It is theoretically and practically important to know whether children conf
use memories of different events to which they have been exposed. In two st
udies, children aged 4 and 10 years watched two related events; one event w
as live and the other was a video recording. Half of the children watched a
video that was similar to the live event, and the remaining children watch
ed a video that was dissimilar. One week later, children in the similar con
dition confused the two events more than those in the different condition w
hen freely recalling (Experiments 1 and 2) and in response to focused quest
ions (Experiment 1). The 10-year olds reported more information than the 4-
year olds and were more accurate overall, confusing the events less than th
e 4-year olds. When the events were presented 1 day after each other (Exper
iment 2), the reports were more inaccurate than when the events were separa
ted by a 2-day interval, but this did not affect the number of rimes the ev
ents were confused. The results suggest that mere exposure to similar event
s in different media can contaminate memories, and the findings are discuss
ed in relation to children's sourer monitoring and eyewitness memory.