Are there developmental differences in reality-monitoring?

doi:10.1016/0022-0965(79)90064-X

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

Volume 27, Issue 1, February 1979, Pages 120-128

https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-0965(79)90064-X Get rights and content

Abstract

The question addressed by the present experiment is whether the ability to distinguish between veridical and imaginal memory representations changes with age. Second-grade, fourth-grade, and sixth grade children (8, 10, and 12 years old) and college students were shown pictures of familiar objects. Each picture was presented one, two, or three times and, interspersed with these presentations, subjects were asked to imagine each picture zero, one, or three times. Subsequently they were asked to judge the presentation frequency of each picture. For all groups, imagining the pictures resulted in inflated estimates of event frequency. However, contrary to the idea that children have a particularly difficult time discriminating externally generated from internally generated memories, one analysis indicated adults were actually somewhat more affected than children by the imagination trials.

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Reality Monitoring of Performed and Imagined Interactive Events: Developmental and Contextual Effects
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Age differences in reality monitoring of interactive events were examined among 4-year-olds, 8-year-olds, 12-year-olds, and adults. Participants engaged in some interactions and imagined others. Afterward, they were asked to determine whether each action was performed, imagined, or new. This memory test was repeated 1 week later. The 4-year-olds had more difficulty discriminating imagined actions than the two oldest age groups. Imagined actions were more often confused with performed ones than the reverse, though this bias was significant only for the two younger age groups. Reality monitoring decreased over time, especially for imagined items. Activities in which the participant was the agent of action were discriminated better than those in which someone else was the agent of action. Object use during the activity increased the discrimination of imagined actions, especially after the delay. Similarity among actions had no effect. Implications for child eyewitness testimony are discussed.
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Research to date into the development of the ability to discriminate between memories of things imagined and things directly experienced (reality monitoring) has not focused on the modality in which the tasks are presented. The present study sought to determine whether similar patterns of developmental progression in reality monitoring were present in visual and auditory modalities. Further, it sought to investigate the role of cross-modal imagery in reality-monitoring tasks. In Experiment 1, 6-year-old children performed less well than 9- to 10-year-old children in an auditory reality-monitoring task but not in a comparable visual task. Experiment 2 examined possible explanations for this finding. Six- and 10-year-old children were administered tasks similar to those in Experiment 1, but, within each modality, children were allocated either to a condition in which presented items were likely to elicit cross-modal imagery or to one in which cross-modal imagery was unlikely. Discrimination scores revealed evidence of developmental progression in both auditory and visual source-monitoring tasks, but no effect of cross-modal imagery.
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^☆: This research was supported in part by an award to the second author from the Spencer Foundation, Teachers College, Columbia University, and a Temple University Biomedical Sciences Grant to the third author.

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Are there developmental differences in reality-monitoring?☆

Abstract

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology

The development of memory, knowing, knowing about knowing, and knowing how to know