DEVELOPMENTAL COMPARISONS OF THE ABILITY TO DISCRIMINATE BETWEEN MEMORIES FOR SYMBOLIC PLAY ENACTMENTS

Children's memory errors reveal the kinds of processing that may occur during source-monitoring judgments. After symbolically enacting every day actions using toys or substitutes, preschoolers were more likely t o claim they played with a toy when a substitute was involved as the i nstrument of action than the reverse (Experiments 1-3). We interpret t his bias as evidence for the importance of the functional similarity b etween actions for children's source-monitoring judgments.