Discriminating adults' genuine, imagined, and deceptive accounts of positive and negative childhood events

Repeated recall on source misattribution in Alzheimer's disease

We assessed the effect of repeated recall on item memory and source monitoring in Alzheimer's disease (AD). AD patients and controls were instructed to either look at or imagine items. They then had to either retrieve the items without indicating their source in three consecutive free recall tests, or to remember the source of the retrieved items in three consecutive source tests. Results showed a significant increase in item memory across all three free recall tests and all three source monitoring tests in control participants, but not in AD patients. More source misattributions were observed in AD patients and controls in the third source test than in the first and second tests. The absence of beneficial effect of repeated recall on item memory in AD patients may be attributed to compromise in memory consolidation processes, while the increase in source misattributions due to repetitions may be attributed to the inflation effect.

Judging the reality of others' memories

Interpersonal reality monitoring (IRM) refers to our ability to evaluate whether other people's memories reflect real or imagined events. The current work examined IRM and whether or not it can be affected by training and feedback. We found that people are better than chance and that the ability to accurately make this judgement can be improved or reduced with appropriate and inappropriate training, respectively. Understanding IRM has implications for applied psychologists interested in how people evaluate others' descriptions of past events (e.g., eyewitness testimony).

Timing does matter: examining imagery's impact on the temporal origins of false beliefs

In the current study imagination inflation effects were revisited, giving special attention to decreases in confidence ratings following imagery. Reexamining false beliefs, 151 participants were instructed to rate their confidence that they experienced specific childhood events before and after imagery. No significant imagery effects emerged when examining differences in confidence ratings. However, imagery differentially enhanced (26.27%) and diminished (15.45%) belief ratings for specific events. Content analysis of participants' imagery descriptions revealed that only diminished false beliefs were distinguishable from genuine belief accounts, containing less affective and contextual detail as well as fewer words, but remaining comparable in the presence of cognitive operations. These findings suggest that deflation effects provide a route to studying the potentially positive impact of imagery on false beliefs. Because diminished false beliefs cannot be mistaken as veridical memories reconstructed during imagery, they are less subject to criticisms of traditional false belief studies using self-report measures.

Fabrication inflation increases as source monitoring ability decreases

The current research looked at the effects of lying about a false childhood event on the liar's memory for the event. Participants attempted to convince researchers that false events had actually happened to them. In Experiment 1, participants showed a Fabrication Inflation Effect in that they were more likely to increase their beliefs in the lied-about events than control events. Individual differences such as scores on the Dissociative Experience Scale, frequency of lying, and self-reported feelings of discomfort while lying were related to rates of fabrication inflation. In Experiment 2, participants also showed fabrication inflation and were more likely to inflate their likelihood ratings when the lie was created during a separate session from the posttest. Results from both studies support the idea that Source Monitoring failures may cause participants to increase their likelihood ratings of lied-about events. These results suggest that intentional lying may lead some participants to increase their beliefs in their own fabrications. Applications to the legal field are discussed.

False rumors and true belief: memory processes underlying children's errant reports of rumored events

Previous research has shown that overhearing an errant rumor--either from an adult or from peers--about an earlier experience can lead children to make detailed false reports. This study investigates the extent to which such accounts are driven by changes in children's memory representations or merely social demands that encourage the reporting of rumored information. This was accomplished by (a) using a warning manipulation that eliminated social pressures to report an earlier heard rumor and (b) examining the qualitative characteristics of children's false narratives of a rumored-but-nonexperienced event. Findings indicated that overheard rumors can induce sensory and contextual characteristics in memory that can lead children to develop genuine false beliefs in seeing rumored-but-nonexperienced occurrences. Such constructive tendencies were especially likely among 3- and 4-year-olds (relative to 5- and 6-year-olds) and when rumors were picked up from peers during natural social interactions (relative to when they were planted by an adult).

Memory on the beach: an Australian memory (and hypnosis) laboratory

The memory (and hypnosis) lab at the University of New South Wales investigates a broad range of memory topics. We try to find innovative methods from cognitive and clinical psychology to address theoretical and empirical questions about memory. We aso use hypnosis as one major methodological tool in our investigations of memory (as well as other cognitive processes). In this paper, we review the projects currently underway in our memory (and hypnosis) lab.