Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.
Memory. 2012;20(8):818-35. doi: 10.1080/09658211.2012.708345. Epub 2012 Sep 11.
Children may incorporate misinformation into reports of witnessed events, particularly if the misinformation is repeated. One explanation is that the misinformation trace is strengthened by repetition. Alternatively, repeating misinformation may reduce the discriminability between event and misinformation sources, increasing interference between them. We tested trace strength and distinctiveness accounts by showing 5- and 6-year-olds an event and then presenting either the "same" or "varying" items of post-event misinformation across three iterations. Performance was compared to a baseline in which misinformation was presented once. Repeating the same misinformation increased suggestibility when misinformation was erroneously attributed to both event and misinformation sources, supporting a trace strength interpretation. However, suggestibility measured by attributing misinformation solely to the event, was lower when misinformation was presented repeatedly rather than once. In contrast, identification of the correct source of the event was less likely if the misinformation was repeated, whether the same or different across iterations. Thus a reduction in the distinctiveness of sources disrupted memory for the event source. Moreover, there was strong association between memory for the event and a measure of distinctiveness of sources, which takes into account both the number of confusable source and their apparent temporal spacing from the point of retrieval.
儿童可能会将错误信息纳入目击事件的报告中，尤其是当错误信息被重复时。一种解释是，错误信息的痕迹因重复而得到加强。或者，重复错误信息可能会降低事件和错误信息源之间的可辨别性，从而增加它们之间的干扰。我们通过向 5 岁和 6 岁的儿童展示一个事件，然后在三个迭代中呈现“相同”或“不同”的事后错误信息项，来测试痕迹强度和独特性解释。与错误信息仅呈现一次的基线相比，比较了性能。当错误信息错误地归因于事件和错误信息源时，重复相同的错误信息会增加暗示性，支持痕迹强度解释。然而，当错误信息重复呈现而不是仅呈现一次时，通过仅将错误信息归因于事件来衡量的暗示性较低。相比之下，如果错误信息被重复呈现，无论是相同的还是不同的，那么识别事件的正确来源的可能性就会降低。因此，来源的独特性降低会破坏对事件来源的记忆。此外，对事件的记忆与源的独特性的度量之间存在很强的关联，该度量考虑了可混淆源的数量及其与检索点的明显时间间隔。
