The effect of working memory on source monitoring that reduces false memories.

Using the DRM word list paradigm (Roediger & McDermott, 1995) we investigated the role of individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) and source monitoring (SM) ability in protection from false memories (FM) in recall and recognition. Both spreading activation and monitoring are cognitive processes associated with working memory (Anderson, 1983; Cantor & Engle, 1993), and previous research demonstrates working memory’s relation to goal maintenance (Kane & Engle, 2003) and importance for withholding irrelevant information (Conway & Engle, 1994). However, whether higher WMC constitutes activation or monitoring and predicts increased or decreased FM production respectively, remains inconclusive (Watson et al., 2005; Peters et al., 2007; Bixter & Daniel, 2013). When considering SM ability, a relationship has been found between WMC and FM in recall, suggesting that SM mediates this relation (Unsworth & Brewer, 2010). Other work suggests that SM and WMC interact based on the role of memory monitoring in constraining task irrelevant information (Rose, 2013; Lilienthal et al., 2015). From an activation-monitoring perspective (Gallo, 2010), we investigated individual differences in WMC and SM predicting FM in recall and recognition, testing whether the relationships are additive or interactive. Our findings support moderation, suggesting that when SM ability is too high, working memory cannot work as well to monitor and constrain activation in order to reduce FM. Only when WMC was higher and SM was lower did we show a predicted decrease in FM during recognition. This work suggests that protecting mental resources in WMC is more important for constraining FM production than SM ability and we consider the implications for real world false memories and eyewitness testimony.

Download Full-text

Individual Differences in Disqualifying Monitoring Underlie False Memories Across Different Paradigms

10.31234/osf.io/vpt7y ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Hunter Ball ◽

Matthew Kyle Robison ◽

Gene Arnold Brewer

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Individual Differences ◽

False Memory ◽

Source Monitoring ◽

Contextual Information ◽

False Memories ◽

General Factor ◽

Reading Span ◽

Common Cause

The current study leveraged experimental and individual differences methodology to examine whether false memories across differing tasks arise from a common cause. Participants completed multiple false memory (DRM and memory conjunction), working memory (operation and reading span), and source monitoring (verbal and picture) tasks. Memory discriminability in the DRM and memory conjunction tasks loaded onto a single (general) factor and were unaffected by warnings provided at encoding. Consistent with previous research, source monitoring ability fully mediated the relation between working memory and false memories. Moreover, individuals with higher source monitoring ability were better able to recall contextual information from encoding to correctly reject lures. These results suggest that there are stable individual differences in false remembering across tasks. The commonality across tasks may be due, at least in part, to the ability to effectively use disqualifying monitoring processes.

Download Full-text

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.

Download Full-text

Study Modality and False Recall

Experimental Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie) ◽

10.1027/1618-3169/a000076 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 58 (2) ◽

pp. 117-124 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Rebekah E. Smith ◽

Randall W. Engle

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Resource Availability ◽

Working Memory Capacity ◽

Critical Item ◽

False Memories ◽

Memory Capacity ◽

False Recall ◽

Modality Effect ◽

Study Phase ◽

Study Modality

False memories occur when individuals mistakenly report an event as having taken place when that event did not in fact occur. The DRM ( Deese, 1959 ; Roediger & McDermott, 1995 ) paradigm provides an effective technique for creating and investigating false memories. In this paradigm participants study a list of words (e.g., SOUR, CANDY,…) that are highly associated to a non-presented critical item (e.g., SWEET). The study phase is followed by a test of memory for the study list words. Researchers typically find very high levels of false recall of the critical non-presented item. However, the likelihood of falsely remembering the non-presented critical items can be reduced by presenting studied associates visually rather than auditorally (e.g., Smith & Hunt, 1998 ). This is referred to as the modality effect in false memory. The current study investigated the role of resource availability in the expression of this modality effect in false recall. In Experiment 1 false recall was reduced in the visual study presentation condition relative to the auditory condition for participants with higher working memory capacity, but not for participants with lower working memory capacity. In Experiment 2 the effect of study modality on false recall was eliminated by the addition of a divided attention task at encoding. Both studies support the proposal that resource availability plays a role in the expression of the modality effect in the DRM paradigm ( Smith, Lozito, & Bayen, 2005 ).

Download Full-text

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.

Download Full-text