Children's expectations and episodic reports over 12 weeks: Influences on memory for a specially designed pediatric examination

Abstract

SummaryThis investigation extended work on the linkage between knowledge and remembering by exploring the relation between generic and episodic memory representations. Thirty 6‐year‐old children experienced a mock physical examination with some expected components omitted and other unexpected actions included. Immediately and again after 12 weeks, the children reported the event, answered questions about what usually happens in an examination, and rated their confidence in aspects of their reports. They remembered more typical than atypical present components, that is, those included in the examination, and, over time, falsely reported more typical than atypical actions. The children produced intrusions of expected‐but‐omitted medical features at the delay but with lower confidence ratings than they provided for correctly recalled items. Performance on a source monitoring task was associated with aspects of the children's confidence ratings for intrusions. The findings provide evidence that the relation between episodic and generic representations is dynamic and suggest that the capacity to differentiate between them contributes to the development of accurate eyewitness memory.