Theory of mind (ToM), the ability to reason about other people's thoughts and beliefs, has been traditionally studied in behavioral and neuroimaging experiments by comparing performance in "false belief" and "false photograph" (control) stories. However, some evidence suggests that these stories are not matched in difficulty, complicating the interpretation of results. Here, we more fully evalu...

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 pres...

This research investigated the relationship between false memories induced by two different paradigms (misinformation and Deese-Roediger-McDermott [DRM]). The misinformation effect refers to the phenomenon that a person's recollection of a witnessed event can be altered after exposure to misleading information about the event. DRM false memory represents the intrusion of words that are semantic...

The present study examined the impact of divided attention on children’s and adults’ neutral and negative true and false memories in a standard DRM paradigm. Children (7and 11-year-olds; n = 126) and adults (n = 52) received 5 neutral and 5 negative DRM word lists where half of each group received a divided attention task. The results showed that divided attention affected children’s and adults...

The present study examined the impact of divided attention on children's and adults' neutral and negative true and false memories in a standard Deese/Roediger-McDermott paradigm. Children (7- and 11-year-olds; n = 126) and adults (n = 52) received 5 neutral and 5 negative Deese/Roediger-McDermott word lists; half of each group also received a divided attention task. The results showed that divi...

Human memory is dynamic and flexible but is also susceptible to distortions arising from adaptive as well as pathological processes. Both accurate and false memory formation require executive control that is critically mediated by the left prefrontal cortex (PFC). Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) enables noninvasive modulation of cortical activity and associated behavior. The pres...