"I can't skip it": does free report improve accuracy in false memories?

Strategic monitoring of recognition memory by children and adults was examined using a semantic DRM procedure. Children (7- and 10-year-olds) and adults (overall  = 393) studied lists of semantically related words either incidentally or intentionally and were tested with old items, new items and critical lures to judge as old or new. Participants either made a decision about every item they saw (forced report), or they had the opportunity to withhold answers they were uncertain about (free report).

Piecing Together the Puzzle of Pictorial Representation: How Jigsaw Puzzles Index Metacognitive Development.

Jigsaw puzzles are ubiquitous developmental toys in Western societies, used here to examine the development of metarepresentation. For jigsaw puzzles this entails understanding that individual pieces, when assembled, produce a picture. In Experiment 1, 3- to 5-year-olds (N = 117) completed jigsaw puzzles that were normal, had no picture, or comprised noninterlocking rectangular pieces.

Item repetition and response deadline affect familiarity and recollection differently across childhood.

The aim was to examine how item repetition at encoding and response deadline at retrieval affect familiarity and recollection in 5-, 7-, or 11-year-old children ( = 156). Familiarity and recollection were estimated using a process dissociation paradigm. Direct comparison of the effects of repetition under unlimited and limited response time revealed a dissociation of familiarity and recollection.

Bilinguals' inhibitory control and attentional processes in a visual perceptual task.

The aim was to examine theories of bilingual inhibitory control superiority in the visual domain. In an ambiguous figure task, the ability to reverse (switch) interpretations (e.g.

Children's perception of visual and auditory ambiguity and its link to executive functions and creativity.

The phenomenon of perceptual bistability provides insights into aspects of perceptual processing not normally accessible to everyday experience. However, most experiments have been conducted in adults, and it is not clear to what extent key aspects of perceptual switching change through development. The current research examined the ability of 6-, 8-, and 10-year-old children (N = 66) to switch between competing percepts of ambiguous visual and auditory stimuli and links between switching rate, executive functions, and creativity.

Similar but separate systems underlie perceptual bistability in vision and audition.

The dynamics of perceptual bistability, the phenomenon in which perception switches between different interpretations of an unchanging stimulus, are characterised by very similar properties across a wide range of qualitatively different paradigms. This suggests that perceptual switching may be triggered by some common source. However, it is also possible that perceptual switching may arise from a distributed system, whose components vary according to the specifics of the perceptual experiences involved.

Ego depletion in visual perception: Ego-depleted viewers experience less ambiguous figure reversal.

This study examined the effects of ego depletion on ambiguous figure perception. Adults (N = 315) received an ego depletion task and were subsequently tested on their inhibitory control abilities that were indexed by the Stroop task (Experiment 1) and their ability to perceive both interpretations of ambiguous figures that was indexed by reversal (Experiment 2). Ego depletion had a very small effect on reducing inhibitory control (Cohen's d = .

Are developments in mental scanning and mental rotation related?

The development and relation of mental scanning and mental rotation were examined in 4-, 6-, 8-, 10-year old children and adults (N = 102). Based on previous findings from adults and ageing populations, the key question was whether they develop as a set of related abilities and become increasingly differentiated or are unrelated abilities per se. Findings revealed that both mental scanning and rotation abilities develop between 4- and 6 years of age.

The format of children's mental images: Evidence from mental scanning.

This study examined the development and format of children's mental images. Children (4-, 5-, 6-7-, 8-9-, and 11-year-olds) and adults (N=282) viewed a map of a fictitious island containing various landmarks and two misleading signposts, indicating that some equidistant landmarks were different distances apart. Five-year-olds already revealed the linear time-distance scanning effect, previously shown in adults (Experiments 1 and 2): They took longer to mentally scan their image of the island with longer distances between corresponding landmarks, indicating the depictive format of children's mental images.

Process dissociation of familiarity and recollection in children: response deadline affects recollection but not familiarity.

According to dual-process theories, recollection (slow and associated with contextual details) and familiarity (fast and automatic) are two independent processes underlying recognition memory. An adapted version of the process dissociation paradigm was used to measure recognition memory in 5-, 7-, and 11-year-olds and adults. In Experiment 1, it was found that 5-year-olds already recollect details of items (i.

Getting the picture: iconicity does not affect representation-referent confusion.

Three experiments examined 3- to 5-year-olds' (N = 428) understanding of the relationship between pictorial iconicity (photograph, colored drawing, schematic drawing) and the real world referent. Experiments 1 and 2 explored pictorial iconicity in picture-referent confusion after the picture-object relationship has been established. Pictorial iconicity had no effect on referential confusion when the referent changed after the picture had been taken/drawn (Experiment 1) and when the referent and the picture were different from the outset (Experiment 2).

Inhibitory processes in visual perception: a bilingual advantage.

Bilingual inhibitory control advantages are well established. An open question is whether inhibitory superiority also extends to visual perceptual phenomena that involve inhibitory processes. This research used ambiguous figures to assess inhibitory bilingual superiority in 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old mono- and bilingual children (N=141).

The development of automatic and controlled inhibitory retrieval processes in true and false recall.

In three experiments, we investigated the role of automatic and controlled inhibitory retrieval processes in true and false memory development in children and adults. Experiment 1 incorporated a directed forgetting task to examine controlled retrieval inhibition. Experiments 2 and 3 used a part-set cue and retrieval practice task to examine automatic retrieval inhibition.

Children with autism's perception and understanding of ambiguous figures: evidence for pictorial metarepresentation, a research note.

A large body of autism research over the last 20 years has shown that people with autism have difficulties understanding mental states. This has been conceived of as a metarepresentational deficit. An open question is whether people with autism's metarepresentational deficit is limited to the mental domain.

Are children's memory illusions created differently from those of adults? Evidence from levels-of-processing and divided attention paradigms.

In two experiments, we investigated the robustness and automaticity of adults' and children's generation of false memories by using a levels-of-processing paradigm (Experiment 1) and a divided attention paradigm (Experiment 2). The first experiment revealed that when information was encoded at a shallow level, true recognition rates decreased for all ages. For false recognition, when information was encoded on a shallow level, we found a different pattern for young children compared with that for older children and adults.

Valence and the development of immediate and long-term false memory illusions.

Across five experiments we examined the role of valence in children's and adults' true and false memories. Using the Deese/Roediger-McDermott paradigm and either neutral or negative-emotional lists, both adults' (Experiment 1) and children's (Experiment 2) true recall and recognition was better for neutral than negative items, and although false recall was also higher for neutral items, false recognition was higher for negative items. The last three experiments examined adults' (Experiment 3) and children's (Experiments 4 and 5) 1-week long-term recognition of neutral and negative-emotional information.

The development of automatic associative processes and children's false memories.

We investigated children's ability to generate associations and how automaticity of associative activation unfolds developmentally. Children generated associative responses using a single associate paradigm (Experiment 1) or a Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM)-like multiple associates paradigm (Experiment 2). The results indicated that children's ability to generate meaningful word associates, and the automaticity with which they were generated, increased between 5, 7, and 11 years of age.

The role of associative strength in children's false memory illusions.

The effects of associative strength on rates of 7- and 11-year-old children's true and false memories were examined when category and Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) lists were used to cue the same critical lure. Backward associative strength (BAS) was varied such that the category and DRM lists had the same strength (DRM=category), DRM lists had more BAS (DRM>category), or category lists had more BAS (DRM View Article and Find Full Text PDF