Distinguishing between memories for thoughts and deeds: The role of prospective processing in children's source monitoring

The source monitoring abilities of children and adults were compared by asking both age groups to distinguish between memories for performed and imagined actions. The identity of the person performing actions (self vs. other), as well as the identity of the person imagined (self vs. other) were varied to create four kinds of performhagine conditions. Results showed that 6‐year‐olds performed worse than adults in all four conditions, and they were more likely than adults to claim an imagined action was actually performed (Expt 1). This bias to claim an imagined action was performed was more pronounced for children who imagined themselves going through the motions of performing actions compared to those who imagined seeing themselves (Expt 2). Action similarity played a role in source monitoring, but only under some conditions. The results point to the importance of prospective processing for children's source monitoring, and suggest that systematic investigation of the goal‐directed nature of actions in source monitoring is needed.