this operation to a narrative task that ought to ensure high levels of recollection rejection and (b) to study five manipulations that ought to influence recollection rejection by affecting the accessibility of verbatim traces of narrative statements: recency of narrative presentation, narrative repetition, type of false-memory item, testing delay, and repeated testing. The results showed that the narrative task did indeed yield high levels of recollection, with an estimated 49% of gist-consistent distractors being rejected in this way on initial memory tests. Consistent with current theoretical conceptions of false-memory editing, the results also showed that recollection rejection increased as a function of manipulations that should enhance the accessibility of verbatim traces of narrative statements, with repeated testing delivering especially large increases in verbatim accessibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

False memories have typically been found to be more common during early childhood than during later childhood or adulthood. However, fuzzy-trace theory makes the counterintuitive prediction that some powerful forms of adult false memory will be greatly attenuated in early childhood, an important example being the Deese/Roediger/McDermott (DRM) illusion. Three developmental studies of this illusion (N = 282) found that (1) it was at near-floor levels in young children, (2) it was still below adult levels by early adolescence, and (3) the low levels of the illusion in young children may be due to failure to "get the gist" of DRM materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The counterintuitive developmental trend in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) illusion (that false-memory responses increase with age) was investigated in learning-disabled and nondisabled children from the 6- to 14-year-old age range. Fuzzy-trace theory predicts that because there are qualitative differences in how younger versus older children and disabled versus nondisabled children connect meaning information across the words on DRM lists, certain key effects that are observed in adult studies will be absent in young children and in learning-disabled children. Data on 6 such adult effects (list strength, recall inflation, delayed inflation, delayed stability, thematic intrusion, and true-false dissociation) were used to investigate this hypothesis, and the resulting data were consistent with prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]