10/09/2026
A child can sincerely believe a memory is their own even when parts of it developed through repeated suggestion, imagination or discussion.
In research described by Stephen Ceci and colleagues in 1994, preschool children were asked once a week about events that had genuinely happened and events that had never occurred. One of the fictitious events involved getting a hand caught in a mousetrap and needing to go to hospital to have it removed.
The children initially denied the fictitious events. After repeatedly being asked to think about them, however, more than one-third eventually said they remembered experiences they had originally rejected. One child later described the mousetrap event in striking detail, including which finger had been caught, where the trap was in the house, who was there, being taken to hospital and receiving a bandage. The event had never happened.
Ceci and colleagues examined this through source misattribution. Memory is not only about retaining information; we also need to keep track of where that information came from. Something directly experienced, something another person said, something imagined and something repeatedly thought about can become harder to separate, particularly for young children.
The research does not show that children are inherently unreliable, or that asking a question more than once creates a false memory. Nor can a study like this tell us what happened in any individual family. What it does show is why repetition, suggestion and imagination deserve attention when we consider how a child’s understanding can develop. When the same possibility, explanation or interpretation is revisited again and again, familiarity can begin to influence what feels known, remembered or true.
In coercive family dynamics, a child may repeatedly hear negative explanations about another parent, be questioned after spending time with them, hear adult events retold from one perspective, or have ordinary interactions repeatedly interpreted for them. Over time, those messages can become woven into how the child understands people, relationships and their own history.
The child does not need to be deliberately repeating someone else’s words. They may sincerely believe the understanding that has developed and may no longer recognise how much of it came from their own direct experience and how much developed through what they repeatedly heard, discussed, imagined or were encouraged to consider.
Repeated influence can reach beyond memory. It can shape what a child believes about another person, how they interpret past and present interactions, what they expect will happen, how they respond emotionally, whether they feel free to express affection, and how safe it feels to maintain an important relationship.
Sometimes what changes a child’s understanding is not one dramatic statement. It is the cumulative effect of what is repeated, explained, questioned and reinforced across many ordinary interactions.
That is part of what can remain UNSEEN.
Ceci et al. (1994)
