Do emotional stimuli enhance or impede recall relative to neutral stimuli? An investigation of two “false memory” tasks

Many eyewitness memory situations involve negative and distressing events; however, many studies investigating “false memory” phenomena use neutral stimuli only. The aim of the present study was to determine how both the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) procedure and the Misinformation Effect Paradigm tasks were related to each other using distressing and neutral stimuli. Participants completed the DRM (with negative and neutral word lists) and viewed a distressing or neutral film. Misinformation for the film was introduced and memory was assessed. Film accuracy and misinformation susceptibility were found to be greater for those who viewed the distressing film relative to the neutral film. Accuracy responses on both tasks were related, however, susceptibility to the DRM illusion and Misinformation Effect were not. The misinformation findings support the Paradoxical Negative Emotion (PNE) hypothesis that negative stimuli will lead to remembering more accurate details but also greater likelihood of memory distortion. However, the PNE hypothesis was not supported for the DRM results. The findings also suggest that the DRM and Misinformation tasks are not equivalent and may have differences in underlying mechanisms. Future research should focus on more ecologically valid methods of assessing false memory.     

Is the truth in the details? Extended narratives help distinguishing false “memories” from false “reports”

The present study examined the effects of fantasy proneness on false "reports" and false "memories", of existent and non-existent footage of a public event. We predicted that highly fantasy prone individuals would be more likely to stand by their initial claim of having seen a film of the event than low fantasy prone participants when prompted for more details about their experiences. Eighty creative arts students and 80 other students were asked whether they had seen CCTV footage preceding the attack on Swedish foreign minister Anna Lindh up to, and including, non-existent footage of the actual moment of the attack. If affirmative, they were probed for extended narratives of what they claimed to have seen. Overall, 64% of participants provided a false "report" by answering yes to the initial question. Of these, 30% provided no explicit details of the attack, and a further 15% retracted their initial answer in their narratives. This left 19% of the sample who appeared to have false "memories" because they provided explicit details of the actual moment of the attack. Women scored higher than men and art students scored higher than other students on fantasy proneness, but there was no effect on levels of false reporting or false "memory". Memories were rated more vivid and clear for existent compared to non-existent aspects of the event. In sum, these data suggest a more complex relationship between memory distortions and fantasy proneness than previously observed.     

Eliciting false memories on implicit and explicit memory tests after incidental learning

Abstract: In a false memory experiment, lists of semantic associates (e.g., newspaper, letter, book, etc.) were presented to three groups of participants to induce false memories for critical nonpresented (CN) words (e.g., read) in an incidental learning task. The control group simply estimated the frequency rate in everyday Japanese discourse of each word on a list. The imagery instruction group received an additional instruction to imagine a thematically related converging word from the target words on a list. Participants in the imagery plus writing group received the same instructions as those in the imagery instruction group, but were also required to write down the word they imagined for each list. The results from the implicit and explicit memory tests given after the incidental learning episode showed that the level of priming for CN words was equivalent to that for actually presented target words for all three groups on the implicit test, whereas explicit memory results showed that participants explicitly recognized more target words than CN words. The implications for implicit associative response and fuzzy‐trace theories of false memory, as well as implicit priming, are discussed.     

When Photographs Create False Memories

ABSTRACT— Photographs help people illustrate the stories of their lives and the significant stories of their society. However, photographs can do more than illustrate events; in this article, we show that photographs can distort memory for them. We describe the course of our "false-memory implantation" research, and review recent work showing that photographs can sometimes increase—while other times decrease—false memories. First, we discuss research showing that a doctored photo, showing subjects taking a completely fictitious hot-air-balloon ride, can cultivate false memories for that experience. We hypothesize that the photograph helps subjects to imagine details about the event that they later confuse with reality. Second, we show that although photographs are indeed powerful sources of influence on memory, they are not necessarily as powerful as narrative. In fact, in certain circumstances, photographs might constrain imagination. Third, we discuss research showing that true photographs can also cultivate false memories. Finally, we present recent work showing that photographs can create false memories for current events.     

A bibliometric analysis of the recovered memory controversy in the 21st century

In the 1990s, repressed and recovered memories were at the heart of intense debates within the clinical field as well as in academia. Recent data suggest that this controversy has not yet been resolved in the clinical field. However, it is unclear to what extent repressed and recovered memories are studied in peer‐reviewed outcomes in the 21st century. The current article examined the volume of publications and citations regarding repressed and/or recovered memories during the years 2001–2018. Analysis of the 145 articles retrieved shows that these issues are still being investigated within the academic sphere. Proponents and opponents of repressed memories regularly published articles, and these were cited as often as articles published during the 1990s. These issues were also multidisciplinary (i.e., social/clinical/experimental psychology, psychiatry, and law) and often dealt with dissociation, child abuse, and/or false memory. The results are encouraging for furthering the research field and for the understanding of traumatic memory mechanisms.     

Who is susceptible in three false memory tasks?

ABSTRACT

Decades of research show that people are susceptible to developing false memories. But if they do so in one task, are they likely to do so in a different one? The answer: “No”. In the current research, a large number of participants took part in three well-established false memory paradigms (a misinformation task, the Deese-Roediger-McDermott [DRM] list learning paradigm, and an imagination inflation exercise) as well as completed several individual difference measures. Results indicate that many correlations between false memory variables in all three inter-paradigm comparisons are null, though some small, positive, significant correlations emerged. Moreover, very few individual difference variables significantly correlated with false memories, and any significant correlations were rather small. It seems likely, therefore, that there is no false memory “trait”. In other words, no one type of person seems especially prone, or especially resilient, to the ubiquity of memory distortion.     

Test of Competing Explanations of the Bizarre Response Bias in Recognition Memory

Recent research has demonstrated that a more liberal response criterion is used when people make judgments about bizarre items than about common items in old-new tests of recognition. The present study was designed to test 2 possible explanations of the bizarre response bias. The bizarre-relations explanation suggests that the bizarre response bias is triggered by the bizarre relations depicted in test items. The target-constituent explanation suggests that the bizarre response bias is the result of a sense of familiarity with constituents of bizarre test items. These explanations were tested by examining the influence of lure manipulations on memory discrimination and response bias for common and bizarre hand-drawn pictures. The results indicated support for the target-constituent explanation by reversing the response bias (obtaining a common response bias) in a recognition test that used common lures containing constituents from bizarre target items and bizarre lures containing constituents from common target items. The results also indicated that increased verbal elaboration enhanced memory discrimination and reduced response bias for both common and bizarre stimuli. The implications of these results are discussed with regard to the false memory controversy.     

情绪对错误记忆的影响及其应用启示

与真实记忆一样,错误记忆也会受到情绪的影响,这主要表现在以下几个方面：（1）在正性心境下,个体会有更多的错误记忆;（2）个体对负性刺激更易产生错误记忆;（3）错误记忆存在着心境一致性效应。这些研究结果在临床治疗和司法鉴定等方面给了我们重要的启示：（1）避免心境一致性效应;（2）根据心境状态选择恰当的提问方式;（3）移植负性错误记忆治疗成瘾行为;（4）根据情绪体验辨别记忆的真伪。未来的研究在深入探讨情绪影响错误记忆的理论机制的同时,可以立足于两者的交互作用进行更多应用性的研究,以扩大其现实意义。