Templeton, Leslie M., Sharon, Wilcox A, (2000). A Tale of Two Representations: The Misinformation Effect and Children’s Theory of Mind. Child Development, 71, 402-416.

Misinformation Effect: misleading information presented after an event will affect the person’s memory reports for the event.

-Loftus: participants viewed an event on video, then had correct or misleading information presented to them. Following this they were given a forced-choice recognition test. Possible responses were either corrects information or misleading information. Loftus found a large discrepancy in memory for the actual event.

-McCloskey and Zaragoza: incorporated the basic method used by Loftus, however they modified the recognition test. Responses were either correct information or novel information. They found no effect of misinformation.

Why: Loftus claimed that only one representation for an event could exist in memory at a time. The misleading information superceded the original information. McCloskey and Zaragoza disagreed. They felt that both the misleading and original information was present, and that the original forced-choice test required participant to guess between the two. There hypothesize was supported by their results using the modified test.

Theory of Mind Research: The ability to hold more than one representation of an event in memory at a time is linked to developmental changes in a child.

-Wimmer and Perner: Theory of Mind experiments (Maxi and the chocolate bar)

The present study used the Theory of Mind test as a predictor of suggestibility.

Hypothesizes of this research:

1. Children’s’ representational abilities should be a better predictor of eyewitness memory than age.
2. Misinformation effect will be found with the original test, but not with the modified.
3. Replication of theory of mind research, but will be linked to representational ability not age.
4. Children who pass the false belief should accurately remember more information than children who fail the task.

117 children ages 3, 4, and 6,

32 adults

Misinformation task- participants viewed a video taped event, listened to a narrative about the event, then answered 3 warm up questions and 12 test questions. (4 questions asking about misleading information, 4 asking about accurate information, and 4 asking about items that were presented in the video but not in the narrative)

False belief task-participants viewed a video about Billy and his candy bar and were then asked a series of questions about the story.

Final Test- Purpose of test was to determine if misinformation had any influence on memory reports. Some participants given original test and some given modified test.

-Participants who were given the original test showed a misinformation effect. Participants given the modified test did not show this effect.

-There was no misinformation effect for any of the age groups when measured with the modified test. It appeared that on the original test, the misinformation effect was largest for the adults. Adults had the highest score in the control condition and the lowest score in the misled condition of all the groups. Templeton argues that this occurs because adults can hold dual representations for the same event.

-The false belief task turned out as expected. The youngest children were the most likely to fail this task.

-Templeton and Wilcox, calculated a difference score for each subject as their measure of the misinformation effect. On the original memory test (but not on the modified) participants who passed the ToM test had higher difference scores (i.e. they were more likely to be misled) than did participants who failed the ToM test. This was true even when holding age and memory ability constant statistically.

-Both representational abilities and general memory abilities play crucial parts in determining the effects of misleading information on children’s eyewitness memory

-Present study lends support for McCloskey and Zaragoza’s multi-representational account of the impact of misleading information.

-Children with poor memory did not show a misinformation effect regardless of their representational abilities.

-Another possible explanation of these findings is Source Monitoring