CHILDRENS DISCRIMINATION OF MEMORIES FOR ACTUAL AND PRETEND ACTIONS IN A HIDING TASK

Previous research has demonstrated that when memories are derived from similar sources children may have difficulty identifying the correct source of a particular memory. For example, young children who have ca rried out some actions and pretended to carry out similar actions may, at a later time, fail to distinguish which actions were actually carr ied out and which actions were only imagined. In the present experimen t 3-, 4-, 6-year-olds and adults carried out a hiding task-they were a sked to hide counters under objects on a table, or only pretend to hid e counters under other objects on the same table. Participants were gi ven a surprise memory test, five minutes or three days after the hidin g task, to assess their ability to distinguish real and pretend hiding places. Contrary to previous research there were few age differences in the participants' ability to distinguish memories of real from memo ries of pretend actions-children and adults performed similarly. There was some, limited, evidence that all age groups were more likely to c onfuse real and pretend hiding places when memory was tested after a d elay of three days than after a delay of five minutes.