Maltreated and non-maltreated children's true and false memories of neutral and emotional word lists in the Deese/Roediger-McDermott task

Gunn Astrid Baugerud; Mark L Howe; Svein Magnussen; Annika Melinder

doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2015.10.007

Maltreated and non-maltreated children's true and false memories of neutral and emotional word lists in the Deese/Roediger-McDermott task

J Exp Child Psychol. 2016 Mar:143:102-10. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2015.10.007. Epub 2015 Nov 28.

Authors

Gunn Astrid Baugerud¹, Mark L Howe², Svein Magnussen³, Annika Melinder³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, 0317 Oslo, Norway. Electronic address: gunn-astrid.baugerud@hioa.no.
² Department of Psychology, City University London, London EC1V 0HB, UK.
³ Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, 0317 Oslo, Norway.

PMID: 26637948
DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2015.10.007

Abstract

Maltreated (n=26) and non-maltreated (n=31) 7- to 12-year-old children were tested on the Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) false memory task using emotional and neutral word lists. True recall was significantly better for non-maltreated than maltreated children regardless of list valence. The proportion of false recall for neutral lists was comparable regardless of maltreatment status. However, maltreated children showed a significantly higher false recall rate for the emotional lists than non-maltreated children. Together, these results provide new evidence that maltreated children could be more prone to false memory illusions for negatively valenced information than their non-maltreated counterparts.

Keywords: Maltreated children; Memory; Non-maltreated children; True and false memories; Valence.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Child
Child Abuse / psychology*
Child Abuse / statistics & numerical data
Emotions / physiology*
Female
Humans
Male
Memory / physiology*
Mental Recall / physiology
Repression, Psychology*