A influência da indução de estereótipo e desaprovação na memória de crianças pré-escolares e escolares

Abstract

This Master's thesis consists of two studies, one theoretical and one empirical. The theoretical session consists of a non-systematic literature review in order to investigate the cognitive and social consequences of child suggestibility and false memory phenomenon, seeking to advance the debate on the development of memory during childhood and its impact on testimonials. This discussion is important to precisely determining practical implications of the child suggestibility. Empirical session proposes a new experimental paradigm for methodological purposes of the study of child suggestibility, aiming to investigate the impact stereotype induction and disapproval influence in preschoolers and schoolchildren memory. Thereunto, 40 preschoolers (23 girls) aged from 4 to 6 years (M = 62.7 months, SD = 8.03) and 36 schoolchildren (17 girls) aged from 7 to 8 years (M = 95.4 months, SD = 6.21) were visited in their classrooms by an adult (Samuel, the scientist), who held a brief demonstration of science to children. The stereotype induction and disapproval were made through videos containing information about the scientist. Two weeks later, we accessed the memory of all children about the scientist's visit by an interview and we categorized their responses into different types of information (accurate, stereotype-related and confabulations). The main results indicate that older children (schoolchildren) remember more accurate information than younger (preschoolers) do. In addition, there is a positive relationship between the recall of accurate memories and stereotype-related information. The age of participants moderates this relation. The main contribution of this study is the empirical investigation of the impact of age on the accuracy of children's memory reports about a target event, and the relationship between accurate memory and false memories.