Explaining developmental reversals in false memory.

We report the first demonstration that a simple, theory-driven manipulation produces opposite developmental trends in false memory for the same information. When 6-, 10-, and 14-year-olds studied lists containing exemplars of familiar taxonomic categories, false memory for the same unpresented items (category exemplars and labels) increased with age if list items were semantically related but decreased with age if semantic relations could not be formed among list items. A control experiment ruled out the hypothesis that these results were due to young children having generic deficits in forming relations among list items.