Citation

Vannucci M, Nocentini A, Chiorri C, Menesini E. J. Adolesc. 2014; 37(8): 1329-1333.

Affiliation

Department of Educational Sciences and Psychology, University of Florence, Italy.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.adolescence.2014.09.007

PMID

25310267

Abstract

The present study investigates the relationship between violent false memories and delinquent and aggressive behavior in a sample of adolescents. Two hundred eleven participants completed measures of aggressive and delinquent behavior and performed a modified version of the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm, a false memory task for lists of associated words. Participants were presented with a list of ambiguously violent words and three lists of neutral words. For each list a free recall task was performed. Violent false memories were significantly associated with delinquent behaviors in both genders, whereas a significant correlation with aggressive behaviors was found only in males. A multilevel multiple regression showed that the prediction of delinquent behaviors was improved by entering violent false memories into the model as a further predictor, whereas no effect was found for aggressive behaviors. These findings indicate a significant association of violent false memories with delinquent behavior in adolescents.

Language: en