Brainerd C J, Reyna V F, Ceci S J
Department of Human Development, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.
Psychol Bull. 2008 May;134(3):343-82. doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.134.3.343.
Can susceptibility to false memory and suggestion increase dramatically with age? The authors review the theoretical and empirical literatures on this counterintuitive possibility. Until recently, the well-documented pattern was that susceptibility to memory distortion had been found to decline between early childhood and young adulthood. That pattern is the centerpiece of much expert testimony in legal cases involving child witnesses and victims. During the past 5 years, however, several experiments have been published that test fuzzy-trace theory's prediction that some of the most powerful forms of false memory in adults will be greatly attenuated in children. Those experiments show that in some common domains of experience, in which false memories are rooted in meaning connections among events, age increases in false memory are the rule and are sometimes accompanied by net declines in the accuracy of memory. As these experiments are strongly theory-driven, they have established that developmental improvements in the formation of meaning connections are necessary and sufficient to produce age increases in false memory.
对错误记忆和暗示的易感性会随着年龄的增长而急剧增加吗？作者回顾了关于这种违反直觉可能性的理论和实证文献。直到最近，有充分记录的模式是，在幼儿期到青年期之间，对记忆扭曲的易感性被发现呈下降趋势。这种模式是在涉及儿童证人和受害者的法律案件中许多专家证词的核心。然而，在过去5年里，已经发表了几项实验，这些实验检验了模糊痕迹理论的预测，即成年人中一些最强大的错误记忆形式在儿童中会大大减弱。这些实验表明，在一些常见的经验领域中，错误记忆植根于事件之间的意义联系，错误记忆随年龄增长是常态，有时还伴随着记忆准确性的净下降。由于这些实验是由强大的理论驱动的，它们已经确定，意义联系形成过程中的发展进步是产生错误记忆随年龄增长的必要和充分条件。
