Question: why can people, especially the teenagers, can respond or remember something that had never happened before? does it take account into false memories?

Maria Montefinese answered on 18 Jun 2018:

Hi Jamie! 🙂 That’s a really interesting question! It’s really difficult to say why because it is still largely mysterious how our brain stores memory (and how it creates false memories) works. Many times, false memories are repressed for a long time due to traumatic episodes occurred. So, like a defense mechanism some memories can be hidden for a long time before to become consciousness.
False memories could be due for example to associative link in our memory.
At this link https://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2016/aug/08/is-your-memory-as-accurate-as-you-think-it-is
you can find a task that we often use in experimental psychology to evaluate the false memory and an explanation of the associative links in our memory.
The teenagers could be more affected by false memories compared to the adults because the brain areas (in the frontal and temporal lobes, in particular) contributing to true and false memory do not reach full adult development until approximately 25 years of age. I hope I made myself clear!
All the best,
Maria