False Remembering in the Aged

ABSTRACT— Researchers studying human memory have increasingly focused on memory accuracy in aging populations. In this article we briefly review the literature on memory accuracy in healthy older adults. The prevailing evidence indicates that, compared to younger adults, older adults exhibit both diminished memory accuracy and greater susceptibility to misinformation. In addition, older adults demonstrate high levels of confidence in their false memories. We suggest an explanatory framework for the high level of false memories observed in older adults, a framework based on the theory that consciously controlled uses of memory decline with age, making older adults more susceptible to false memories that rely on automatic processes. We also point to future research that may remedy such deficits in accuracy.     

Memory distortions: When suggestions cannot be easily ignored

In the present study, the persistence of personal false memories (FMs) after social feedback that denies their truth was assessed. Participants imitated actions performed by the experimenter (Session 1) and watched a doctored video with performed and critical “fake” actions (Session 2), followed by a memory rating and a recognition task. A few days later (Session 3), participants were clearly told that some memories were false and received daily reminders of the correct list of objects/actions before testing their memory again in Session 4. Results of both memory ratings and recognition indicated effective FM implantation. Interestingly, response times for correct rejections were longer for fake than true objects, suggesting participants struggled to ignore false suggestions. Crucial for our aim, Session 4 showed that FM persisted also after the debriefing and repeated presentations of correct list of objects/actions, suggesting that FMs for actions are rather difficult to discard.     

Ecologically relevant stimuli and color memory

Ecologically relevant stimuli were developed as an alternative to Munsell color chips. Colored pictures of familiar objects were used to study color memory. We investigated the typicality of color to particular objects. Contextually typical colors were remembered more accurately than atypical colors were. Moreover, this variable had a stronger effect on memory than focality did. We concluded that memory for ecologically relevant material is more impressed by a color's relation to experience than by its intrinsic properties.     

知觉和概念加工范式对内隐与外显记忆发展的影响

控制知觉材料的熟悉性和概念范例的典型性,以考察它们对内隐与外显记忆发展的影响。结果表明：（1）知觉内隐记忆的启动效应不存在年龄和熟悉性效应,而知觉外显记忆成绩则具有明显的年龄和熟悉性效应;（2）在概念内隐记忆任务上,典型范例的启动效应不存在年龄差异,非典型范例的启动效应则存在随年龄而增长的启动效应：无论是典型范例还是非典型范例的外显记忆成绩均随年龄增长而提高。     

Digitally manipulating memory: Effects of doctored videos and imagination in distorting beliefs and memories

In prior research on false autobiographical beliefs and memories, subjects have been asked to imagine fictional events and have been exposed to false evidence that indicates that the fictional events occurred. But what are the relative contributions of imagination and false evidence toward false belief and memory construction? In the present study, subjects observed and copied various simple actions; then they viewed doctored videos that suggested that they had performed extra actions and they imagined performing some of those and some other actions. Subjects returned 2 weeks later for a memory test. False evidence or imagination alone was often sufficient to cause belief and memory distortions; in combination, they appeared to have additive or even superadditive effects. The results bear on the mechanisms underlying false beliefs and memories, and we propose legal and clinical applications of these findings.     

The Role of the Self in False Memory Creation

Summary

People will create false memories of childhood experiences. In this article, the research that demonstrates the creation of false memories is first described. Three processes that may be involved in memory creation are then outlined. First, individuals must accept a suggested event as plausible. Second, they construct an image and narrative of the false event. Third, they incorrectly attribute the source of the event to personal memory rather than external suggestion. We argue that the self plays a role in each of these processes. In addition, because memories are important components of the self, when memories change, the self changes as well.     

错误记忆的应用研究综述

本文着重从被压抑的早期记忆、目击者记忆两个角度论述了错误记忆的应用研究。本文还从增加有益的错误记忆、区别真实和错误记忆,以及错误记忆实验室研究的生态学效度三个方面,对错误记忆的应用研究做出了思考和展望。     

Contributions of visual and embodied expertise to body perception

Recent research has demonstrated that our perception of the human body differs from that of inanimate objects. This study investigated whether the visual perception of the human body differs from that of other animate bodies and, if so, whether that difference could be attributed to visual experience and/or embodied experience. To dissociate differential effects of these two types of expertise, inversion effects (recognition of inverted stimuli is slower and less accurate than recognition of upright stimuli) were compared for two types of bodies in postures that varied in typicality: humans in human postures (human-typical), humans in dog postures (human-atypical), dogs in dog postures (dog-typical), and dogs in human postures (dog-atypical). Inversion disrupts global configural processing. Relative changes in the size and presence of inversion effects reflect changes in visual processing. Both visual and embodiment expertise predict larger inversion effects for human over dog postures because we see humans more and we have experience producing human postures. However, our design that crosses body type and typicality leads to distinct predictions for visual and embodied experience. Visual expertise predicts an interaction between typicality and orientation: greater inversion effects should be found for typical over atypical postures regardless of body type. Alternatively, embodiment expertise predicts a body, typicality, and orientation interaction: larger inversion effects should be found for all human postures but only for atypical dog postures because humans can map their bodily experience onto these postures. Accuracy data supported embodiment expertise with the three-way interaction. However, response-time data supported contributions of visual expertise with larger inversion effects for typical over atypical postures. Thus, both types of expertise affect the visual perception of bodies.     

Children's kinematic false memories

ABSTRACT

Individuals misrecognise as seen the never-presented natural continuation of an action. These false memories derive from the running of kinematic mental models of the actions seen, which rest on motor inferences from implicit knowledge. We verified an implied prediction: kinematic false memories should be detectable even in children. The participants in our experiments first observed photos in which actors were about to perform actions on objects. At recognition they were presented with the original photos, plus (a) distractors representing the unseen natural continuation of the original actions, (b) distractors representing the beginning of other actions on the same objects and (c) distractors representing completed different actions on the same objects. In contrast to the original studies in which participants expressed their confidence in recognition, in our experiments the participants catgorirzed the action as seen or not seen. After replicating the original results with the dichotomous recognition task (Experiment 1), we detected spontaneous false memories also in children (Experiment 2).     

The schema provokes a disparity of false recollection between actions and objects in an everyday scene

We explored the effect of the schema on recognition memories and subjective experiences for actions and objects in an everyday scene. At first, participants watched slides of a man cooking in a kitchen. The man performed schema‐consistent actions, and schema‐consistent objects were left. After watching the slides, participants completed a recognition test, a remember/know test, and a Perception/Thought/Emotion/Context questionnaire. We confirmed three main results. First, participants made more false recognitions for schema‐consistent distracters than for schema‐inconsistent distracters with more “remember” judgments accompanied by perceptual, thought, and contextual details, and with more “know” judgments. Second, participants made more false recognitions for schema‐consistent object distracters than for schema‐consistent action distracters. Third, participants more frequently recognized schema‐consistent action targets than schema‐consistent object targets with more “remember” judgments. Both action memory and object memory were reconstructed under the schema, provoking false recognitions for schema‐consistent distracters. However, the memories of schema‐consistent action targets were so recollective that they could prevent false recognitions for schema‐consistent action distracters.     

Prototypicality in sentence production

Three cued-recall experiments examined the effect of category typicality on the ordering of words in sentence production. Past research has found that typical items tend to be mentioned before atypical items in a phrase—a pattern usually associated with lexical variables (like word frequency), and yet typicality is a conceptual variable. Experiment 1 revealed that an appropriate conceptual framework was necessary to yield the typicality effect. Experiment 2 tested ad hoc categories that do not have prior representations in long-term memory and yielded no typicality effect. Experiment 3 used carefully matched sentences in which two category members appeared in the same or in different phrases. Typicality affected word order only when the two words appeared in the same phrase. These results are consistent with an account in which typicality has its origin in conceptual structure, which leads to differences in lexical accessibility in appropriate contexts.     

False recognition in women with a history of childhood emotional neglect and diagnose of recurrent major depression

While previous research has suggested that adults with a history of childhood sexual abuse may be more prone to produce false memories, little is known about the consequences of childhood neglect on basic memory processes. For this reason, the authors investigated how a group of women with a history of childhood emotional neglect (CEN) and diagnosed with recurrent Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) performed on the Deese–Roediger–McDermott paradigm in comparison to control groups. The results indicated that women with MDD and CEN were actually less prone to produce false memories relative to both women with MDD but no CEN and healthy women without MDD and any form of childhood maltreatment. These findings were explained in terms of the inability to extract/retrieve gist memories that support false recognition of critical lures, an explanation that seems to fit well with emerging MRI findings linking childhood neglect to reduced volume of brain regions associated to memory function.     

Walking through doorways differentially affects recall and familiarity

Previous research has reported that walking through a doorway to a new location makes memory for objects and events experienced in the previous location less accurate. This effect, termed the location updating effect, has been used to suggest that location changes are used to mark boundaries between events in memory: memories for objects encountered within the current event are more available than those from beyond an event boundary. Within a computer‐generated memory task, participants navigated through virtual rooms, walking through doorways, and interacting with objects. The accuracy and their subjective experience of their memory for the objects (remember/know and confidence) were assessed. The findings showed that shifts in location decreased accurate responses associated with the subjective experience of remembering but not those associated with the experience of knowing, even when considering only the most confident responses in each condition. These findings demonstrate that a shift in location selectively impacts recollection and so contributes to our understanding of boundaries in event memory.     

The role of kinematic mental simulation in creating false memories

Our investigation focuses on memory for scenes depicted in photos. According to the mental model theory, the observation of a static scene depicted in a photo which portrays an actor near to perform an action can trigger a kinematic mental simulation of that action unfolding in time. The deriving prediction is that such a kinematic mental model supports the creation of a false memory of the actor performing an advanced phase of the action. We test this prediction in three experiments in which participants are presented with static scenes of actions, and after three days they perform a recognition task in which they assess recognition of old and novel static scenes depicting actions. The results confirm that false memories occur for actions that represent the unfolding over time of the static action initially observed. Our theoretical framework can accommodate also several previous findings in the literature on false memories.     

Neural correlates underlying true and false associative memories

Despite the fact that associative memory studies produce a large number of false memories, neuroimaging analyses utilizing this paradigm typically focus only on neural activity mediating successful retrieval. The current study sought to expand on this prior research by examining the neural basis of both true and false associative memories. Though associative false memories are substantially different than those found in semantic or perceptual false memory paradigms, results suggest that associative false memories are mediated by similar neural mechanisms. Specifically, we found increased frontal activity that likely represents enhanced monitoring and evaluation compared to that needed for true memories and correct rejections. Results also indicated that true, and not false associative memories, are mediated by neural activity in the MTL, specifically the hippocampus. Finally, while activity in early visual cortex distinguished true from false memories, a lack of neural differences between hits and correct rejections failed to support previous findings suggesting that activity in early visual cortex represents sensory reactivation of encoding-related processing.     

Developmental reversals in false memory: Effects of emotional valence and arousal

Do the emotional valence and arousal of events distort children’s memories? Do valence and arousal modulate counterintuitive age increases in false memory? We investigated those questions in children, adolescents, and adults using the Cornell/Cortland Emotion Lists, a word list pool that induces false memories and in which valence and arousal can be manipulated factorially. False memories increased with age for unpresented semantic associates of word lists, and net accuracy (the ratio of true memory to total memory) decreased with age. These surprising developmental trends were more pronounced for negatively valenced materials than for positively valenced materials, they were more pronounced for high-arousal materials than for low-arousal materials, and developmental increases in the effects of arousal were small in comparison with developmental increases in the effects of valence. These findings have ramifications for legal applications of false memory research; materials that share the emotional hallmark of crimes (events that are negatively valenced and arousing) produced the largest age increases in false memory and the largest age declines in net accuracy.     

Adaptive constructive processes: evidence from priming verbal reasoning with false memories

Previous research has demonstrated that false memories produced by the Deese–Roediger–McDermott paradigm serve adaptive functions both in related memory tasks and in various cognitive processes. The present study investigated whether memory errors induced by associated words could influence performance on verbal reasoning tasks. Participants were asked to solve sentence-based verbal reasoning problems, half of which had been primed by the presentation of word lists where the critical lures were also the solutions to the problems. The results showed that when false memories were generated, problems were solved more often and significantly faster than those that were primed without false memories or those that were unprimed, and that there was no evidence that the effect of priming with false memories observed in experiments was due to testing effects. The findings extend false memory priming effects to verbal reasoning processes, providing evidence with adaptive constructive processes.     

How you lie affects what you remember

We investigated how telling different types of lies may impact memory. Participants studied pictures of objects, and later lied and told the truth about these and new objects once or multiple times by describing them or by denying they had seen them. Forty-eight hours later, participants were tested on their source memory. Results revealed that participants had good memory for having falsely described a never-seen object, but relatively poor memory for having falsely denied seeing a studied object. These results suggest that telling certain types of lies may make a person more likely to forget having lied. In addition, repeated truthful denials of having seen a picture paradoxically increased false memories for having seen it. Thus, telling the truth does not always prevent the possibility of memory distortion.