As cognitive researchers increasingly contribute to solving real-world problems with practical applications, more attention must be focused on the ethical consequences and implications of their research. With few exceptions, cognitive researchers have rarely articulated ethical concerns about their work in a public arena. However, we believe that the paradigm, procedures, and issues concerning participants' rights involving implanted memories require careful re¯ection, especially as they pertain to children. We hope the commentaries on this topic in this issue of Applied Cognitive Psychology spark additional discussions of scienti®c responsibility and the use of children in cognitive research.
It is questionable whether experiments that demonstrate memories may be implanted in children have been necessary at all. The great developmentalist Piaget is well known to have experienced an implanted memory in which his nanny fabricated an attempt to kidnap the young Piaget. This anecdote from Piaget (1962) is widely accepted as an illustration of how children pick up false memories. Another distinguished psychologist from the turn of the century, James Mark Baldwin (1890), similarly discusses as a fact, the acquisition of false memories that the individual comes to regard as real. Even William James (1890) discussed the creation of false memories as a frequent occurrence. If the goal of some current cognitive researchers has been to determine that memories can be implanted in children, a good literature review could have demonstrated the point without putting children at potential risk. Of course, experiments provide dierent information than anecdotes, but anecdotes do not elicit the ethical concerns created by deliberately implanting memories in children.
While adults and many adolescents are able to provide informed consent in situations where false memories may be created, children do not have the cognitive ability to fully understand the experimental situation. Instead, when children are sought to participate in such research, their parents provide the informed consent. In the 1970s there was considerable discussion about the use of children in research. Discussion at