Mental reinstatement of the misinformation context and the misinformation effect in children and adults

Abstract

AbstractThe present study investigated the effects of mental reinstatement of the context in which misleading information about an event was presented on later recognition memory for the event. Five‐year‐olds, 7‐year‐olds and adults were shown a short video depicting a children's adventure and were asked a set of misleading questions to introduce misinformation one week later. Before the recognition memory test was administered another week later, half of the participants were given instructions to mentally reinstate the context of the misleading interview. Memory was assessed with a set of forced‐choice recognition questions once in the misleading interview context and for the children a second time at home one week later. When participants were instructed to mentally reinstate the context of the misleading interview prior to the recognition test, false memory reports occurred more often for adults than for children and had a stronger impact on peripheral information than on central information for both 7‐year‐olds and adults. When 5‐ and 7‐year‐olds were tested at home, false memory reports decreased. Thus, reinstating the context of an interview introducing misinformation can reduce the accuracy of memory reports; the context dependence of both accurate and inaccurate memory reports in children and adults is discussed. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.