Source monitoring and false recollection: a life span developmental perspective.

In a variation of Deese's (1959, Journal of Experimental Psychology, 58, 17-22) list-learning paradigm, 32 first-graders, 32 younger adults, and 24 older adults self-generated words that were semantically related to study items prior to recall. This manipulation increased false recollection for children and older adults, but not for younger adults. These data suggest that source-monitoring deficits underlie children's and older adults' illusory memories within the list-learning format.