APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, VOL. 12, 207±217 (1998)
The Ethics of Conducting `False Memory' Research with
Children: A Reply to Herrmann and Yoder
GAIL S. GOODMAN*, JODI A. QUAS
and ALLISON D. REDLICH
University of California, Davis, USA
Child witness research has two central yet complementary goals: (1) to advance
scienti®c knowledge, and (2) to address real-world problems. Research on children's
eyewitness memory, including research on `implanted' or `false' memory, integrates
the two goals well. In regard to scienti®c advances, valuable knowledge about how
children encode, store, and retrieve information is gained. In regard to addressing
real-world problems, important information is provided about children's capabilities
in forensic interviews and courtroom encounters, information that is potentially
relevant to the guilt or innocence of individuals accused of crimes against children. It
is essential to weigh the utility of `false memory' research in relation to these two goals
when discussing its future and ethics.
In the present commentary, we respond to concerns raised by Herrmann and Yoder
about the ethics of conducting implanted memory studies. We welcome discussion of
ethical issues in eyewitness memory research with children, especially false memory
research, and we agree with a number of general points made by Herrmann and
Yoder. For example, the authors rightfully state that `future development of memory
paradigms to be used with children should from the outset include consultation of the
relevant child development literature'. As Thompson (1990, 1992) notes, the ability to
conduct ethically sound research with children depends largely on consideration of
children's cognitive and socio-emotional development. Another point raised by
Herrmann and Yoder is also well justi®ed: `Although the implanted memory paradigm
has increased knowledge about memory, we believe this research as it has been used
with children raises ethical issues that should be examined'. We concur that empirical
research should address the issues raised by Herrmann and Yoder, and that researchers
who have already conducted implanted memory studies should take the lead. However, we contend that such an examination should co-occur with: (1) appreciation of
the signi®cance of implanted memory research for societal intervention into child
maltreatment, particularly child sexual abuse, and for psychological theory; (2) more
critical and complete analysis of the actual methodologies and results of false memory
studies; (3) discussion of possible bene®ts to children of participating in child eyewitness studies; and (4) evaluation of other types of child witness research that may be
more deserving of ethical scrutiny. We discuss these issues in turn. Finally, at the end
*Correspondence to: Gail S. Goodman, Department of Psychology, University of California-Davis,
1 Shields Ave., Davis, CA 95616±5224, USA.
CCC 0888±4080/98/030207±11 $17.50
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of our commentary, we o€er recommendations to help researchers avoid some of the
ethical pitfalls mentioned by Herrmann and Yoder.
LEGAL AND THEORETICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPLANTED
MEMORY STUDIES
To place Herrmann and Yoder's comments in context, it is important to consider the
impetus for conducting implanted memory research with children. In the 1980s, a wave
of sensational trials for heinous acts of alleged sexual abuse of preschoolers received
national attention. A number of these trials undoubtedly involved false allegations,
for instance of ritualistic abuse by satanic cults, resulting from highly suggestive,
coercive interviewing of young children (Bottoms, Shaver and Goodman, 1996), thus
motivating scientists to conduct implanted memory research. Although we believe that
actual child abuse is a much more pervasive and serious problem than false allegations,
false accusations do harm, including to actual abuse victims who may be perceived as
lying or mistaken; to innocent defendants who may have their reputations tarnished,
their ®nances depleted, and their freedom restricted; and to non-abused children who
may come to hold false autobiographical memories of abuse.
Psychological research on children's suggestibility, including some ingenious
research on implanted memory, helped to stem the tide of these allegations and in¯uenced appeals courts to overturn convictions. An amicus brief written by implanted
memory researchers was relied on by at least one appellate court (e.g. State of New
Jersey v. Michaels, 1994). Furthermore, the US Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals
recently overturned a conviction of child sexual abuse (United States v. Rouse, 1996)
stating that research on children's suggestibility met the standards set by the US
Supreme Court in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals (1993) for introduction of
expert testimony. The court cited a review article written by two leaders in the ®eld,
Ceci and Bruck (1993), to support its opinion. As Wiener, Hurt and Gasper (1997)
point out, `This holding opens the door in the Eighth circuit for testimony regarding
the occurrence of speci®c case-related techniques that may result in child suggestibility.'
These open doors may help guard against false reports and convictions of innocent
persons, but they may also have a chilling e€ect on certain categories of child sexual
abuse investigations and prosecutions (e.g. those involving young children) by
creating a general atmosphere of disbelief of children's testimony. Note that, over the
last two years, reports of child sexual abuse to child protection agencies have
decreased nationwide (NCCAN, 1997; NCPCA, 1997). Although this decrease may
re¯ect fewer false reports, it may also re¯ect parents' and children's fears that
children's disclosures of abuse will not be believed. As further evidence of possible
negative repercussions of implanted memory research, it is not uncommon now in
studies of mock jurors' reactions to child witnesses for jurors to discuss false memory
research, as portrayed in the media. In our own research, implanted memory studies
were discussed by mock jurors in deliberations to discredit children's testimony even
when the children were accurate and the mock trials did not involve the type of
repeated, suggestive interviewing characteristic of implanted memory studies (Goodman et al., 1996; Redlich et al., 1996). Thus, current research on implanted memory in
children is having an impact ± both positive and negative ± on society's attempts to
intervene in child sexual abuse cases.
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Despite its amalgam of positive and negative social-policy e€ects, research on
implanted memory is important, not just from an applied perspective but from a
theoretical perspective as well. Consensus exists among cognitive psychologists that
memory is reconstructive in nature. Nevertheless, debate continues about the extent
of malleability inherent in adults' and children's memory (e.g. Loftus and Pickrell,
1995; Pezdek, Finger and Hodge, 1997). If false memories can be formed in children
through repeatedly suggesting that an event happened, investigation of the mechanisms involved is critical for understanding the nature of children's minds. If false
memories are not formed in this way, but rather children are responding to demand
characteristics (e.g. trying to please an interviewer), a very di€erent conception of
children's memory is implied. Most likely, both false memory and acquiescence to
demand characteristics occur at times, but the conditions under which each eventuates must be clari®ed. Continued research on implanted memory is needed to pin
down the processes involved so that we do not err as a ®eld in believing that children's
memory is more or less malleable than it really is. As we argue later, such research can
be conducted in a manner that does not harm children.
RESULTS AND INTERPRETATIONS OF FALSE MEMORY STUDIES
WITH CHILDREN
One of our major reservations about Herrmann and Yoder's article was their lack of
critical analysis of some false memory research. To us, an even more important ethical
issue than the ones raised by Herrmann and Yoder is that implanted memory results
have been overstated by researchers, creating a risk that interpretation of the ®ndings
is leading to misunderstanding of memory development and improper application in
legal contexts. Here we discuss recent trends in child eyewitness memory research that
we ®nd disconcerting. These trends, when combined with uncareful evaluation of
results, appear to be at the heart of Herrmann and Yoder's ethical concerns.
Current interest in and controversy over false memory is fuelled by studies
purportedly demonstrating that a high percentage of young children can be led to say
they experienced `false events' and even to provide considerable false narrative detail.
We agree that false memories can be created and that it is important to understand the
precise conditions under which they can be formed. However, does research convincingly demonstrate that false memories have been implanted in children? The
answer to this question depends in part on how studies are designed, data are scored,
and results are interpreted.
For example, in several false memory studies, children's memory data have been
scored so that if a child makes even one false armation during an interview, the child
is classi®ed as inaccurate (Leichtman and Ceci, 1995; Poole and Lindsay, 1995). In the
past, children's memory data have instead been scored in terms of proportion correct,
so that a child who makes one mistake out of 25 questions received a score of 4%
incorrect. Now, however, the same child might well be deemed, in e€ect, 100%
incorrect by being grouped with children who make `one or more errors'. Second,
instructions to children in false memory studies have included telling children to
`pretend' or `imagine' that the event occurred. As a result, a child who follows
instructions and just pretends may be classi®ed as having a false memory. Third, in
several studies (e.g. Ceci et al., 1994b), children have been told that they are playing a
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game, rather than that they are involved in a serious investigation about something
that may have happened to them.
Even when children answer questions incorrectly, the inaccuracies do not always
re¯ect false memory creations. For example, Shyamalan, Lamb and Sheldrick (1995)
attempted a partial replication of the Ceci et al., (1994a) implanted memory study in
which children were repeatedly interviewed about false events, but Shyamalan et al.
created a serious atmosphere rather than a playful one (e.g. describing the interview as
a `picture in the head game'; Ceci et al., 1994b). Children in the Shyamalan et al.
(1995) study produced fewer armation errors to false events than children in the Ceci
et al. (1994a) study. Virtually all the children who erred were from low socioeconomic
(SES) groups. It is reasonable to assume that rather than re¯ecting di€erences in false
memory susceptibility, these ®ndings indicate that the low SES children gave more
false armations for social reasons, such as wanting to please the interviewer. Note
that Ceci and colleagues also found SES di€erences in error rates. Moreover, in the
Shyamalan et al. (1995) study, children who did err tended to do so inconsistently
over sessions, disarming the false event on most sessions but occasionally erring by
saying `yes' when asked if they had experienced the false event (getting their ®nger
caught in a mousetrap). As Shyamalan et al. point out, if a false memory were being
formed, one would not expect such inconsistency over trials. Similarly, in our investigation of false reports of a medical procedure (Quas et al., in press), 40% of the
children falsely assented to general but misleading questions. However, this result by
no means indicates that we had successfully implanted false `memories' in 40% of our
sample. When the medical procedure was later described in detail, only 13% of the
children answered `yes' to the question `Did you ever have this procedure?' We still
cannot say with certainty whether we successfully implanted false `memories' in this
smaller set of children because they may have assented to the question for a variety of
reasons, a false memory being only one of them. In sum, it is possible that no false
memories have been created in children in implanted-memory studies.
Authors who wish to call into question the ethics of conducting false memory
research should conduct a more critical evaluation of the studies' actual results before
raising criticisms. Had Herrmann and Yoder done this, they might have realized that
many of their concerns are based on overstatements, inconsistent reports, and
inaccurate re¯ections of the actual results obtained. For instance, Herrmann and
Yoder report that Ceci (1994, 1995) claimed `over one half of the children in implanted
memory paradigm studies remembered at least one ®ctitious event'. Later when the
children were told the event never occurred, `they responded in disbelief because they
felt so certain that the event had occurred'. Even after being told of the fabrication,
many persisted in claiming they had experienced the ®ctitious event. Herrmann and
Yoder are referring to a conference talk given by Ceci (1994) that was cited in the New
York Times that was cited in an undergraduate textbook. Ceci and his colleagues have
conducted a number of false memory studies, many of which are published in peerreviewed scienti®c journals. Whenever possible, Herrmann and Yoder should have
directly referenced the empirical article rather than relying on secondary and tertiary
sources. When the empirical articles are examined, Ceci's results, as described in the
New York Times article and by Herrmann and Yoder, are dramatizations of the actual
®ndings.
In the New York Times article (Goleman, 1994), Ceci was quoted as stating that
across various studies, 58% of the children made up false accounts of at least one
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®ctitious event and one-quarter had concocted phony accounts of almost all the
®ctitious events. For the purpose of making the point that some children can be led to
make false accusations of sexual abuse, these quotes are particularly sensational and
shocking, as would be expected in a newspaper account. However, in their published
articles, Ceci and colleagues clarify that a high percentage of children inaccurately
assent that non-experienced events occurred (e.g. Ceci et al., 1994a). Such assents can
simply be a nod of the head. The researchers are careful in the scienti®c publications
to note that it is unclear how many of these false assents actually represent false
`memories' per se.
Herrmann and Yoder, in describing a published study by Ceci et al. (1994b), state
that because `many children were unwilling to believe that their memories were created'
researchers `need to use heightened care and sensitivity when children participate in
research'. In the empirical article, Ceci et al. (1994b) never claimed that `many'
children were unwilling to believe that their memories were false when debriefed.
Rather, Ceci et al. report that some of the children who consistently assented over
many occasions `clung tenaciously to their accounts' and that `during debrie®ng, some
children who consistently made false assents resisted recanting in varying degrees'
(p. 314). From this description, it is unclear how many children were included in the
`consistent false assenters' group. It is only in a summary article that Ceci and
Hu€man (1997) provide more speci®c ®gures. The authors report that across two false
memory studies (i.e. Ceci et al., 1994a,b), between 27% and 35% of the children could
not be debriefed. According to our calculations, this equates to approximately 14 of
136 children across the two studies. Given the required brevity of methodology
descriptions common in scienti®c journals and summary articles, it is unknown how
children were debriefed and thus what constituted `resistance' by them, especially
when one considers Ceci et al.'s (1994b) comment about resistance of `varying
degrees'. Furthermore, as alluded to above, children may maintain that a false event
occurred for reasons other than a false memory, such as to `save face', avoid the
possibility of punishment, appear knowledgeable, or continue to play a game.
In any case, the interpretations made by Herrmann and Yoder about false memory
studies are common in legal and scienti®c circles. Of late, emphasis in the scienti®c
literature has been placed on proving that children can falsely claim that neverexperienced events occurred, so much so that an uncritical analysis of the study ®ndings has pervaded the literature. It is possible that no false memories, or perhaps only
a few, have been created in children under the experimental conditions researchers
have employed. It is understandable how concerns regarding the ethics involved in
such research are raised. A closer evaluation of the results described in empirical
articles and a clearer description of the methodology, coding, ®ndings, and debrie®ng
procedures should alleviate some of the concerns raised by Herrmann and Yoder.
POTENTIAL BENEFITS FOLLOWING PARTICIPATION IN FALSE
MEMORY STUDIES
We turn now to the main points raised by Herrmann and Yoder on possible negative
e€ects following children's participation in false memory studies. These hypothesized
risks include problems stemming from children's lack of understanding of the
debrie®ng and the e€ects of debrie®ng on children's self-concept, perceptions of
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authority, and helplessness. Although we agree wholeheartedly that it is important to
ensure that research methods and debrie®ng procedures are ethical, developmentally
appropriate, and sensitive to children's needs, Herrmann and Yoder's arguments lack
empirical support and re¯ect assumptions about the ways in which children are
debriefed in false memory studies. We describe some of our own debrie®ng procedures below to exemplify why many of Herrmann and Yoder's points do not apply
in a straightforward manner to all false memory research. Also, Herrmann and Yoder
spend a large amount of time discussing hypothesized negative e€ects for older
children and adolescents. In contrast, we concentrate our commentary on younger
children because most false memory studies to date have included children 6 years and
younger, and these studies ®nd that preschoolers (e.g. 3-year-olds) are disproportionally likely to falsely assent to never-experienced events.
Herrmann and Yoder report that although most adults can `brush o€' having been
deceived, children may not be able to do so, especially given children's limited
cognitive capabilities and experiences. For example, the authors hypothesize that it
may be harmful to children to ®nd out that they were induced to form an implanted
memory because being fooled does not positively contribute to feelings of competency and may negatively in¯uence children's perceptions of powerful others.
Although being fooled can negatively a€ect children's feelings of competence, in our
own research, if a false memory is successfully implanted (which itself is up for
debate), upon debrie®ng children are not led to believe that they were deceived or
fooled. Rather, we claim that the interviewer made a mistake. Children are also asked
in a friendly way if they were being silly or pretending when they claimed the ®ctitious
event happened. In this manner, children are given an `out' for their inaccurate
statements and thus a bu€er against a negative assessment of their own competence.
Also, we do not believe that demonstrating to children that adults can make a mistake
decreases children's trust in authority. Rather, debrie®ng procedures may help
children realize that adults can make mistakes in questioning children, and that
children need to stick to the truth. As a result, the children may be less suggestible in
other situations that really matter.
As rightly pointed out by Herrmann and Yoder, it is quite likely that children
interpret both the debrie®ng and their participation di€erently from adults. However,
this di€erence may not lead to greater negative consequences for young children. In
general, young children are not critical thinkers (Piaget, 1983). Unless explicitly
instructed to do so, young children do not always infer underlying intentions of
others. Rather, young children tend to interpret others' actions as direct re¯ections of
their intentions (Astington, 1991; Karniol, 1978). Thus, in our false memory studies,
when children are told that an interviewer made a mistake when she asked them about
the ®ctitious event, young children would be less likely than older children or adults to
question whether the interviewer really made a mistake or had some other, underlying
motive for asking about the ®ctitious event. Developmental research also suggests
that young children tend to focus their attention on one central aspect of an experience and evaluate their performance based on discrete situations (Piaget, 1983;
Thompson, 1992). After debrie®ng, we thank children, tell them how important their
participation was to the study, and explain that the information they provided may
help other children. Because of the recency and salience of this positive feedback,
young children are more likely to evaluate themselves positively based on the current
information rather than `re¯ect' on having been `deceived'. Finally, what appears to
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be most important to children as a result of their participation may bear little in
common with what adults consider important, including having been deceived, the
debrie®ng, and, at times, the events experienced in the study (Goodman and Tobey,
1994). Thus, while age di€erences commonly exist in children's understanding of
debrie®ng procedures, young children's limited cognitive capabilities may serve well
to inoculate them from adverse consequences following debrie®ng (Thompson, 1992),
including those alluded to by Herrmann and Yoder that follow debrie®ng in false
memory studies.
Positive e€ects on children's self-concept may even emerge following children's
participation in many eyewitness and false memory studies, depending upon how
researchers handle sensitive issues. In our debrie®ng, children are made to feel special
and told that they did a great job and helped with important work. Giving children
considerable attention and making them feel needed and special, rather than emphasizing deception, can have a positive impact on their more immediate sense of worth.
Second, just coming to a university campus can be bene®cial to children and their
parents, as reported anecdotally by Goodman and Tobey (1994), who interviewed
parents by phone after their children's research participation. Now when parents talk
to their children about going to college, they have a mental image of one. Other false
memory researchers (e.g. Bruck et al., 1995) use debrie®ng procedures similar to our
own, including phoning families after participation to check on children's reactions.
In summary, Herrmann and Yoder speculate about negative e€ects on children
involved in false memory research without providing empirical support for their
speculations. Although the authors extrapolate from developmental theory and
research to support their ideas, it is also possible, as just shown, to extrapolate from
the same knowledge base to predict null or even positive e€ects, depending upon how
important ethical issues, such as debrie®ng, are handled. Having worked with
hundreds of children during their participation in eyewitness memory studies, including false memory and repeated interview research, we are con®dent that implanted
memory studies can be conducted ethically. Potential positive e€ects should not be
overlooked when evaluating the ethics of child witness research.
ETHICAL ISSUES IN OTHER CHILD WITNESS RESEARCH:
GAINING PERSPECTIVE
Although we agree that ethical issues should be addressed in false memory studies, we
also believe that a set of ethical issues that arise in other child witness research
provides important perspective. For instance, in some recent laboratory studies,
researchers have had a child's parent `steal' a book in front of the child and then had
the parent instruct the child to make a false accusation against an innocent adult
(Honts et al., 1992). Later the child is questioned not only by the researchers but also
by police. In this study, a relatively high percentage of children (over 60%) maintained the false accusation to protect their parent. The children were then debriefed,
and the study used as a `moral lesson'. One has to wonder what type of moral lesson a
child could derive from such an experience and how the parents react once the child
gets home. In other research, children have been asked, sometimes by their mothers,
to keep secrets for minutes, days, or weeks (Bottoms, Goodman et al., 1990; ClarkeStewart, Thompson and Lepore, 1989; Pipe and Wilson, 1994). Yet, in child sexual
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abuse prevention programmes, children are told that they should not keep secrets.
Although these studies have provided valuable information, certainly one can
question the research ethics involved. A number of researchers, ourselves included,
have stopped conducting this type of research because of our concerns about possible
adverse e€ects on child participants.
Ethical considerations can and should constrain the research enterprise. For
instance, although it would be of great interest to conduct research about the e€ects
on non-abused children of repeated, strongly suggestive, misleading questions about
abuse, we have refrained from doing so. Three interviews of the same children is the
most we have dared because we do not want to risk implanting false memories of
abuse in even a single child. Although memory is reconstructive by nature and thus
some degree of memory inaccuracy, or even false memory, may be unavoidable in life,
laboratory creation of false memories of signi®cant negative life events such as abuse
would certainly raise ethical concerns, more so than do current studies that have
concentrated on relatively benign events. In this regard, it is important to note that
studies of implanted memories, such as those conducted by Ceci and his colleagues,
have not concerned acts of abuse. It is often more dicult to obtain false reports of
negative than positive or neutral events (e.g. Ceci et al., 1994b; Rudy and Goodman,
1991). This places limits on the generalizability of false memory results to abuse cases.
However, the balance between providing useful information to the courts and
potentially causing harm to research subjects has leaned us and many others in the
direction of caution for child participants.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Having conducted child witness research for many years, we have either dealt with or
hypothetically considered numerous ethical dilemmas. In many cases we have been
able to resolve and overcome them to our satisfaction and to the satisfaction of
Institutional Review Boards. We ®nd that with sensitivity, thoughtfulness, and
thoroughness, we can create a positive experience for children while conducting
research on children's suggestibility. We have been fortunate, in a sense, that the
children in our studies typically do so well at countering false suggestions, thus
decreasing the chances that they formed false memories. We o€er the following
recommendations to future researchers interested in suggestibility and false memory
studies:
(1) First, a thorough explanation to parents about the goals of the study should be
given prior to children's involvement. Then, if parents agree to their children's
participation, time should be spent building rapport with children. Permit
parents to be in the interview room until the children are comfortable.
(2) As part of the debrie®ng, do not emphasize that interviewers `lied' for the sake of
science. Rather, explain in a developmentally appropriate manner that interviewers may not know what happened and can make mistakes when they talk to
both adults and children. Also, if a child made a false claim, tell the child that he
or she did not experience the event. When possible, to reinstate accurate memory,
show the child a videotape of the original event experienced and point out what
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really happened. Perhaps in part because of these debrie®ng procedures, children
in our studies have not persisted in saying something occurred when it did not.
(3) Careful presentation of ®ndings should be an essential part of disseminating
results, rather than presentations that so re¯ect an agenda of proving that
false memories can be created that results are misinterpreted and misapplied. For
instance, careful description of study results at conferences should be given to
avoid, to the extent possible, misrepresentation of research ®ndings when quoted
in newspapers and by other secondary sources. (We do recognize, however, how
little control researchers have when scienti®c studies are described in the popular
media.) Researchers who venture into the social policy arena should also be
especially accurate in their research reports. Thus researchers should make sure
that in their publications, experimental procedures are described well, tables and
®gures are accurate (e.g. see Leichtman and Ceci, 1995), and results are reported
consistently across publications (e.g. compare Ceci and Hu€man, 1997; Ceci et al.,
1994a; Goodman and Clarke-Stewart, 1991; Saywitz et al., 1991). Again, given
reliance on these studies in legal cases that a€ect children's welfare and adults'
freedom, such problems can mount to become a type of ethical issue not raised by
Herrmann and Yoder.
(4) Clearer explanations of debrie®ng procedures are also desirable. Although often
there is little room for extraneous detail in scholarly reports, providing readers
with the procedures used for debrie®ng is important in controversial areas of
research.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, once again, we welcome the opportunity to discuss the ethics surrounding false memory research with children. After evaluating the points raised by
Herrmann and Yoder, we asked ourselves `Would we conduct another false memory
study?' Our answer to this question was `yes', not simply because we believe the
societal value outweighs the potential distress or harm caused to child participants
but rather because the societal and theoretical value is great, and we ®rmly believe
that the children in our studies enjoy participating, and that they and their parents
bene®t directly from involvement.
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