Developmental Trends in False Memory Across Adolescence and Young Adulthood: A Comparison of DRM and Memory Conformity Paradigms.

Little is known about the reliability of eyewitness memory among adolescents as most memory research has focused primarily on adults and young children. A number of studies recently have emerged outlining conditions where memory suggestibility increases from early childhood to adulthood. These developmental reversals are found in semantic association tasks such as the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm and have not yet been thoroughly investigated among adolescents. In the current study, we examined DRM performance among 11-21 year olds ( N = 245). Extending the work comparing children and adults, false memory on the DRM task increased with age. False memory on the DRM task was not associated with false memory on a memory conformity task. The different memory processes involved with the tasks and the implications for legal psychology are discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]