Reality monitoring in auditory and visual modalities: developmental trends and effects of cross-modal imagery

Research to date into the development of the ability to discriminate between memories of things imagined and things directly experienced (reality monitoring) has not focused on the modality in which the tasks are presented. The present study sought to determine whether similar patterns of developmental progression in reality monitoring were present in visual and auditory modalities. Further, it sought to investigate the role of cross-modal imagery in reality-monitoring tasks. In Experiment 1, 6-year-old children performed less well than 9- to 10-year-old children in an auditory reality-monitoring task but not in a comparable visual task. Experiment 2 examined possible explanations for this finding. Six- and 10-year-old children were administered tasks similar to those in Experiment 1, but, within each modality, children were allocated either to a condition in which presented items were likely to elicit cross-modal imagery or to one in which cross-modal imagery was unlikely. Discrimination scores revealed evidence of developmental progression in both auditory and visual source-monitoring tasks, but no effect of cross-modal imagery.