Department of Human Development, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2010 Oct;107(2):137-54. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2010.04.013. Epub 2010 Jun 12.
Do the emotional valence and arousal of events distort children's memories? Do valence and arousal modulate counterintuitive age increases in false memory? We investigated those questions in children, adolescents, and adults using the Cornell/Cortland Emotion Lists, a word list pool that induces false memories and in which valence and arousal can be manipulated factorially. False memories increased with age for unpresented semantic associates of word lists, and net accuracy (the ratio of true memory to total memory) decreased with age. These surprising developmental trends were more pronounced for negatively valenced materials than for positively valenced materials, they were more pronounced for high-arousal materials than for low-arousal materials, and developmental increases in the effects of arousal were small in comparison with developmental increases in the effects of valence. These findings have ramifications for legal applications of false memory research; materials that share the emotional hallmark of crimes (events that are negatively valenced and arousing) produced the largest age increases in false memory and the largest age declines in net accuracy.
事件的情绪效价和唤醒度会扭曲儿童的记忆吗？效价和唤醒度会调节违背直觉的虚假记忆随年龄增长而增加吗？我们使用康奈尔/科特兰情感词汇表（一个可以诱发虚假记忆的词汇表库，其中可以对效价和唤醒度进行因子分析）在儿童、青少年和成年人中研究了这些问题。对于未呈现的词汇表语义联想词，虚假记忆会随年龄增长而增加，而净准确率（真实记忆与总记忆的比率）则随年龄增长而降低。与正性效价材料相比，负性效价材料的这些令人惊讶的发展趋势更为明显；与低唤醒度材料相比，高唤醒度材料的这些发展趋势更为明显；与效价的发展性增加相比，唤醒度的发展性增加对虚假记忆的影响较小。这些发现对虚假记忆研究的法律应用具有重要意义；与犯罪具有相同情绪特征的材料（负性效价和唤起的事件）产生了最大的虚假记忆年龄增长和净准确率的最大年龄下降。
