Running Head : BIASING CHILDREN ’ S MEMORY Using Story Contexts to Bias Children ’ s True and False Memories

The effects of embedding standard Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) lists into stories whose context either biased interpretation towards or away from the overall theme of the DRM list on both true and false recognition were investigated with 7and 11-year-olds. These biased story contexts were compared to the same children’s susceptibility to false memory illusions using the standard DRM list presentation paradigm. The results showed the usual age effects for true and false memories in the standard DRM list paradigm, where 11-year-olds exhibited higher rates of both true and false recognition compared to the 7-year-olds. Importantly, when DRM lists were embedded in stories, these age effects disappeared for true recognition. For false recognition, although developmental differences were attenuated, older children were still more susceptible to false memory illusions than younger children. These findings are discussed in terms of current theories of children’s false memories as well as the role of themes and elaboration in children’s memory development.