Actually,a picture is worth less than 45 words: Narratives produce more false memories than photographs do

Most memory “implantation” studies have elicited false memories by using fake narratives. Recently, Wade, Garry, Read, and Lindsay (2002) showed that doctored photographs can be used to create false childhood memories in adults. Fifty percent of Wade et al.’s sample reported details of taking a childhood hot air balloon ride, although they had never been in a balloon. In this experiment, we investigated whether photos or narratives influence memory more than the other. We exposed subjects to either a fake photograph or a fake narrative of a childhood hot air balloon ride. Subjects tried to remember the false event and three real events over 1 week. Narratives were more likely to produce false memory reports than were photos. We offer a fluency-based account of our results and suggest that narratives promote more familiarity in subjects than do photographs.     

一图抵千言：多媒体学习中的自我生成绘图策略

自我生成绘图是指学生使用可视化的学习方法绘制一幅能反映每一段文字中重要观点的图画, 通过图文结合的方式来促进学习的一种策略。综述以往研究发现, 先前研究通过操纵文本、动画等学习材料来考察自我生成绘图在学习中的作用, 发现自我生成绘图的效果并不稳健：一方面它可以通过提高学生的认知和元认知能力、激发积极的情感状态而提高学习效果, 得到了绘图建构生成理论和多媒体学习认知理论的支持; 另一方面也可以通过增加认知负荷而阻碍学习, 得到了认知负荷理论的支持。整体而言, 自我生成绘图策略还是有利于学习的, 已有研究在学习效果上的效应量中值为d_保持 = 0.13, d_理解 = 0.46, d_迁移 = 0.38。未来的研究仍需要关注自我生成绘图策略的材料操纵、效果评定以及潜在变量等等。     

An image is worth a thousand words: why nouns tend to dominate verbs in early word learning

Nouns are generally easier to learn than verbs (e.g., Bornstein, 2005; Bornstein et al., 2004; Gentner, 1982; Maguire, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, 2006). Yet, verbs appear in children's earliest vocabularies, creating a seeming paradox. This paper examines one hypothesis about the difference between noun and verb acquisition. Perhaps the advantage nouns have is not a function of grammatical form class but rather related to a word's imageability. Here, word imageability ratings and form class (nouns and verbs) were correlated with age of acquisition according to the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) (Fenson et al., 1994). CDI age of acquisition was negatively correlated with words' imageability ratings. Further, a word's imageability contributes to the variance of the word's age of acquisition above and beyond form class, suggesting that at the beginning of word learning, imageability might be a driving factor.     

Generative processing and false memories: when there is no cost

Encoding manipulations (e.g., levels of processing) that facilitate retention often result in greater numbers of false memories, a pattern referred to as the more is less effect (M. P. Toglia, J. S. Neuschatz, & K. A. Goodwin, 1999). The present experiments explored false memories under generative processing. In Experiments 1-3, using Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) lists with items that were either read or generated, the authors found recognition and recall tests indicated generation effects for true memories but no increases in false memories (i.e., generation at no cost). In Experiment 4, in a departure from the DRM methodology, a cuing procedure resulted in a more is less pattern for congruous generation,and a no cost pattern for incongruous generation. This highlights the critical distinction between these encoding contexts.     

Using warnings to reduce categorical false memories in younger and older adults

Warnings about memory errors can reduce their incidence, although past work has largely focused on associative memory errors. The current study sought to explore whether warnings could be tailored to specifically reduce false recall of categorical information in both younger and older populations. Before encoding word pairs designed to induce categorical false memories, half of the younger and older participants were warned to avoid committing these types of memory errors. Older adults who received a warning committed fewer categorical memory errors, as well as other types of semantic memory errors, than those who did not receive a warning. In contrast, young adults' memory errors did not differ for the warning versus no-warning groups. Our findings provide evidence for the effectiveness of warnings at reducing categorical memory errors in older adults, perhaps by supporting source monitoring, reduction in reliance on gist traces, or through effective metacognitive strategies.     

Props,not pictures,are worth a thousand words: verbal accessibility of early memories under different conditions of contextual support

When they are tested nonverbally, even young children demonstrate long-term recall. There have been few studies of whether early memories later are verbally accessible; the results of those that exist are mixed. Inconsistencies may be due to differences in the contextual cues provided at the time of recall. In two experiments, children 13–20 months were exposed to multi-step sequences and tested for nonverbal recall after 3–6 months. At age 3 years, they were tested verbally, under varying conditions of contextual support: in the original laboratory with event-related props versus at home with photographs of the props (Experiment 1), and at home with props (Experiment 2). Children younger than 20 months at initial experience of the events did not demonstrate verbal recall. Children who were 20 months at the initial exposure recalled verbally, as long as they had physical props as cues, regardless of whether testing took place at home or in the laboratory. This research informs the conditions under which memories from very early childhood later can be recalled verbally. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Using story contexts to bias children’s true and false memories

The effects of embedding standard Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) lists into stories whose context biased interpretation either toward or away from the overall themes of the DRM lists on both true and false recognition were investigated with 7- and 11-year-olds. These biased story contexts were compared with the same children’s susceptibility to false memory illusions using the standard DRM list presentation paradigm. The results showed the usual age effects for true and false memories in the standard DRM list paradigm, where 11-year-olds exhibited higher rates of both true and false recognition compared with the 7-year-olds. Importantly, when DRM lists were embedded in stories, these age effects disappeared for true recognition. For false recognition, although developmental differences were attenuated, older children were still more susceptible to false memory illusions than younger children. These findings are discussed in terms of current theories of children’s false memories as well as the role of themes and elaboration in children’s memory development.     

Dissonance-induced false memories: Evidence from a free-choice paradigm

People often misremember the past as consistent with the present. Recent research using an induced-compliance paradigm has revealed that cognitive dissonance is one mechanism that can underlie this memory distortion. We sought to replicate and extend this finding using a free-choice paradigm: Participants made either an easy or a difficult choice between two smartphones and, either immediately or two days later, reported their memories for their decision experience. Participants who made a difficult decision produced the spread-of-alternatives effect expected by dissonance theory, and they were also more likely than those in the easy conditions to misremember their initial decision more favourably than they had initially rated it. Overall, our findings replicate the effect of dissonance on memory distortion and, further, show that the effect generalises to other dissonance-inducing situations.     

A picture is worth a thousandp values: On the irrelevance of hypothesis testing in the microcomputer age

Hypothesis testing, while by far the most common statistical technique for generating conclusions from data, is nonetheless not very informative. It emphasizes a banal and confusing question (“Is it true that some set of population means are not all identical to one another?”) whose answer is, in a mathematical sense, almost inevitably known (“No”). Hypothesis testing, as it is customarily implemented, ignores two issues that are generally much more interesting, important, and relevant: What is thepattern of population means over conditions, and what are the magnitudes of various variability measures (e.g., standard errors of the mean, estimates of population standard deviations)? The simple expedient of plotting relevant sample statistics with associated variability bars is a substantially better way of conveying the results of an experiment. In today’s microcomputer environment, there are many relatively cheap and easily available applications that allow one to do this. I make some brief, informal comments about some of these applications.     

"A picture's worth a thousand words": language use in the autophotographic essay

The authors applied Pennebaker's Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) program to autophotographic essays addressing the question, "Who are you?" to test hypotheses about individuality and social connectedness. Specifically, the authors tested whether insight-oriented words would correlate with individuality ratings, defining essays that portray unique persons who creatively explore the self. Second, the authors tested whether connectedness, operationalized by photos of people-touching and self with others, would correlate with social process words. In 164 student photo essays, greater linguistic cognitive complexity characterized individuality, even when controlling for needs for cognition and uniqueness, and verbal intelligence. Connectedness predicted social words. These findings show that autophotography essays do capture complex self-reflective thought and suggest LIWC may be a valuable tool for understanding the expression of individuality and relatedness.     

Believing is seeing: how rumors can engender false memories in preschoolers

This study examined how an erroneous rumor circulated among preschoolers can influence their memory. One fourth of the children overheard a rumor from an adult conversation in which it was alleged that an event the children had not experienced themselves had occurred. A second fourth were the classmates of those who overheard the rumor. A third group had no exposure to the rumor. The remaining children actually experienced the event suggested by the rumor. One week later, the children were interviewed in either a neutral or a suggestive manner. Results from a second interview after a 2-week delay revealed that under both interview conditions, children who overheard the rumor, either from the adult conversation or during naturally occurring interactions with classmates, were as likely to report experiencing the rumored but nonexperienced event as were those who actually experienced it. Most reports of the rumored but nonexperienced event were in children's free recall and were accompanied by high levels of fictitious elaboration.     

A thousand pleasures are not worth a single pain: The compensation argument for Schopenhauer's pessimism

Pessimism is, roughly, the view that life is not worth living. In chapter 46 of the second volume of The World as Will and Representation, Arthur Schopenhauer provides an oft‐neglected argument for this view. The argument is that a life is worth living only if it does not contain any uncompensated evils; but since all our lives happen to contain such evils, none of them are worth living. The now standard interpretation of this argument (endorsed by Kuno Fischer and Christopher Janaway) proceeds from the claim that the value—or rather valuelessness—of life's goods makes compensation impossible. But this interpretation is neither philosophically attractive nor faithful to the text. In this article, I develop and defend an alternative interpretation (suggested by Wilhelm Windelband and Mark Migotti) according to which it is instead the actual temporal arrangement of life's goods and evils that makes compensation impossible.     

Sensitivity reductions in false recognition: a measure of false memories with stronger theoretical implications

Signal detection analyses of recognition memory indicate that a bias to respond "old" is large for critical words that are centrally related with previously encoded word lists, is small for words that are less related, and is not observed for unrelated words. Also, recognition sensitivity has not been previously shown to differ between those conditions, which has focused debate over how to explain false recognition on the bias differences. In 3 experiments, critical-word sensitivity was lower than sensitivity for other word types, but related-word sensitivity was not lower than sensitivity for unrelated words. Extant models that predict reduced critical-word sensitivity also predict lower sensitivity for related words than for unrelated words. These results provide crucial new constraints on theoretical explanations of false memories.     

Children's false memories: easier to elicit for a negative than for a neutral event

The present study examined the role of valence in the development of children's implanted false memories. Seventy-six 7-year-old children listened to two true and one false narrative. The false narrative was either neutral ("moving to another classroom") or emotional negative ("being accused by the teacher for copying off your neighbor"). In addition, half of the children were presented with their class photograph while listening to the narratives. During two interviews, children recalled as many details as possible from the true and false events. Results showed that the negative event elicited more false memories than the neutral event. The presentation of a true photograph did not promote the development of false memories.     

Using cue words to investigate the distribution of autobiographical memories in childhood

The cue-word technique is frequently used with adults to examine the distribution of autobiographical memories across the life span. Such studies demonstrate childhood amnesia: a paucity of memories of events from the first 3(1/2) years of life, and a gradually increasing number of memories from age 3 to age 7. The pattern is remarkable in light of findings of autobiographical competence among children in the period of life eventually obscured by this amnesia. In the present study, we modified the cue-word task for use with school-age children. Seven- to 10-year-olds successfully generated and dated memories of past events. Girls provided more complete narratives than boys. Across the sample, the resulting distribution of memories was better fit by an exponential than by a power function, implying that early memories may not consolidate and instead remain vulnerable to interference. Implications for explanations of childhood amnesia are discussed.     

Iatrogenic creation of false childhood sexual abuse memories: Controversy,dynamics, fantasy,and reality

This paper examines the phenomenon of False Memory Syndrome (FMS). In the last decade there has been an increase in the number of adult individuals who report childhood sexual abuse only to recant their allegations. Recanters and the falsely accused are specifying that therapeutic interventions by trusted and, at times, well intentioned therapists facilitated their false memories. The theory of repression, reliability of memory, recovery techniques, and characteristics of therapist and clients are explored. This paper also discusses a number of cases that have been filed, and some guidelines for therapists who work or plan to work in the recovery of repressed memories.     

Synaesthesia is linked to more vivid and detailed content of autobiographical memories and less fading of childhood memories

People with synaesthesia have enhanced memory on a wide range of laboratory tests of episodic memory, but very little is known about their real-world memory. This study used a standard measure of autobiographical remembering (the Autobiographical Memory Questionnaire, AMQ) considering four constructs (Recollection, Belief, Impact and Rehearsal) and two time periods (recent memories from adulthood, remote memories from childhood). Synaesthetes reported more Recollection (e.g., sensory detail) and Belief (e.g., confidence) which interacted with time, such that remote memories are reported to be comparatively better preserved in synaesthetes. This cannot be explained by synaesthetes recalling more salient episodes (the groups did not differ in Impact). It suggests instead that childhood memories have a special status in synaesthesia that reflects the different neurodevelopmental trajectory of this group. With regards to Rehearsal, controls tended to report that more recent memories tend to resurface (i.e., adulthood > childhood), but the synaesthetes showed the opposite dissociation (i.e., childhood > adulthood).     

Negotiating false memories: interviewer and rememberer characteristics relate to memory distortion

In a recent study, more than half of the participants were led to create a partial or complete false memory for an emotional childhood event (e.g., serious animal attack). Using a subsample from that study, we examined the hypothesis that memory distortion is related to characteristics of interviewers and rememberers. The relations between susceptibility to memory distortion and (a) dissociation (Dissociative Experiences Scale) and (b) personality traits (NEO-Five Factor Inventory) were investigated. Results indicated that participants who exhibited memory distortion scored significantly higher on the dissociative scale than their counterparts who did not exhibit memory distortion. Further, susceptibility to memory distortion was associated with higher extraversion scores in interviewers and lower extraversion scores in participants. This pattern of findings suggests that false memories may derive from a social negotiation between particular interviewers and rememberers.     

People believe it is plausible to have forgotten memories of childhood sexual abuse

Pezdek, Blandon-Gitlin, and Gabbay (2006) found that perceptions of the plausibility of events increase the likelihood that imagination may induce false memories of those events. Using a survey conducted by Gallup, we asked a large sample of the general population how plausible it would be for a person with longstanding emotional problems and a need for psychotherapy to be a victim of childhood sexual abuse, even though the person could not remember the abuse. Only 18% indicated that it was implausible or very implausible, whereas 67% indicated that such an occurrence was either plausible or very plausible. Combined with Pezdek et al.’s findings, and counter to their conclusions, our findings imply that there is a substantial danger of inducing false memories of childhood sexual abuse through imagination in psychotherapy.