Look into my eyes: a "faceless" avatar interviewer lowers reporting threshold for adult eyewitnesses.

Evidential interviewing is often used to gather important information, which can determine the outcome of a criminal case. An interviewer's facial features, however, may impact reporting during this task. Here, we investigated adults' interview performance using a novel tool-a faceless avatar interviewer-designed to minimize the impact of an interviewer's visual communication signals, potentially enhancing memory performance. Adults were interviewed about the details of a video by (1) a human-appearing avatar or a human interviewer (Experiment 1; N = 105) or (2) a human-appearing avatar or a faceless avatar interviewer (Experiment 2; N = 109). Participants assigned to the avatar interviewer condition were (1) asked whether they thought the interviewer was either computer or human operated (Experiment 1) or (2) explicitly told that the interviewer was either computer or human operated (Experiment 2). Adults' memory performance was statistically equivalent when they were interviewed by a human-appearing avatar or a human interviewer, but, relative to the human-appearing avatar, adults who were interviewed by a faceless avatar reported more correct (but also incorrect) details in response to free-recall questions. Participants who indicated that the avatar interviewer was computer operated-as opposed to human operated-provided more accurate memory reports, but specifically telling participants that the avatar was computer operated or human operated had no influence on their memory reports. The present study introduced a novel interviewing tool and highlighted the possible cognitive and social influences of an interviewer's facial features on adults' report of a witnessed event.

Dissociation and false memory: the moderating role of trauma and cognitive ability.

The term dissociation is often used to refer to a diverse range of psychological symptoms, including perceptual impairments, emotional detachment, and memory fragmentation. In the present study, we examined whether there was a relation between participants' self-reports of dissociative experiences and their memory performance in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm-a laboratory-based procedure that is frequently used to investigate false memory. University students (N = 298) completed the Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES) and the Traumatic Life Events Questionnaire (TLEQ). Participants were also administered a standardised intelligence test (Shipley-2), and they were tested in the DRM paradigm. Overall, experiencing trauma and dissociation, as well as lower levels of cognitive ability, were associated with higher false memory. These findings are discussed in the context of the activation monitoring theory of DRM false memory.

How does social distancing during COVID-19 affect negative moods and memory?

In the absence of an effective vaccine or treatment, the current best defence against COVID-19 is social distancing - staying at home as much as possible, keeping distance from others, and avoiding large gatherings. Although social distancing improves physical health in terms of helping to reduce viral transmission, its psychological consequences are less clear, particularly its effects on memory. In this research, we investigated the effect of social distancing duration on negative moods and memory. The relation between social distancing duration and both negative mood and memory errors followed the same U-shaped function: negative moods and memory errors initially decreased as social distancing duration increased, and then at approximately 30 days, they began to increase. Subsequent analyses indicated that memory errors were mediated by lonely mood in particular. Thus, short-term social distancing might benefit psychological well-being and memory performance, but extended social distancing has a negative impact on mood and memory.

Recollection improves with age: children's and adults' accounts of their childhood experiences.

Since the time of Freud, psychologists have drawn conclusions about children's memory on the basis of retrospective research with adults. Here, we turn the tables by examining what prospective studies with children and adolescents can tell us about the retrospective memory accounts provided by adults. Adults were interviewed about recent events and events from different points during their childhood (Age 5, Age 10) and early adolescence (Age 13). Children (5- and 8- to 9-year-olds) and young adolescents (12- to 13-year-olds) were interviewed about recent events. When matched for age at the time of encoding, adults recalled more about the target events than did 5-year-olds, even though the retention interval for adults was substantially longer. We conclude that retrospective studies with adults may lead researchers to overestimate the content of the early childhood memories that survive. We discuss the theoretical implications of these findings for an understanding of memory development and the practical implications for the interpretation of adults' retrospective accounts in the courtroom.

Mood impedes monitoring of emotional false memories: evidence for the associative theories.

In the present experiment, we investigated whether warnings provided at the time of retrieval would reduce emotional false memories in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. The provision of retrieval warnings allowed us to test specific predictions based on the associative theories (e.g., Activation-Monitoring Theory; AMT) and Fuzzy-Trace Theory (FTT) that have been used to account for false memories in the DRM paradigm. Participants were randomly assigned to either a no-warning group or a retrieval-warning group. In each group, mood-induction procedures were used to elicit a positive, negative, or neutral mood and participants were then presented with word lists comprised of positive, negative, or neutral words. Retrieval warnings reduced false recognition, regardless of the valence of the to-be-remembered information or participants' mood. Consistent with the associative theories' predictions, within the warning condition, positive moods yielded greater false recognition for positive critical lures, and negative moods yielded greater false recognition for negative critical lures, compared to neutral moods. These findings have important practical implications for our understanding of the effect of mood on memory.

If You're Happy and You Know It: Positive Moods Reduce Age-Related Differences in False Memory.

When tested in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm, children typically exhibit fewer false memories than do adolescents or adults. Here, participants' moods and the valence of word lists were manipulated to explore the mechanism responsible for this developmental reversal in memory performance. Children (7- to 8-year-olds), adolescents (11- to 12-year-olds), and young adults (18- to 22-year-olds; N = 270) were assigned to one of three induced mood conditions and were presented with emotional word lists. In negative moods, adolescents and adults falsely recalled more negative information than did children, showing the typical developmental reversal effect. This effect, however, was eliminated when participants were in positive moods. The findings provide support for associative-activation theory and have important implications for our understanding of the development of emotional false memories.

"What" and "where" was when? Memory for the temporal order of episodic events in children.

In the past, researchers have shown that the individual components of episodic memory (i.e "what," "where," and "when") may emerge at different points in development. Specifically, while children as young as three can accurately report the "what" and "where" of an event, they struggle to accurately report when the event occurred. One explanation for children's difficulty in reporting when an event took place is a rudimentary understanding, and ability to use, temporal terms. In the current experiment, we employed a physical timeline to aid children's reporting of the order in which a series of episodic events occurred. Overall, while 4-, 5-, and 6-year olds performed above chance, 3-year olds did not. Our findings suggest that 3-year olds' limited ability to produce temporal terms may not be the rate-limiting step preventing them from identifying when events occurred in their recent past.

The effect of mood on false memory for emotional DRM word lists.

In the present study, we investigated the effect of participants' mood on true and false memories of emotional word lists in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. In Experiment 1, we constructed DRM word lists in which all the studied words and corresponding critical lures reflected a specified emotional valence. In Experiment 2, we used these lists to assess mood-congruent true and false memory. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three induced-mood conditions (positive, negative, or neutral) and were presented with word lists comprised of positive, negative, or neutral words. For both true and false memory, there was a mood-congruent effect in the negative mood condition; this effect was due to a decrease in true and false recognition of the positive and neutral words. These findings are consistent with both spreading-activation and fuzzy-trace theories of DRM performance and have practical implications for our understanding of the effect of mood on memory.

Drawing conclusions: The effect of instructions on children's confabulation and fantasy errors.

Drawing is commonly used in forensic and clinical interviews with children. In these interviews, children are often allowed to draw without specific instructions about the purpose of the drawing materials. Here, we examined whether this practice influenced the accuracy of children's reports. Seventy-four 5- and 6-year-old children were interviewed one to two days after they took part in an interactive event. Some children were given drawing materials to use during the interview. Of these children, some were instructed to draw about the event, and some were given no additional instructions at all. Children who were instructed to draw about the event, or who were interviewed without drawing, made few errors. In contrast, children who drew without being given specific instructions reported more errors that were associated with both confabulation and fantasy. We conclude that, to maximise accuracy during interviews involving drawing, children should be directed to draw specifically about the interview topic.

Early memories come in small packages: episodic memory in young children and adults.

In two experiments, 3-year-old children were tested using an operant train procedure based on one originally developed by Carolyn Rovee-Collier. Children's behavioral and verbal recall of the event was assessed after a 24 hr (Experiment 1) and a 1-year delay (Experiment 2). After the 1-year delay, their mothers' verbal recall of the same event was also assessed. After both delays, children exhibited excellent nonverbal memory. Children also exhibited verbal, episodic memory of the same event, but their verbal reports were lean relative to those of their mothers, suggesting that the memories may be more vulnerable to forgetting over the long term. These data have important implications for memory development and childhood amnesia.

Developmental reversals in recognition memory in children and adults.

Older members of a given species typically exhibit superior learning and memory abilities relative to younger members, however, the developmental difference does not always occur in this younger-to-older direction. Developmental reversals are thought to reflect adaptive responses to the unique challenges imposed by the infant's niche. In humans, identification of developmental reversals has largely been precluded because infants, children, and adults are rarely tested using the same experimental procedures. Here, we adapted the visual recognition memory task and tested 3-year-olds and adults using one set of child-oriented stimuli and one set of adult-orientated stimuli. When tested immediately, children and adults exhibited recognition memory for both stimuli. When tested after a 1-week delay, children exhibited recognition memory for the child-oriented stimuli, but not for the adult-oriented stimuli and adults exhibited recognition memory for the adult-oriented stimuli, but not for the child-oriented stimuli. These data have important implications for current theories of memory development.

Visual attention to meaningful stimuli by 1- to 3-year olds: implications for the measurement of memory.

The visual recognition memory (VRM) paradigm has been widely used to measure memory during infancy and early childhood; it has also been used to study memory in human and nonhuman adults. Typically, participants are familiarized with stimuli that have no special significance to them. Under these conditions, greater attention to the novel stimulus during the test (i.e., novelty preference) is used as the primary index of memory. Here, we took a novel approach to the VRM paradigm and tested 1-, 2-, and 3-year olds using photos of meaningful stimuli that were drawn from the participants' own environment (e.g., photos of their mother, father, siblings, house). We also compared their performance to that of participants of the same age who were tested in an explicit pointing version of the VRM task. Two- and 3-year olds exhibited a strong familiarity preference for some, but not all, of the meaningful stimuli; 1-year olds did not. At no age did participants exhibit the kind of novelty preference that is commonly used to define memory in the VRM task. Furthermore, when compared to pointing, looking measures provided a rough approximation of recognition memory, but in some instances, the looking measure underestimated retention. The use of meaningful stimuli raise important questions about the way in which visual attention is interpreted in the VRM paradigm, and may provide new opportunities to measure memory during infancy and early childhood.

Where There's Smoke, There's Fire: the Effect of Truncated Testimony on Juror Decision-making.

In countries that allow child complainants of abuse to present their direct evidence via pre-recorded videotape, the recording is sometimes truncated for relevance or admissibility purposes before it is presented to the jury. In two experiments, we investigated how this practice affects mock jurors' judgments of child credibility and defendant culpability when truncation omitted the child's less plausible allegations. Mock jurors read a transcript of a 6-year-old girl making an abuse allegation against the janitor at her school. Some jurors read this allegation only (truncated version), while others also read either one or two additional - but less plausible - allegations by the same child. Contrary to what we predicted, the presence of these additional allegations did not decrease jurors' belief in the core allegation, nor did it influence their judgments about the child complainant's honesty or cognitive competence. In fact, under at least one condition, reading additional, less plausible allegations made jurors more likely to pronounce the defendant guilty of the core allegation - even when jurors did not believe the additional allegations. This finding stands in stark contrast to prior research on jurors' evaluation of adults' testimony that includes implausible details. Future research in this area will help to elucidate the conditions under which the presentation of truncated testimony may or may not influence juror decision-making. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Mental time travel for self and other in three- and four-year-old children.

Humans possess the unique ability to mentally travel backward in time to re-experience past events (i.e., episodic memory) and forward in time to pre-experience future events (i.e., episodic foresight). Although originally viewed as different cognitive skills, they are now both viewed as components of the episodic memory system. Recently, it has been suggested that the episodic system may allow us to not only pre-experience and predict our own future but also that of another person. In the current study, we investigate this possibility by examining the ability of three- and four-year-old children to plan for their own future and for that of another person. We found that both three- and four-year-old children performed equally, when planning for their own future or when planning for the experimenter's future. These data are consistent with the finding that planning for someone else's future recruits the same neural structures that are used when planning for one's own future.

Age-related changes in spreading activation during infancy.

The concept of spreading activation describes how retrieval of one memory cues retrieval of other memories that are associated with it. This study explored spreading activation in 6-, 12-, and 18-month-old infants. Infants (n = 144) learned two tasks within the same experimental session; one task, deferred imitation (DI), is typically remembered longer than the other task, visual recognition memory (VRM). At all ages, retrieval of the DI memory facilitated retrieval of the VRM memory, but the conditions under which this spreading activation occurred changed as a function of age. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the development of mnemonic networks during infancy and the value of studying infants for our understanding of memory more generally.

I want it all and I want it now: Delay of gratification in preschool children.

On the delay-of-gratification choice paradigm, 4-year-olds typically choose the larger, delayed reward, exhibiting delay of gratification, whereas 3-year-olds typically choose the small, immediate reward. Despite this highly replicated finding, the cognitive mechanism(s) underlying 3-year-olds' failure on the choice paradigm remain unclear. Recently, several researchers have proposed the involvement of the "hot" affective system and the "cool" cognitive system in pre-schoolers' performance on the choice paradigm. Using this "hot" and "cool" systems framework, we tested 112 3- and 4-year-olds on a modified choice paradigm that was designed to help young children better utilize their "cool" system, allowing them to make more mindful and future-oriented decisions. In the modified paradigm, 3-year-olds made choices consistent with those of 4-year-olds, exhibiting delay of gratification. These findings have important implications for previous theoretical accounts of 3-year-old children's failure to delay gratification. Additionally, they highlight the critical role that the method plays in young children's performance on cognitive paradigms.

The devil is in the detail: children's recollection of details about their prior experiences.

Adults sometimes report highly specific details of childhood events, including the weather, what they or others were wearing, as well as information about what they or others said or were thinking at the time. When these details are reported in the course of research they shape our theories of memory development; when they are reported in a criminal trial they influence jurors' evaluation of guilt or innocence. The key question is whether these details were encoded at the time the event took place or have been added after the fact. We addressed this question prospectively by examining the memory accounts of children. In Experiment 1 we coded the reports of 5- to 6-year-olds and 9- to 10-year-olds who had experienced a unique event. We found that spontaneous mentions of these specific details were exceedingly rare. In Experiment 2 we questioned additional children about a similar event using specific questions to extract those details. We found that 9- to 10-year-olds were able to accurately answer, while 5- to 6-year-olds had considerable difficulty. Moreover, when the younger children did respond they provided generic, forensically inadequate, information. These data have important implications for the courtroom and for current theories of memory development and childhood amnesia.

Do children recall the birth of a younger sibling? Implications for the study of childhood amnesia.

To establish the parameters of childhood amnesia, researchers often ask adults to recall events for which the exact date is known. One event of this kind is the birth of a sibling, but is this an event that children are likely to understand and encode at the time that it occurs? Here, we report the first examination of age-related changes in the content and accuracy of 2- to 5-year-old children's accounts of the recent birth of a sibling. The interview procedure we used was identical to that used in a prior study with adults, so we had the opportunity to compare children's recall with that of adults who were matched on age at the time of the birth. For both children and adults, the amount of information reported and the number of questions answered increased as a function of age at the time of the birth. Relative to children, adults reported more information and answered more questions. These findings suggest that the failure of adults to recall the birth of a younger sibling that occurred when they were very young may be due primarily to a failure to effectively encode the event in the first place.

Misconceptions about childhood sexual abuse and child witnesses: Implications for psychological experts in the courtroom.

Recent changes to the law in New Zealand have led to a marked increase in experts being called to give evidence in cases of alleged child sexual abuse. Here we outline some of the common misconceptions that are held by expert witnesses in these cases and we review research on patterns of abuse disclosure and retraction, symptoms of abuse, external influences on children's reports, and experts' ability to distinguish true from false reports. We also consider what experts can say about memory that has relevance for these cases. We conclude that many long-held notions of child sexual abuse and children's testimony that make their way into our courtrooms are not supported by empirical research, raising questions about who is-and who is not-qualified to act as an expert witness.