Processes That Control Children's False-Memory Reports: Recollection, Rejection, and Phantom Recollection

这个项目延续了研究人员对儿童错误记忆的研究项目。这个研究项目是由理论驱动的，迄今为止，它已经产生了许多关于错误记忆的新发现，这些新发现最初是在理论基础上预测的。这个项目包括三个大规模的发展实验。实验集中在两个被认为是儿童错误记忆报告的关键控制因素的认知操作：回忆拒绝和幻影回忆。研究人员对错误记忆的理论解释（即模糊痕迹理论）预测了这两种操作的存在，并且在以前的实验中已经报道了成年人使用这两种操作的证据。拒绝回忆是一种抑制与儿童经历要点一致的虚假事件的报道的操作。抑制是通过检测虚假但基本一致的事件与实际事件的逐字痕迹之间的不匹配来实现的。例如，在听了一个包含“鸟在笼子里”和“笼子在桌子下面”的叙述后，孩子们可以通过逐字检索所呈现的句子的痕迹来拒绝未呈现的“鸟在桌子下面”，并注意到“鸟”和“桌子”这两个词在句子中没有同时出现。另一方面，幻影回忆是一种操作，它通过对这些事件产生虚幻的生动现象学来支持与儿童经验要点一致的虚假事件的报告。模糊追踪理论认为，要点记忆有时会导致虚假事件伴随着虚幻的生动现象学，这些现象学很难与伴随真实事件的生动现象学区分开来。这些虚幻的回忆导致没有经历过的事情被记忆为物理的“事件”（例如，它们在心灵的眼睛中看到或在心灵的耳朵中听到）。模糊追踪理论预测，当满足两个条件时，幻影回忆就会发生：(a)经历过的事件反复提示一些熟悉的意义，因此对该意义的要点记忆非常强烈；(b)引起幻影回忆的错误事件是对强要点记忆特别好的检索线索。实验实现了一种新的范式——联合识别。该范式为测量儿童回忆拒绝和幻影回忆提供了一种可靠的行为方法。儿童在三种类型的指令下对记忆测试做出反应（只接受有经验的事件，只接受与经验要点一致的非经验事件，接受有经验的事件+与经验要点一致的非经验事件）。在这些不同类型的指令中，记忆拒绝和幻影记忆具有不同的反应模式。在范式上定义的数学模型纠正了外来变量影响的原始反应模式，这使得研究人员能够分离和量化回忆拒绝和幻影回忆的影响。这一范式的实施产生了详细的发现，包括回忆拒绝和幻影回忆如何影响错误记忆报告，这些操作如何随着年龄的增长而变化，以及它们如何对具有法医意义的任务变量做出反应。在实验1中，研究了回忆拒绝和幻影回忆对幼儿（4、5岁）、大儿童（10、11岁）和成人自发性叙述错误记忆的影响。实验1还确定了这两种操作对五个具有重要意义的任务变量（事件的重复、事件的近时性、记忆测试的顺序、记忆测试的时间和记忆测试的重复）的反应。模糊痕迹理论预测了这些变量对回忆拒绝和幻影回忆的影响。实验2在相同的三个年龄水平上，通过在叙述呈现后插入记忆提示程序，研究了回忆拒绝和幻影回忆对植入虚假叙述记忆的影响。实验2包含与实验1相同的5个任务变量。实验3的目的是确定实验1和2的结果推广到更自然的目击情景的程度。叙述性错误记忆程序被涉及轻罪盗窃的标准化准法医任务所取代。回忆拒绝和幻像回忆对自发记忆和植入错误记忆的影响通过目击者程序进行了评估。研究了同样的三个年龄水平，设计包括实验1和2中出现的五个任务变量中的三个（事件重复、记忆测试的时间和记忆测试的重复）。

This project continues the researchers' program of research on children's false memories. That program of research is theory-driven, and to date, it has produced a number of new findings about false memories that were originally predicted on theoretical grounds. This project consists of three large-scale developmental experiments. The experiments focus on two cognitive operations that are believed to be key controlling factors in children's false-memory reports: recollection rejection and phantom recollection. The existence of both operations is predicted by the researchers' theoretical account of false memory (i.e., fuzzy-trace theory), and evidence of the use of both operations by adults has been reported in previous experiments. Recollection rejection is an operation that suppresses the reporting of false events that are consistent with the gist of children's experience. Suppression is accomplished via the detection of mismatches between false-but-gist-consistent events and verbatim traces of actual events. For instance, after hearing a narrative containing the statement "The bird is inside the cage" and "The cage is under the table," children could reject the unpresented statement "The bird is under the table" by retrieving verbatim traces of either presented sentence and noticing that the words "bird" and "table" do not appear together in the sentence. Phantom recollection, on the other hand, is an operation that supports the reporting of false events that are consistent with the gist of children's experience by generating illusory vivid phenomenologies for those events. Fuzzy-trace theory posits that gist memories sometimes cause false events to be accompanied by illusory vivid phenomenologies that are difficult to distinguish from the vivid phenomenologies that accompany true events. These phantom recollections cause things that were not experienced to be remembered as physical "occurrences" (e.g, they are seen in the mind's eye or heard in the mind's ear). Fuzzy-trace theory predicts that phantom recollection can occur when two conditions are met: (a) Experienced events repeatedly cue some familiar meaning, so that gist memories of that meaning are very strong, and (b) the false events that provoke phantom recollection are especially good retrieval cues for strong gist memories. The experiments implement a new paradigm, conjoint recognition. This paradigm provides a reliable behavioral method of measuring recollection rejection and phantom recollection in children. Children respond to memory tests under three types of instructions (accept only experienced events, accept only nonexperienced events that are consistent with the gist of experience, and accept experienced events + nonexperienced events that are consistent with the gist of experience). Recollection rejection and phantom recollection are identified with distinct patterns of responses across these different types of instructions. A mathematical model that is defined over the paradigm corrects raw response patterns for the influence of extraneous variables, which allows researchers to separate and quantify the effects of recollection rejection and phantom recollection. Implementation of this paradigm generates detailed findings on how recollection rejection and phantom recollection affect false-memory reports, on how these operations change with age, and on how they react to forensically-significant task variables. In Experiment 1, the effects of recollection rejection and phantom recollection on spontaneous false memories of narratives are studied in younger children (4- and 5-year-olds), older children (10- and 11-year-olds), and adults. Experiment 1 also determines how the two operations react to five forensically-significant task variables (repetition of events, recency of events, order of memory tests, timing of memory tests, and repetition of memory tests). Fuzzy-trace theory makes predictions about each of these variable's effects on recollection rejection and phantom recollection. In Experiment 2, the effects of recollection rejection and phantom recollection on implanted false memories of narratives are studied at the same three age levels by interpolating a memory-suggestion procedure following narrative presentation. Experiment 2 includes the same five task variables as Experiment 1. The aim of Experiment 3 is to determine how well the results of Experiments 1 and 2 generalize to more naturalistic eyewitness situations. The narrative false-memory procedure is replaced by a standardized quasi-forensic task involving a misdemeanor theft. The effects of recollection rejection and phantom recollection on both spontaneous and implanted false memories are assessed with this eyewitness procedure. The same three age levels are studied, and the design includes three of the five task variables that figure in Experiments 1 and 2 (repetition of events, timing of memory tests, and repetition of memory tests).