Source monitoring and false memories in children: Relation to certainty and executive functioning

We presented children aged 6, 8, and 10 years with a video and then an audi o tape about a dog named Mick. Some information was repeated in the two sou rces and some was unique to one source. We examined: (a) children's hit rat e for remembering whether events occurred and their tendency to make false alarms, (b) their memory for the context in which events occurred (source m onitoring), (c) their certainty about hits, false alarms, and source, and ( d) whether working memory and inhibition were related to hits, false alarms , and source monitoring. The certainty ratings revealed deficits in childre n's understanding of when they had erred on source questions and of when th ey had made false alarms. In addition, inhibitory ability accounted for uni que variance in the ability to avoid false alarms and in some kinds of sour ce monitoring but not hits. In contrast, working memory tended to correlate with kill forms of memory including hits. (C) 2001 Academic Press.