Abstract: Reality monitoring (RM) refers to the ability to discriminate internal memories from external events. It develops gradually from age 4 to 5, and reaches the level of adults at age 11~12. Some research on modality differences of reality monitoring showed a developmental trend, with the effect of visual passage being more predominant than the auditory passage. But little research investigated this trend using different materials in the same modality. The present study explored the developmental difference in visual and auditory passage on reality monitoring using different kinds of stimuli.
Method In order to compare the developmental differences on reality monitoring between and within modalities, a total of 223 subjects including preschoolers (5yr.) and school children (7yr., 9yr.) were enrolled to make source discriminative reactions. The material of reality monitoring consisted of two visual stimuli including picture and flash, two auditory stimuli including natural sound and sounds of word, with the contents being matched.
Results and discussion In visual condition, an ANOVA with 3 (age: 5 vs.7 vs. 9) × 2 (picture vs. flash) design showed that there was a significant interaction between age and material (F (2,110) = 3.31, p < 0.05). We found that performance on source discrimination of 5-year-old was poorer than that of 7- and 9-year-old children. No significant main effects of materials (picture or flash) were found in source discrimination tasks in the group of age 5 and 7, but performance on source discrimination tasks was better when using flash than when using picture for 9-year-old children. In auditory condition, similar analyses demonstrated significant main effects of age and materials. Performance on source discrimination tasks was better when using sound than when using words. Another ANOVA with 3 (age) × 4 (picture, flash, sound, and word) showed that there was a significant interaction between age and material (F (6,221) = 2.80, p = 0.012). Simple effect analysis showed that the predominance of source discrimination performance was as follows: RMpicture > RMword, RMflash = RMsound = RMword for 5-year-old children; RMpicture = RMflash > RMsound = RMword for 7-year-old children; and RMpicture = RMflash = RMsound > RMword for 9-year- old children.
Conclusions The kind of stimuli did affect children’s source discrimination. First, the performance of picture source discrimination was better than that of flash for younger children and the performance of flash was better than that of picture for older ones in the visual condition. Second, the performance of sound discrimination was better than the word discrimination. Third, there existed a developmental trend of source discrimination: the reality monitoring of picture was predominant for 5-year-old children; the reality monitoring of picture and flash were predominant for 7-year-old children; and the reality monitoring of visual and sound were predominant for 9- year-old children

Key words: reality monitoring, visual and auditory modalities, children’s development