Abstract: Currently There are two research strands regarding false memory. First, there are how to decrease false memory and, second, how to understand the development of false memory. At the first aspect, a few of reports showed some perceived features, such as colour and location, could covertly contribute to false memories. This was not in accordance with fuzzy-trace theory’s prediction which suggested that more perceived features would decrease false memory. More recently, research demonstrated false memory for the semantically related unpresented items increased with age. We hypothesized that i. specific visual features which provide specific information would decrease false memory, but nonspecific visual features would increase false memory; and that ii. younger children’s false memory would be less influenced than older children from the two kinds of features as cues.
144 children, divided into groups aged 8-, 10-, and 12-years of age, took part in two experiments. DRM paradigm was used in both. In the first, we examined the effects of specific visual features of a picture on false memory. In the second , we investigated how the location of words (nonspecific visual features) influence false memory.
We found the false alarm rates of critical lures increased from 8 to 12 to a statistically significant extent. We also found specific visual feature had a positive effect false memory which increases with age – with no significant effect on 8-years-olds, and with no significant difference between the false alarm rates of critical lures of 10 year olds and children of 12 years of age. Nonspecific visual feature had negative effect on false memory but no significant effect on the 8 year old group. The negative effect on the false memory of the 10 and 12 years old group were significantly different.
The results indicate that false memory, induced by DRM paradigm, increases from 8 to 12. This may be due to children of 8 years of age being unable to ‘get the gist’ of the semantically related words and connect them and that this ability will increase as they get older. The visual features, no matter specific or nonspecific, seem to have no influence on children of 8 years old, but have significant effect on children of 10 and 12 years of age. The impairing effect secondary to specific visual features on false memory rises from age 8 to 10 but further from 10 to 12. This may be because this impaired effect is related to the ability to form the ‘verbatim trace’. The increasing effect brought by nonspecific visual features on false memory rises from age 8 to 12 suggesting that the ability to ‘get the gist’ of semantically related words and connect increases across these age groups.

Key words: children’s false memory, fuzzy-trace theory, DRM paradigm, specific visual feature, nonspecific visual feature