Children (but Not Adults) Can Inhibit False Memories

The role of inhibition in children's (5-, 7-, and 11-year-olds') false memory illusions in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm was examined using a list-wise directed-forgetting procedure. Children studied either a single DRM list (control) or two DRM lists in succession with a directed-remembering instruction or a directed-forgetting instruction between list presentations. The findings indicated that, like adults, children effectively suppressed the output of true memories when given a directed-forgetting instruction. Unlike adults, whose false memories are not attenuated in directed-forgetting conditions, children suppressed false memories at recall in the directed-forgetting condition. Because recognition data indicated that the children did generate false memories regardless of instruction, it appears that although adults' false memories are generated automatically and do not become part of their conscious experience, children's false memories are produced with greater effort and conscious processing, and as a result are easier to suppress at output.