The influence of emotional valence and specificity on children's judgments about the fidelity of peer's memories

One of the primary sources of learning is social sharing [1], i.e., learning from the experiences of others. However, not all shared experiences are accurate. To determine whether the information reported by others’ memories is reliable, humans seem to have developed specific cognitive processes that allows them to judge the fidelity of others' memories (i.e., interpersonal memory monitoring). Recent studies in adults have shown a relation between the presence of emotions or perceptual and contextual details in reported memories and higher interpersonal judgments [2][3]. To date, however, this relation has not yet been investigated in children. The aim of this study is to determine whether and on the basis of which mnemonic cues children make these judgments. To this end, 51 children aged 4 to 8 years old (27 girls; Mage = 6.58 years; SD=1.53) were asked to judge the reliability of six stories reported by other children that varied in terms of emotional valence (positive or neutral) and specificity (i.e., a detailed vs. non-detailed version of each story was created and counterbalanced between participants). Mixed models showed a significant effect of emotional valence, b=.22, SE=.08, t=2.63, p=.01, and an interaction effect between specificity and valence, b=-.37, SE=.19, t=-2.01, p=.05. Specifically, our results show that children judged narratives with positive emotional valence to be more faithful than narratives with neutral emotional valence, but only when the memories were not detailed. When the story contained more episodic details, neutral and positive memories were judged to be equally faithful, suggesting a moderating role of contextual and perceptual details on the relation between emotional valence and children’s interpersonal judgments. Overall, these findings shed light on the cues that children use when judging others' memories. Further investigation of age-related differences is needed to better understand the emergence and development of these processes.

References
[1] Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191–215. [2] Justice, L. V., & Smith, H. M. J. (2018). Memory judgements : The contribution of detail and emotion to assessments of believability and reliability. Memory, 26(10), 1402 1415. [3] Bastin, C., Folville, A., & Geurten, M. (s. d.). Interpersonal_Memory_Fidelity.