YOUNG CHILDRENS UNDERSTANDING OF CONFLICTING MENTAL REPRESENTATION PREDICTS SUGGESTIBILITY

This study examined the relation between developmental suggestibility effects and preschoolers' emerging ability to reason about conflicting mental representations (CMRs). Three- to 5-year-olds listened to a st ory accompanied by pictures. Following a 4-min delay, children answere d straightforward and misleading questions about the story. One week l ater, their memory for the story was assessed. Children also completed tasks indexing their ability to reason about CMRs. Stepwise regressio n analyses revealed that suggestibility was negatively related to perf ormance on CMR tasks. This finding remained significant after controll ing for age, children's level of initial encoding of the event, and th eir ability to retrieve event details when not misled. An integration is proposed between children's theory of mind and source monitoring th at may help to explain early developmental changes in suggestibility.