Planting false childhood memories in children: The role of event plausibility

This experiment tested and supported the hypothesis that events will be sug gestively planted in children's memory to the degree that the suggested eve nt is :plausible and script-relevant knowledge exists in memory. Nineteen 5 - to 7-year-old children and 20 9- to 12-year-old children were read descri ptions of two true events and two false events, reported to have occurred w hen they were 4 years old. One false event described the child lost in a ma ll while shopping (the plausible false event); the other false event descri bed the child receiving a rectal enema (the implausible false event). The m ajority of the 39 children (54%) did not remember either false event. Howev er, whereas 14 children recalled the plausible but not the implausible fals e event, only one child recalled the implausible but not the plausible fals e event; this difference was statistically significant. Three additional ch ildren tall in the younger age group) recalled both false events. Although this pattern of results was consistent for both age groups, the differences were significant for the younger children only. A framework is outlined sp ecifying the cognitive processes underlying suggestively planting false eve nts in memory.