Imagination Reduces False Memories for Everyday Action Sentences: Evidence From Pragmatic Inferences

Human memory can be unreliable, and when reading a sentence with a pragmatic implication, such as “the karate champion hit the cinder block,” people often falsely remember that the karate champion “broke” the cinder block. Yet, research has shown that encoding instructions affect the false memories we form. On the one hand, instructing participants to imagine themselves manipulating the to-be-recalled items increase false memories (imagination inflation effect). But on the other hand, instructions to imagine have reduced false memories in the DRM paradigm (imagination facilitation effect). Here, we explored the effect of imaginal encoding with pragmatic inferences, a way to study false memories for information about everyday actions. Across two experiments, we manipulated imaginal encoding through the instructions given to participants and the after-item filler task (none vs. math operations). In Experiment 1, participants were either assigned to the encoding condition of imagine+no filler; pay attention+math; or memorize+math. In Experiment 2, the encoding instructions (imagine vs. memorize) and the filler task (none vs. math) were compared across four separate conditions. Results from the two experiments showed that imagination instructions lead to better memory, by showing a higher proportion of correct responses and better performance in a memory benefit index. Similarly, a significant reduction of false memories was observed across both experiments, even though a complementary Bayesian analysis only supported this conclusion for Experiment 1. The findings show that imaginal encoding improves memory, suggesting the engagement of a distinctiveness heuristic and source-monitoring process.

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False Memories in Native and Foreign Languages

Frontiers in Psychology ◽

10.3389/fpsyg.2021.716336 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 ◽

Author(s):

Aleksandra Dolgoarshinnaia ◽

Beatriz Martin-Luengo

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Source Monitoring ◽

False Memories ◽

Human Memory ◽

Memory Errors ◽

Monitoring Task ◽

Memory Functioning ◽

Different Types ◽

Processing Information ◽

Memory Monitoring

Human memory is prone to memory errors and distortion. Evidence from studies on cognitive functions in bilinguals indicates that they might be prone to different types of memory errors compared to monolinguals; however, the effect of language in false memories is still understudied. Source monitoring processes required for proper memory functioning, presumably, rely on inhibitory control, which is also heavily utilized by bilinguals. Moreover, it is suggested that thinking in a second language leads to more systematic and deliberate reasoning. All these results lead to expect that bilinguals are more analytical when processing information in their second language overcoming some memory errors depending on the language of information. To test this hypothesis, we run a classical misinformation experiment with an explicit source monitoring task with a sample of Russian–English bilinguals. The language of the misinformation presentation did not affect the degree of the misinformation effect between the Russian and English languages. Source monitoring demonstrated an overall higher accuracy for attributions to the English source over the Russian source. Furthermore, analysis on incorrect source attributions showed that when participants misattributed the sources of false information (English or Russian narrative), they favored the Russian source over the not presented condition. Taken together, these results imply that high proficiency in the second language does not affect misinformation and that information processing and memory monitoring in bilinguals can differ depending on the language of the information, which seems to lead to some memory errors and not others.

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Warnings Reduce False Memories for Missing Aspects of Events

Experimental Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie) ◽

10.1027/1618-3169/a000087 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 58 (3) ◽

pp. 207-216 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Matthew P. Gerrie ◽

Maryanne Garry

Keyword(s):

False Recognition ◽

Source Monitoring ◽

False Memories ◽

Monitoring Framework

When people see movies with some parts missing, they falsely recognize many of the missing parts later. In two experiments, we examined the effect of warnings on people’s false memories for these parts. In Experiment 1, warning subjects about false recognition before the movie (forewarnings) reduced false recognition, but warning them after the movie (postwarnings) reduced false recognition to a lesser extent. In Experiment 2, the effect of the warnings depended on the nature of the missing parts. Forewarnings were more effective than postwarnings in reducing false recognition of missing noncrucial parts, but forewarnings and postwarnings were similarly effective in reducing false recognition of crucial missing parts. We use the source monitoring framework to explain our results.

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Do People’s Motives Influence Their Susceptibility to Imagination Inflation?

Experimental Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie) ◽

10.1027/1618-3169/a000010 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 57 (1) ◽

pp. 77-82 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Stefanie J. Sharman ◽

Samantha Calacouris

Keyword(s):

Autobiographical Memory ◽

Source Monitoring ◽

False Beliefs ◽

Explicit Motives ◽

Imagination Inflation ◽

Motivational Model ◽

Past Experiences ◽

Implicit And Explicit ◽

Affiliation Motives

People are motivated to remember past autobiographical experiences related to their current goals; we investigated whether people are also motivated to remember false past experiences related to those goals. In Session 1, we measured subjects’ implicit and explicit achievement and affiliation motives. Subjects then rated their confidence about, and memory for, childhood events containing achievement and affiliation themes. Two weeks later in Session 2, subjects received a “computer-generated profile” based on their Session 1 ratings. This profile suggested that one false achievement event and one false affiliation event had happened in childhood. After imagining and describing the suggested false events, subjects made confidence and memory ratings a second time. For achievement events, subjects’ explicit motives predicted their false beliefs and memories. The results are explained using source monitoring and a motivational model of autobiographical memory.

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Source Monitoring Abilities Mediate the Relationship Between Working Memory and False Memories Via Recollection Rejection Strategies

PsycEXTRA Dataset ◽

10.1037/e524912015-186 ◽

2014 ◽

Author(s):

Hunter Ball ◽

Gene Brewer

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Source Monitoring ◽

False Memories ◽

Recollection Rejection ◽

The Relationship

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La fotografia live istant come dispositivo costruttivo di booty Looting di Wim Vanderkeybus.

Sciami | ricerche ◽

10.47109/0102210103 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Arianna Novaga

Keyword(s):

False Memories ◽

Art World ◽

The Real ◽

Photographic Image ◽

Dance Company ◽

Susan Sontag ◽

Live Music ◽

The One ◽

Venice Biennale

The Belgian theatre-dance company Ultima Vez – founded by the director and choreographer Wim Vandekeybus – presented Booty Looting in 2012, at the Venice Biennale Danza. On the stage, a complex and apparently disordered narrative rhapsody, brings into play complementary diegetic coefficients: while a story straddles the real and the imaginary, the dancers become consumed actors, the actors dance and live music fills the empty spaces. But the real beating heart of the show is the photographer, who is entrusted with the delicate task of deciphering the feverish dynamism of the scene to move the public's attention elsewhere, as if to give them a relaxing break from the chaos. The photographic image, taken and reported in real time on the screen at the bottom of the stage, freezes some salient moments of that convulsive movement, almost to break it down anatomically into parts of a 'muybridgian' conception. The photographer, always active during the representation, is an integral part of the story, becoming a performer himself so that his intervention determines the dramaturgical development of the plot. The visual quality of the scene is strongly enhanced by live photographic images, which are often attributable to known visual models. Booty looting literally means stealing what has already been the object of theft, exactly as it happens in the art world, according to the perspective of Vandekeybus. Photography is seen here as an instrument that on the one hand makes it useful to prove the reality of facts, but at the same time declares its ability to lie, to deform memory, to create false memories, to become misleading echoes of experiences actually lived. Between truth and deceit, the photographic image plunders the world and gives us the feeling of being able to know and know it in depth - as Susan Sontag teaches - but it is only a distorted memory that confuses and falsifies the real.

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Internet Memes, Memory, and Orders of Repackaging

The Philosophy of Humor Yearbook ◽

10.1515/phhumyb-2021-006 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 111-136

Author(s):

Julija Korostenskiene

Keyword(s):

Human Memory ◽

Two Dimensions ◽

The Other ◽

Methodological Framework ◽

Internal Dimension ◽

External Dimension ◽

The One ◽

Taxonomic Relations

Abstract The present study explores the construction of humor in internet memes along two dimensions. The external dimension is concerned with humor in internet memes as opposed to verbal humor on the one hand and as opposed to humor in comics and caricatures on the other. The perceptive differences, stemming from the workings of the human memory, and the medium are posited as the two main differentiating factors. On the internal dimension, we explore manifestations of humor in light of the communicative situation and taxonomic relations at both the intermedial and intramedial levels of internet memes, taking as an example a family of You Wouldn’t Get It image macros. Our analysis employs elements of intertextuality theory and the notion of orders of indexicality. The study aims to contribute to the growing theoretical and methodological framework for multifactorial analyses of internet memes.

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