Factors that influence the generation of autobiographical memory conjunction errors

The constructive nature of memory is generally adaptive, allowing us to efficiently store, process and learn from life events, and simulate future scenarios to prepare ourselves for what may come. However, the cost of a flexibly constructive memory system is the occasional conjunction error, whereby the components of an event are authentic, but the combination of those components is false. Using a novel recombination paradigm, it was demonstrated that details from one autobiographical memory (AM) may be incorrectly incorporated into another, forming AM conjunction errors that elude typical reality monitoring checks. The factors that contribute to the creation of these conjunction errors were examined across two experiments. Conjunction errors were more likely to occur when the corresponding details were partially rather than fully recombined, likely due to increased plausibility and ease of simulation of partially recombined scenarios. Brief periods of imagination increased conjunction error rates, in line with the imagination inflation effect. Subjective ratings suggest that this inflation is due to similarity of phenomenological experience between conjunction and authentic memories, consistent with a source monitoring perspective. Moreover, objective scoring of memory content indicates that increased perceptual detail may be particularly important for the formation of AM conjunction errors.     

Reported serial positions of true and illusory memories in the Deese/Roediger/McDermott paradigm

One of the easiest ways to induce illusory memories in the laboratory is to use the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) word-list paradigm. Researchers have used this paradigm not only to study people's memories of stimuli that were not actually presented, but also to study the phenomenological qualities of these illusions. In four experiments, the current investigation explored a phenomenological quality of illusory memories that has received almost no attention, specifically, temporality. A serial position task was incorporated into the DRM paradigm to examine temporal attributes of participants' true and false memories. Effects of list strength, presentation order, and types of warnings were examined. Results showed consistent serial position responses for true and false memories. However, only responses for illusory memories were affected by manipulations at study. The current findings thus lend support to encoding-based explanations of false recollections.     

On the adaptive function of children's and adults’ false memories

Recent research has shown that memory illusions can successfully prime both children's and adults' performance on complex, insight-based problems (compound remote associates tasks or CRATs). The current research aimed to clarify the locus of these priming effects. Like before, Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) lists were selected to prime subsequent CRATs such that the critical lures were also the solution words to a subset of the CRATs participants attempted to solve. Unique to the present research, recognition memory tests were used and participants were either primed during the list study phase, during the memory test phase, or both. Across two experiments, primed problems were solved more frequently and significantly faster than unprimed problems. Moreover, when participants were primed during the list study phase, subsequent solution times and rates were considerably superior to those produced by those participants who were simply primed at test. Together, these are the first results to show that false-memory priming during encoding facilitates problem-solving in both children and adults.     

The effect of mood on false memory for emotional DRM word lists

In the present study, we investigated the effect of participants’ mood on true and false memories of emotional word lists in the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) paradigm. In Experiment 1, we constructed DRM word lists in which all the studied words and corresponding critical lures reflected a specified emotional valence. In Experiment 2, we used these lists to assess mood-congruent true and false memory. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three induced-mood conditions (positive, negative, or neutral) and were presented with word lists comprised of positive, negative, or neutral words. For both true and false memory, there was a mood-congruent effect in the negative mood condition; this effect was due to a decrease in true and false recognition of the positive and neutral words. These findings are consistent with both spreading-activation and fuzzy-trace theories of DRM performance and have practical implications for our understanding of the effect of mood on memory.     

Children do not follow the rule "ignorance means getting it wrong"

Two experiments tested whether 4- and 5-year-olds follow the rule “ignorance means you get it wrong.” Following this rule should lead children to infer that a character who is ignorant about some situation will also have a false belief about it. This rule should sometimes lead children into error because ignorance does not imply false belief. In Experiment 1, children and adults were told about a girl who is looking for her dog but does not know which of two boxes it is under. Most children predicted that the girl would look in the box with the dog and not in the empty box; adults chose both boxes equally. Experiment 2 used a similar story but varied whether the girl wants to approach or avoid her dog. Again, most children predicted that the girl would succeed. These findings suggest that children do not follow the rule “ignorance means you get it wrong.”     

Comprehension of the representational mind in infancy

A broad array of infant studies are reviewed that appear to be consistent with the idea that belief understanding specifically, and mental attribution generally, emerge much earlier than previously acknowledged. We first examine existing false-belief research, which, while confirming that children under 4 years perform poorly on standard tests, suggests nevertheless that they have more implicit understanding of beliefs than they can express. After surveying theories that both favor and reject early development of theory of mind (TOM), we address two recent bodies of visual fixation research that provide support for the possibility of knowledge and belief attribution in infancy. The first indicates that infants of 13–15 months are sensitive to others’ false beliefs (and therefore have a representational TOM), the second, that by 12 months or younger infants have two antecedently related psychological understandings: (a) that when agents look they “see” and (b) that seeing plays a presumptive role in producing knowledge. This raises the broader question of whether “mentalism” might be part of core knowledge, which takes us to the earliest manifestation of psychological attribution, the construal of agentive behavior as intentional. Contrary to previous assumptions, recent studies indicate that infants of 3–9 months do not accord intentionality exclusively to humans or to self-propelled objects but rather to any entity that: (1) chooses flexibly among means and ends, (2) responds non-randomly to social overtures, and (3) reacts rationally to changing circumstances (i.e., that is not a mere automaton but is selectively and adaptively responsive to the environment). Other evidence is then examined which suggests that infants begin to construe these and other behaviors in mentalist rather than teleological terms much earlier than expected. Finally, the implications of this empirical record for domain-specific and domain-general theories of TOM are considered.     

The efficiency of binding spontaneous trait inferences to actors’ faces

Three experiments tested the hypothesis that the process of binding spontaneous trait inferences (STIs) to actors’ representations is relatively independent of attentional resources. Participants were presented with faces paired with single behaviors. Binding of STIs to actors was revealed by a higher false recognition of implied traits paired with actors’ faces than of implied traits randomly paired with other familiar faces. This effect replicated when each face-behavior pair was presented for 2 s (Experiment 1), when the processing of the information was shallow (Experiment 2), and when participants performed a secondary task during the presentation of behaviors (Experiment 3). Experiment 4 showed that explicit on-line trait judgments of the actor, but not explicit behavior judgments, predicted the false recognition of implied traits in the context of the actor. The possibility that the process of binding STIs to actors’ representations is automatic is discussed.     

Influence of suggestion in the DRM paradigm: what state of consciousness is associated with false memory?

We assessed the effect of suggestion on the Deese–Roediger–McDermott paradigm and associated it with the Remember–Know–Guess paradigm. Undergraduate students were given either lists of semantically related words or texts containing these words. After the recall task, if participants did not produce the critical lure, the experimenter suggested that the word had been present, using either a question (moderate suggestion) or an assertion (strong suggestion); these conditions were compared to a condition without suggestion. Afterwards, participants took a recognition test. The results showed that strong suggestions lead to more false recognitions than other conditions and the state of consciousness associated with false recognitions tends to be a feeling of knowing rather than remembering, regardless of the verbal version (list or text). Therefore moderate suggestions did not lead to more false recognitions compare to no suggestion. We discuss the impact of suggestion on consciousness associated with false memories.