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计划。该研究项目是理论驱动的，迄今为止，它已经产生了许多关于错误记忆的新发现，这些发现最初是在理论基础上预测的。该项目包括三个大规模的开发实验。本实验主要研究了两种被认为是儿童错误记忆报告中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预测了这两种操作的存在（即，模糊痕迹理论），并且在先前的实验中已经报道了成年人使用这两种操作的证据。回忆拒绝是一种抑制与儿童经验要点一致的虚假事件报告的操作。抑制是通过检测虚假但gist-consistent事件和真实事件的逐字痕迹之间的不匹配来完成的。例如，在听到一个包含“鸟在笼子里”和“笼子在桌子下面”的叙述后，孩子们可以通过检索任何一个句子的逐字痕迹并注意到“鸟”和“桌子”这两个词在句子中没有一起出现来拒绝未呈现的陈述“鸟在桌子下面”。另一方面，幻影回忆是一种支持虚假事件报告的操作，这些事件与儿童经验的主旨一致，通过为这些事件产生虚幻的生动现象。模糊痕迹理论认为，主旨记忆有时会导致虚假事件伴随着虚幻的生动现象，这些现象很难与伴随真实事件的生动现象区分开来。这些虚幻的回忆导致那些没有经历过的事情被记住为物理“事件”（例如，它们在心灵的眼睛里看到或在心灵的耳朵里听到）。模糊痕迹理论预测，幻影回忆可以在满足两个条件时发生：（a）经历的事件反复提示某些熟悉的含义，因此对该含义的主旨记忆非常强烈;（B）引发幻影回忆的虚假事件是对强主旨记忆的特别好的提取线索。实验实现了一个新的范例，联合识别。该范式提供了一种可靠的测量儿童回忆拒绝和幻影回忆的行为方法。儿童在三种类型的指令下对记忆测试作出反应（只接受有经验的事件，只接受与经验要点一致的非有经验的事件，接受有经验的事件+与经验要点一致的非有经验的事件）。在这些不同类型的指令中，回忆拒绝和幻影回忆被识别为具有不同的反应模式。一个数学模型，是定义在范式校正原始的反应模式的影响，无关的变量，这使得研究人员能够分离和量化的回忆拒绝和幻影回忆的影响。这种范式的实施产生详细的调查结果，回忆拒绝和幻影回忆如何影响错误的记忆报告，这些操作如何随着年龄的变化，以及它们如何对法医学上重要的任务变量作出反应。在实验1中，回忆拒绝和幻影回忆的影响，自发的错误记忆的叙述研究在年幼的儿童（4-和5岁），年龄较大的儿童（10-和11岁），和成人。实验1还确定了这两个操作如何对五个具有法医学意义的任务变量（事件的重复，事件的近因，记忆测试的顺序，记忆测试的时间和记忆测试的重复）作出反应。模糊痕迹理论预测了这些变量中的每一个对回忆拒绝和幻影回忆的影响。在实验2中，在相同的三个年龄水平的叙事植入错误记忆的回忆拒绝和幻影回忆的效果进行了研究，通过插入一个记忆暗示程序后的叙事呈现。实验2包括与实验1相同的五个任务变量。实验3的目的是确定如何以及实验1和2的结果推广到更自然的目击者的情况。叙述性错误记忆程序被一个标准化的准法医任务所取代，该任务涉及轻罪盗窃。本研究评估了自发性错误记忆和植入性错误记忆对回忆拒绝和幻影回忆的影响。同样的三个年龄水平进行了研究，设计包括五个任务变量中的三个，图在实验1和2（重复的事件，记忆测试的时间，和重复的记忆测试）。

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).