Frontiers in Psychology 01 frontiersin.org Normative developmental vs. reverse developmental trends in memory distortion: a framework to investigate the impact of internal and external influences on memory and their relevance to legal decisions Brittany J. Rosendaul *, I-An Su and Stephen J. Ceci Child Witness and Cognition Lab, Department of Psychology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, United States There are two opposing positions regarding the development of memory: the normative developmental position, and the reverse developmental position. The normative position, which has long been the default presupposition, supports the notion that susceptibility to memory distortion, including false memories, decreases with age. In contrast, the concept of “developmental reversals” supports the notion that susceptibility to memory distortion and false memories increases with age. Each perspective finds support from existing theories as well as from research on endogenous and exogenous sources of influence. In a legal context, having an accurate understanding of the developmental course of false memory can contribute on the one hand to mitigating wrongful convictions and, on the other hand, to appreciating the accuracy of children’s statements when warranted. This review aims to integrate the existing literature regarding these seemingly opposite developmental courses and construct a framework outlining the conditions under which we may observe one age trend over the other. This entails an examination of the paradigms that have been invoked to support these competing positions, specifically developmental responses to internal vs. external sources of distortion. KEYWORDS memory distortion, developmental reversals, endogenous sources, exogenous sources, false memories, suggestibility, psychology and law 1. Introduction When it comes to memory, we may intuitively think of a close correlation between accuracy and chronological age, at least until old age when memory declines (Mueller-Johnson and Ceci, 2004; Mueller-Johnson et al., 2007). Children have long been publicly regarded as an unreliable memory source (Wright et al., 2010), made salient by the historical skepticism surrounding child eyewitness testimony dating back to the beginnings of scientific psychology (e.g., Ceci and Bruck, 1993, 1995; Dale et al., 1978; Melton, 1981). Upon asking open-access artificial intelligence to provide “descriptors of children,” two of the ten responses refer directly to OPEN ACCESS EDITED BY Henry Otgaar, Maastricht University, Netherlands REVIEWED BY Pietro Spataro, Mercatorum University, Italy Elisa Krackow, West Virginia University, United States *CORRESPONDENCE Brittany J. Rosendaul bjr227@cornell.edu RECEIVED 01 June 2023 ACCEPTED 02 August 2023 PUBLISHED 16 August 2023 CITATION Rosendaul BJ, Su I-A and Ceci SJ (2023) Normative developmental vs. reverse developmental trends in memory distortion: a framework to investigate the impact of internal and external influences on memory and their relevance to legal decisions. Front. Psychol. 14:1232753. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1232753 COPYRIGHT © 2023 Rosendaul, Su and Ceci. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. TYPE Review PUBLISHED 16 August 2023 DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1232753