Jun 30 2011
The Truth Fairy
In one of the most famous child abuse cases in recent history, the “Little Rascals” ritual abuse case in Edenton, NC involved 90 children accusing 20 adults of long term ritual sexual and other abuse. Among the adults accused were the mayor and the sheriff. The reports from the children included the following claims:
- being taken to the back room of a store and sexually abused. There is a very wide opening between the back room and the rest of the store, so that any sexual abuse would have been perpetrated in the full view of customers.
- being taken on board a space ship and flown into outer space where they were abused.
- seeing a large fish tank where sharks were trained.
- being taken on board a ship into the ocean and abused while trained sharks swam around the boat.
As far as I can tell from reports none of the sharks had frikin’ laser beams on their heads. The case has become a classic example of a modern witch hunt – driven by hysteria and incompetent investigation.
The case is also one among many that has raised serious scientific and practical questions about the role of children as eyewitnesses. Eventually all charges were dropped, but the accused adults were put through a long and terrible process, some even involving jail time.
A recent study intends to shed further light on the question of child witnesses – specifically the effect of fantastical belief on the construction of memory. The researchers investigated the effect of belief in the tooth fairy on memories of a recent loss of a baby tooth.
I found the background of the study more interesting than the study itself. The authors give a nice summary of existing research. One key concept is the fact that children can give reports in more than one context, and it may be difficult to tell them apart. Children often slip into what is called pretense, where they make up fantastical stories but they know that they are not real. They are pretending, perhaps because they feel they are expected to, or perhaps just for fun.
In our culture children are often encouraged to engage in pretense, and even in fantastical beliefs – Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy being common examples. These beliefs may also be intermingled with religious beliefs – and children likely do not distinguish which fantastical beliefs are pretend and for fun and which are serious and expected to persist into adulthood.
It should not be surprising, then, that under long interrogation children would start to make up stories about space ships and trained sharks – or ritual abuse. We should, in fact, be grateful for those details because they helped put the more serious details of abuse into perspective.
Already it is clear that investigators need to be aware of this phenomenon, and related phenomena that are active even in adults. Our memories are largely constructed, and we will alter memories to fit our beliefs. We will even update our memories as our beliefs change or new information becomes available. We are also suggestible – adding details suggested to us by others, even just by asking leading questions or questions that contain innocuous details.
The current study seeks to add to the vast literature on memory and suggestibility by exploring whether fantastical beliefs lead to false memory construction or just fantasy pretense. The study is rather complicated, but here is a quick overview. Children were separated into six groups based upon two criteria. They were divided into those who believe in the tooth fairy, those who do not, and those who are uncertain. And then each of these groups were divided into those who were encouraged to tell a truthful story about their recent tooth loss, and those who were encouraged to tell a “fun” story about their tooth loss. They were made to understand that “fun” means the inclusion of dramatic and fantastical elements.
The basic pattern of the results is that believers told stories, whether encouraged to be truthful or fun, that contained many elaborate details, including those about the tooth fairy. Those who did not believe contained few such details. While those who were uncertain contained many fantastical details when encourage to be “fun” and few when encouraged to be truthful.
The study supports the conclusion that when interviewing children care must be taken to be neutral, and to not ask leading questions or to encourage the children to engage in pretense. This is not surprising or new.
The authors also conclude that the pattern of results suggests that the believer children could not distinguish their made-up fantasies from true memories. This is plausible, and I understand the reasoning the authors use to conclude that the children were constructing false memories in line with their fantasy beliefs about the tooth fairy. I am not convinced that this conclusion is firm, however. It seems possible that the children are simply more persistent in their pretense, or are knowingly making up details to support their beliefs. I think there is a very fuzzy line between really believing something and just going along because it is in line with one’s beliefs and desires.
The study was not designed to address this issue – but we also don’t know where the arrow of cause and effect is. Many skeptical parents want to know if they are intellectually harming their children by encouraging belief in things like the tooth fairy. The question is – did belief in the tooth fairy encourage the children in the believer group to make up fantastical details, or did a pre-existing proneness for fantasy lead these children to still believe in the tooth fairy?
In the current study, there were no major differences among the groups in terms of their parent’s treatment of the tooth fairy myth. So believer children and non-believer children were all equally subjected to encouragement and even deception on the part of their parents into believing in the tooth fairy. So then why were believer children believers and non-believer children non-believers? There may be variables not measured by the study, or it may be the personality type of the children.
To separate these various possibilities we would need to do a study where children are randomized to either be encouraged or discouraged to believe in the tooth fairy, and then run a similar experiment on them as above. I doubt such a study will ever be done, however. At least, however, a retrospective study can be done controlling for that variable – differences in parental behavior toward common fantastical beliefs like the tooth fairy.
Regardless of these open questions, the lessons from this and similar research are clear. Memories are not reliable. They can be fabricated, altered, and contaminated. Therefore, special care must be taken by investigators and therapists not to create or contaminate memories. This is true of adults, but especially true of children who are more prone to fantasy and less grounded in reality.
16 Responses to “The Truth Fairy”
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Wow. I don’t envy the researchers trying to answer questions like these; it sounds like the issues is plagued by compounding factors.
I haven’t read the study fully, but I wonder if it would have been a better idea to briefly discuss the tooth fairy with all the children first, randomly split them into groups from there and then conduct the study. After the study was concluded, THEN ask about whether they believed in the tooth fairy.
Do you think the very discussion about whether they believed in the tooth fairy could have been a leading question(s)? I feel like children who have just had a conversation about not believing in a serious research setting might be less likely to engage in fantastical thinking.
Enzo – the authors were careful to do the various aspects of the study in random order. So some children were sorted for belief first, then asked to tell true or fun accounts of tooth loss, others were sorted for belief after. I think they adequately controlled for such effects.
How much of kids confabulating is simply a lack of inhibition from relatively under-developed frontal lobes?
The MTL dependent memory system is needed for explicit “real” memories, mental time travel, fantasies, etc (e.g., Dan Gibson, Randy Buckner, DAn Schacter). But when we effortfully recall, we rely on top down/executive control biasing of explicit memory from frontal lobes, which develop relatively later, to re-activate the memory. At this stage, fantastical memories should be inhibited by executive goals.
Maybe kids at certain ages (stages) simply cannot as easily tell the difference between fantasy and reality – they may need more coaxing, less distractions, etc. to free up more exec resources, but to us it appears they’re just having fun?
This is very interesting.
We are going through something like this with our 3 year old right now. She seems obsessed with talking about her sightings of the big bad wolf. They range from the big bad wolf is outside of my window to the big bad wolf tried to blow down our house, but we had a tea party instead. When I explain to her that the big bad wolf is fictional she gives me a look like I am crazy.
I am sure she got the idea of a big bad wolf from both a TV show that she likes to watch, and from books we read. Her fascination with it kind of boggles my mind.
My parents told me I had a similar fascination with ghostbusters when I was a kid, and my brother with ninja turtles. Seems like a normal but strange stage in development.
Fantasy is a luxury. Abused kids feel real pain. They know there is not any magical interventions.
I wonder if humanity as a whole went through a child-like stage in our evolution and whether this would explain our creation myths and legends?
HHC-
That is actually a false statement. Many children who are the victims of sex abuse have been conditioned and convinced that the abuse is normal and in fact is a loving act by a caregiver. An adult third party may have anger and revulsion over an act of abuse; the actual experience of the child may be something completely different. I’ve investigated thousands of abuse cases and been involved with thousands of victims of child abuse for over 27 years and the differences in emotional content to abuse memories are as different as the individuals involved and their circumstances. And while there are indeed no magical interventions, sometimes interventions are successful.
The book “Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts” has some excellent chapters dealing with implanting false memories and what happens in law enforcement and CPS investigations when decisions are made before the facts can lead to a reasonable conclusion. I’m also really anticipating the presentation by Elizabeth Loftus PhD at TAM-9. Loftus is an expert on memory and has been involved in a number of the horrible witch hunts that have happened over the past fifteen years.
I like that when criticizing the design of the experiment, you also made suggestions about how to improve the design in this case.
Have their been any studies about children that have physical evidence of abuse and their accounts? Do they have fantastical elements in their accounts as well or do are they more realistically expressed?
If so it seems it would make it more difficult to just dismiss claims just because they had implausible elements although arresting innocent people because of some made up story a child told has a devastating effect as well.
Memory is indeed a slippery thing. But I would like to fuse steve12 and HHCs comments into an observation: allegations of ritual abuse are not a modern witch hunt. The peak occurred in the mid-90s, and compared to things like the War on Drugs, the ‘hunt’ was pretty minimally dispersed. I feel for the innocent who were caught up in kids imaginings, however there are far too many times where real sexual and physical abuse of children is underreported or unreported. And it’s not strangers or groups of strangers – it’s friends and family.
Getting a handle on children’s memory is a key aspect of bringing perpetrators of horrific acts to justice. Survivors of abuse deal with that trauma for much of their lives. Many times the results are tragic. The point of saying all of this is best summed up with the suggestion that leading off and wrapping up with a reference to ‘false’ memories regarding allegations of abuse is misplaced. Predatory sexual abuse is one of the great continuing evils of society and should be treated with more respect. I’m sure other examples of kids making things up can be found.
The Principe and Smith study discussed above had subjects between 60 and 95 months of age (“5 to 6 year olds”). Relative to the the Little Rascals case, it is difficult to ascertain the ages of the children at the time of the alleged abuse, let alone the time (often months later) that their testimony was taken. According to , five of the twelve the children testifying were between 36 months and 71 months old “at the time of the alleged abuse.”
The point here is that children can use words with seeming adult-level accuracy without in fact anchoring those words in the same way adults would do.
Several vignettes may illustrate:
Children can recite the numbers one, two, three, ….n accurately in order, but when presented with the stimulus ::: may not be able to respond accurately with the word six –or given stimulus … even the word three would not be produced.
A child may announce confidently on Friday that “on Tuesday we are going to [destination], but (a) on asked to tell how many days until departure, have no idea; or (b) when talking with the parents they respond that on some Tuesday in the future, departure for [destination] will happen, but it is not the next Tuesday or even some definite Tuesday.
Relative to the sexual content of the “Little Rascals” case, I have an anecdote from some years back.
I was taking care of a friend’s children, a 5 month old [Sam] and his older sister [Julia] who was then 35 months old, while the parents were out on a date. The girl had graduated from diapers (been toilet trained) about a month before her brother was born. I was changing the boy’s diapers and forgot to drape his penis, so of course he started to pee. I quickly draped him before I was sprayed — much– and completed the diaper change — but there was some swearing on my part.
The family used penis and vulva, not pet names like pene or dick or pussy or vajayjay, but used peep and poop for urine and feces.
After I’d settled Sam, Julia remarked that she had had a penis and had sprayed people, just like Sam had sprayed me, but (and this is what I remember clearly) “I gave my penis back when I gave diapers up and learned to put my peep and poop in the toilet.” All I said then was, “Well, that’s something”.
Imagine what a Satanist-obsessed investigator would make of that statment.
Sorry about the endless link.
“allegations of ritual abuse are not a modern witch hunt. The peak occurred in the mid-90s, and compared to things like the War on Drugs, the ‘hunt’ was pretty minimally dispersed.”
Witch hunt in the sense that the alleged abuse was some underworld ritual, that many who questioned the validity of the accusations became the accused, and in the end all of it was false and based a a faulty understanding of how memory works. I don’t think it has to be widespread to be called a ‘witch hunt’.
“I feel for the innocent who were caught up in kids imaginings, however there are far too many times where real sexual and physical abuse of children is underreported or unreported. And it’s not strangers or groups of strangers – it’s friends and family.”
Of course. POinting to instances of witch hunts to explore how memory works in no way means that real abuse of children doesn’t occur. We need to understand more about assessing kids’s memory in these cases so that reliable prosecutions can take place when appropriate.
Thanks for the additions JacobV, lizditz & Steve. I don’t mean to digress from the article’s main thrust ~ the sidebar topic is important to me on a number of levels.
I am somewhat familiar with Dr. Loftus’ work in that I have had discussions with her one of her grad students and read some of her writings – and this is where I note that yes, memory is flawed, and especially so in children – even more so at a young age. However, I see it as a mistake to levy that against the existence of rampant abuse in general. The number of times the crime is committed far outweigh the number of times someone innocent is caught up in accusations. I would venture a guess that the same holds true for rape statistics. And yet, in my anecdotal observations, people want to believe the smaller statistic: it didn’t happen. That belief in turn would bias the search for the truth of what occurred.
I also still think it’s a mistake to cast the loaded label of witch hunt over something that had a sensationally overblown but limited impact. While some assert that underground ritual networks do not exist, I believe quite the contrary. The premise is not so fantastic, and though sources go to thorough lengths to discredit such notions, I have witnessed the effect extreme sexual trauma has on a person. Indeed, if the argument centers on power and control, then the ‘false memories’ become a moot discussion, as that would be an excellent diversionary planted memory to take away from what was actually occurring.
I’m also not well versed on memory locking when it comes to post-traumatic dissociation: I’ve heard accounts of reliving every moment and also of memories becoming vague, indistinct, hazy and emotion-based rather than visual.
I thus find it intriguing when I see articles like this: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/17/science/17memory.html and wonder what it will look like in humans.
>> “We need to understand more about assessing kids’s memory in these cases so that reliable prosecutions can take place when appropriate.”
Agreed. So I, too, am interested to hear more in this field, by Loftus or others ~ there are others I know who are having to ‘fight the system’ because it’s prone to believing the smaller statistic. I would love to see this cycle ended in a generation or two.
Jacob V, Wishing you a Happy Fourth of July, and thanks for being that magician for more than 27 years!
I work with children who are involved in the Court process and one of the issues to remember is that there are not only problems with the accuracy of children’s memories (which is only a problem for Court, their memories work very well at promoting their healthy development), there are also problems with the pre-conceived notions that adults have about children’s memories. For example, I hear all the time that a children’s story should be considered as accurate because children never lie (i.e. about sexual abuse) and children should always be believed. Another problem is that adults don’t realize how easy it is to implant memories by suggestive questioning, something that comes up again and again with police and child protection authorities. These factors compounds the problems, because the children say inaccurate or imaginary things and adults then take them at their word and act on the inaccurate information.