DEVELOPMENTAL COMPARISONS OF EXPLICIT VERSUS IMPLICIT IMAGERY AND REALITY MONITORING

Reality Monitoring refers to the decision processes involved in discriminating perceptual memories from those which are self-generated. The present studies compare the effects of spontaneous, implicit imagery generation and controlled, explicit imagery generation on the reality monitoring decisions of children and adults. Subjects (6 year olds, 9 year olds, and adults) were shown pictures and words, and they were asked each object's function or they were asked to create an image of each object. When later deciding whether each object was presented as a picture or a word, subjects were more likely to claim a word was presented as a picture than the converse, especially in the Function condition (Experiment 1). This confusion effect was evident for simple and complex perceptual materials and extended across three age groups (Experiments 1 and 2). The results indicate that the absence of developmental differences in reality monitoring previously reported is not due simply to the type of imagery involved, and that the representational processes of children and adults are more alike than is commonly believed. © 1991.