Source Misattributions Research Articles

Repeatedly Thinking about a Non-event: Source Misattributions among Preschoolers

In this paper we review the factors alleged to be responsible for the creation of inaccurate reports among preschool-aged children, focusing on so-called "source misattribution errors." We present the first round of results from an ongoing program of research that suggests that source misattributions could be a powerful mechanism underlying children′s false beliefs about having experienced fictitious events. Preliminary findings from this program of research indicate that all children of all ages are equally susceptible to making source misattributions. Data from a follow-up wave of data indicate that very young children may be disproportionately vulnerable to these kinds of errors when the procedure is changed slightly to create mental images more easily. This vulnerability leads younger preschoolers, on occasion, to claim that they actually experienced events that they only thought about. These preliminary findings are discussed in the context of the ongoing debate over the veracity and durability of delayed reports of early memories, repressed memories, dissociative states, and the validity risks posed by therapeutic techniques that entail repeated visually guided imagery inductions.

Source misattributions and the suggestibility of eyewitness memory.

Although the suggestibility of eyewitness memory is well documented, previous studies have not clearly established the extent to which misled Ss might come to believe they actually remember seeing the suggested details they report. To assess whether Ss confuse misleading suggestions for their "real memories" of a witnessed event, Ss were asked specific questions about their memory for the source of suggested items. The results of 5 experiments showed that misled Ss do sometimes come to believe they remember seeing items that were merely suggested to them, a phenomenon we refer to as the source misattribution effect. Nevertheless, the results also showed that the magnitude of this effect varies and that source misattributions are not an inevitable consequence of exposure to suggestions.

Source misattributions and the suggestibility of eyewitness memory.

Source misattributions and the suggestibility of eyewitness memory.

Memory impairment and source misattribution in postevent misinformation experiments with short retention intervals.

The four experiments reported here provide evidence that (1) misleading postevent suggestions can impair memory for details in a witnessed event and (2) subjects sometimes remember suggested details as things seen in the event itself. All four experiments used recall tests in which subjects were warned of the possibility that the postevent information included misleading suggestions and were instructed to report both what they witnessed in the event and what was mentioned in the postevent narrative. Recall of event details was poorer on misled items than on control items, and subjects sometimes misidentified the sources of their recollections. Our results suggest that these findings are not due to guessing or response biases, but rather reflect genuine memory impairment and source monitoring confusions.

Rate of False Source Attributions Depends on How Questions Are Asked

Lindsay and Johnson (1989) and Zaragoza and Koshmider (1989) report evidence indicating that "eyewitness" subjects are much less likely to falsely claim to have seen information suggested to them verbally when they receive a source monitoring test than when they receive a recognition test requesting only identification of the seen information. The present study reports additional evidence that source misattributions are affected by the nature of the test. Intraub and Hoffman (1992) recently reported the results of a study in which subjects claimed to have seen pictures corresponding to scenes that had only been described in paragraphs they had read. With this paradigm, we found a similar effect using their test, but source confusions were reduced with a test patterned after the one used by Lindsay and Johnson. We attribute this difference in performance to the different decision criteria evoked by these two tests.