ERIC Number: EJ1024595
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2013
Pages: 10
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1524-8372
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Suggestibility from Stories: Can Production Difficulties and Source Monitoring Explain a Developmental Reversal?
Goswick, Anna E.; Mullet, Hillary G.; Marsh, Elizabeth J.
Journal of Cognition and Development, v14 n4 p607-616 2013
Children's memories improve throughout childhood, and this improvement is often accompanied by a reduction in suggestibility. In this context, it is surprising that older children learn and reproduce more factual errors from stories than do younger children (Fazio & Marsh, 2008). The present study examined whether this developmental reversal is limited to production tests, or whether younger children are still less suggestible when the final test (multiple-choice) asks them to recognize the answer. A second goal was to explore the role of source monitoring in children's suggestibility by examining children's awareness of learning within, versus before, the experiment. Five-year-olds and 7-year-olds listened to stories containing correct, neutral, and misleading references and later took either a multiple-choice or short-answer general knowledge test. In addition, they judged whether each answer had appeared in the stories and whether they had known it before the experiment. Critically, a developmental reversal in suggestibility was observed on both tests; younger children were less suggestible even when faced with the story errors at test. Although older children showed superior source discriminability for whether their answers had appeared in the stories, they showed an illusion of prior knowledge, believing they had known their misinformation answers all along. To this effect, older children's increased suggestibility may be due not only to their superior memory capacity for specific story errors, but also to their ability and tendency to integrate story information into their knowledge base.
Descriptors: Multiple Choice Tests, Memory, Childrens Literature, Young Children, Story Reading, Statistical Analysis, Recall (Psychology), Cues, Childhood Attitudes, Prior Learning, Misconceptions, Age Differences, Recognition (Psychology)
Psychology Press. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 325 Chestnut Street Suite 800, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Fax: 215-625-2940; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Early Childhood Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A