Memory for media: Investigation of false memories for negatively and positively charged public events

Children's suggestibility for neutral arbitrary actions in the context of norm violations

This study investigated children's false memories for neutral arbitrary actions. Five- to six-year-olds (N = 32) were taught four arbitrary actions, each following specific rules. The children then watched a televised adult performing eight actions: the four familiar actions while violating one aspect of each rule script and four unfamiliar actions. Suggestive and non-suggestive questions about all witnessed actions were asked, followed by forced-choice test questions to measure the false memory effect. The likelihood of forming false memories was higher in the suggestive condition than in the non-suggestive condition. There was no effect of previously acquired knowledge about the rules of the actions and no interaction between rule knowledge and suggestion. The results are discussed in light of previous findings in related fields of false memory research.

A systematic review of the relationship between emotion and susceptibility to misinformation

Inaccurate memory reports can have serious consequences within forensic and clinical settings, where emotion and misinformation are two common sources of memory distortion. Many studies have investigated how these factors are related; does emotion protect memory or leave it more vulnerable to the distorting effects of misinformation? The findings remain diffused. Thus, the present review aimed to clarify the relationship between emotion and susceptibility to misinformation. 39 eligible studies were reviewed. Results varied according to the type and dimension of emotion measured. Level of arousal may be unrelated to susceptibility to misinformation when retrieval occurs without delay; studies including delayed retrieval were limited. Stimuli valence may be associated with increased susceptibility to peripheral misinformation but unrelated to other misinformation. The following results were reported by limited studies: short-term distress and moderate levels of stress may decrease susceptibility, while anger and greater cortisol response to stress may increase susceptibility to misinformation. Source memory may also be unaffected by emotion. The results have important potential implications for forensic and clinical practice, for example by highlighting the value of enquiring witnesses' source memory. Methodological recommendations for future studies are made.

Misinformation effects in an online sample: results of an experimental study with a five day retention interval

Traditional face-to-face laboratory studies have contributed greatly to our understanding of how misinformation effects develop. However, an area of emerging concern that has been relatively under-researched is the impact of misinformation following exposure to traumatic events that are viewed online. Here we describe a novel method for investigating misinformation effects in an online context. Participants (N = 99) completed the study online. They first watched a 10-min video of a fictional school shooting. Between 5 and 10 days later, they were randomly assigned to receive misinformation or no misinformation about the video before completing a recognition test. Misinformed participants were less accurate at discriminating between misinformation and true statements than control participants. This effect was most strongly supported by ROC analyses (Cohen's d = 0.59, BF10 = 8.34). Misinformation effects can be established in an online experiment using candid violent viral-style video stimuli.

The Impact of Emotion and Sex on Fabrication and False Memory Formation

The aim of the present study was to examine how negative emotion and sex affect self-generated errors as in fabrication set-up and later false recognition of those errors. In total, 120 university students volunteered to take part in the study. Participants were assigned at random into two equal sized groups (N = 60) depending on the type of event they received (negative emotional or neutral). We expected that fabrication and false recognition would be enhanced for the emotional event compared to the neutral one. We further hypothesized that both the willingness to fabricate and later false recognition would be enhanced for women compared with men. The results partly confirmed the hypotheses. The results showed that emotional valence (negative) affects both the willingness to fabricate about events that never took place, and the recognition of the fabrication as true at a later point. Women and men were equally likely to fabricate but women were more likely to recognize their fabrication, particularly for the emotional event. The results are discussed in the context of prior work.

The good old days and the bad old days: evidence for a valence-based dissociation between personal and public memory

How does memory for the public past differ from memory for the personal past? Across five experiments (N = 457), we found that memories of the personal past were characterised by a positivity bias, whereas memories of the public past were characterised by a negativity bias. This valence-based dissociation emerged regardless of how far back participants recounted the personal and public past, whether or not participants were asked to think about significant events, how much time participants were given to retrieve relevant personal and public memories, and also generalised across various demographic categories, including gender, age, and political affiliation. Along with recent work demonstrating a similar dissociation in the context of future thinking, our findings suggest that personal and public event cognition fundamentally differ in terms of access to emotionally salient events. Direct comparisons between personal and public event memory should represent a fruitful avenue for research on event cognition.

The Return of the Repressed: The Persistent and Problematic Claims of Long-Forgotten Trauma

Can purely psychological trauma lead to a complete blockage of autobiographical memories? This long-standing question about the existence of repressed memories has been at the heart of one of the most heated debates in modern psychology. These so-called memory wars originated in the 1990s, and many scholars have assumed that they are over. We demonstrate that this assumption is incorrect and that the controversial issue of repressed memories is alive and well and may even be on the rise. We review converging research and data from legal cases indicating that the topic of repressed memories remains active in clinical, legal, and academic settings. We show that the belief in repressed memories occurs on a nontrivial scale (58%) and appears to have increased among clinical psychologists since the 1990s. We also demonstrate that the scientifically controversial concept of dissociative amnesia, which we argue is a substitute term for memory repression, has gained in popularity. Finally, we review work on the adverse side effects of certain psychotherapeutic techniques, some of which may be linked to the recovery of repressed memories. The memory wars have not vanished. They have continued to endure and contribute to potentially damaging consequences in clinical, legal, and academic contexts.

Retention interval modulates the effect of negative arousing pictures on recognition memory

This study examined the modulation of retention interval in the effect of emotion as elicited from negative and positive arousing pictures on recognition memory. Participants underwent seven encoding sessions and one testing session. The encoding sessions were separated by certain lengths of intervals such that there were seven levels of time gaps between encoding and testing. In each encoding session, participants learned a list of 30 pictures (including 10 neutral, 10 positive and 10 negative pictures). In the testing session, they were presented with a list of 210 old and 210 new pictures and made "old/new" and "remember/know" judgements. The results showed that negative arousing pictures enhanced overall recognition in the 2-week interval and enhanced recollection in both the 2-week and 3-week intervals. However, neither negative nor positive arousing pictures had any effect on familiarity regardless of retention interval. The current study contributes to the literature by suggesting that longer retention intervals do not necessarily lead to more pronounced effects of negative arousing pictures and that the modulation of retention interval depends on the specific components of recognition memory.

How social interactions affect emotional memory accuracy: Evidence from collaborative retrieval and social contagion paradigms

In daily life, emotional events are often discussed with others. The influence of these social interactions on the veracity of emotional memories has rarely been investigated. The authors (Choi, Kensinger, & Rajaram Memory and Cognition, 41, 403–415, 2013) previously demonstrated that when the categorical relatedness of information is controlled, emotional items are more accurately remembered than neutral items. The present study examined whether emotion would continue to improve the accuracy of memory when individuals discussed the emotional and neutral events with others. Two different paradigms involving social influences were used to investigate this question and compare evidence. In both paradigms, participants studied stimuli that were grouped into conceptual categories of positive (e.g., celebration), negative (e.g., funeral), or neutral (e.g., astronomy) valence. After a 48-hour delay, recognition memory was tested for studied items and categorically related lures. In the first paradigm, recognition accuracy was compared when memory was tested individually or in a collaborative triad. In the second paradigm, recognition accuracy was compared when a prior retrieval session had occurred individually or with a confederate who supplied categorically related lures. In both of these paradigms, emotional stimuli were remembered more accurately than were neutral stimuli, and this pattern was preserved when social interaction occurred. In fact, in the first paradigm, there was a trend for collaboration to increase the beneficial effect of emotion on memory accuracy, and in the second paradigm, emotional lures were significantly less susceptible to the “social contagion” effect. Together, these results demonstrate that emotional memories can be more accurate than nonemotional ones even when events are discussed with others (Experiment 1) and even when that discussion introduces misinformation (Experiment 2).

Change in Memory of Emergency Warnings

The goal of this research was to examine individuals’ proximity, gender, and memories about a specific situation in which emergency alerts were distributed. Students, faculty, and alumni were surveyed online one week after an averted campus shooting and again nine months later. Overall, this research suggests that closer living proximity to campus positively influences subscription to the emergency alert system and that women are more interested in safety than men. Data suggest that participants’ memory of their emotional reaction to the event and their memory of perceiving the alerts as serious warnings stayed approximately the same. Responses immediately after the crisis indicated that people were significantly more confident in their memory and remember feeling more worry over not receiving a warning than did the responses nine months later. The uniqueness of the situation may have influenced the lack of memory inaccuracies, due to the reduced negativity and affect towards the situation.

Do emotional stimuli enhance or impede recall relative to neutral stimuli? An investigation of two "false memory" tasks

Many eyewitness memory situations involve negative and distressing events; however, many studies investigating "false memory" phenomena use neutral stimuli only. The aim of the present study was to determine how both the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) procedure and the Misinformation Effect Paradigm tasks were related to each other using distressing and neutral stimuli. Participants completed the DRM (with negative and neutral word lists) and viewed a distressing or neutral film. Misinformation for the film was introduced and memory was assessed. Film accuracy and misinformation susceptibility were found to be greater for those who viewed the distressing film relative to the neutral film. Accuracy responses on both tasks were related, however, susceptibility to the DRM illusion and Misinformation Effect were not. The misinformation findings support the Paradoxical Negative Emotion (PNE) hypothesis that negative stimuli will lead to remembering more accurate details but also greater likelihood of memory distortion. However, the PNE hypothesis was not supported for the DRM results. The findings also suggest that the DRM and Misinformation tasks are not equivalent and may have differences in underlying mechanisms. Future research should focus on more ecologically valid methods of assessing false memory.

Emotion and False Memory

Emotional memories are vivid and lasting but not necessarily accurate. Under some conditions, emotion even increases people’s susceptibility to false memories. This review addresses when and why emotion leaves people vulnerable to misremembering events. Recent research suggests that pregoal emotions—those experienced before goal attainment or failure (e.g., hope, fear)—narrow the scope of people’s attention to information that is central to their goals. This narrow focus can impair memory for peripheral details, leaving people vulnerable to misinformation concerning those details. In contrast, postgoal emotions—those experienced after goal attainment or failure (e.g., happiness, sadness)—broaden the scope of attention leaving people more resistant to misinformation. Implications for legal contexts, such as emotion-related errors in eyewitness testimony, are discussed.

Working memory affects false memory production for emotional events

Whereas a link between working memory (WM) and memory distortions has been demonstrated, its influence on emotional false memories is unclear. In two experiments, a verbal WM task and a false memory paradigm for negative, positive or neutral events were employed. In Experiment 1, we investigated individual differences in verbal WM and found that the interaction between valence and WM predicted false recognition, with negative and positive material protecting high WM individuals against false remembering; the beneficial effect of negative material disappeared in low WM participants. In Experiment 2, we lowered the WM capacity of half of the participants with a double task request, which led to an overall increase in false memories; furthermore, consistent with Experiment 1, the increase in negative false memories was larger than that of neutral or positive ones. It is concluded that WM plays a critical role in determining false memory production, specifically influencing the processing of negative material.

The inhibitory avoidance discrimination task to investigate accuracy of memory

The present study was aimed at developing a new inhibitory avoidance task, based on training and/or testing rats in multiple contexts, to investigate accuracy of memory. In the first experiment, male Sprague-Dawley rats were given footshock in an inhibitory avoidance apparatus and, 48 h later, retention latencies of each rat were assessed in the training apparatus (Shock box) as well as in a novel, contextually modified, apparatus. Retention latencies in the Shock box were significantly longer than those in the Novel box, indicating accurate memory of the training context. When the noradrenergic stimulant yohimbine (0.3 mg/kg, sc) was administered after the training, 48-h retention latencies in the Shock box, but not Novel box, were increased, indicating that the noradrenergic activation enhanced memory of the training experience without reducing memory accuracy. In the second experiment, rats were trained on an inhibitory avoidance discrimination task: They were first trained in an inhibitory avoidance apparatus without footshock (Non-Shock box), followed 1 min later by footshock training in a contextually modified apparatus (Shock box). Forty-eight-hour retention latencies in the Shock and Non-Shock boxes did not differ from each other but were both significantly longer than those in a Novel box, indicating that rats remembered the two training contexts but did not have episodic-like memory of the association of footshock with the correct training context. When the interval between the two training episodes was increased to 2 min, rats showed accurate memory of the association of footshock with the training context. Yohimbine administered after the training also enhanced rats' ability to remember in which training context they had received actual footshock. These findings indicate that the inhibitory avoidance discrimination task is a novel variant of the well-established inhibitory avoidance task suitable to investigate accuracy of memory.

Investigating the variability of memory distortion for an analogue trauma

In this paper, we examine whether source monitoring (SM) errors might be one mechanism that accounts for traumatic memory distortion. Participants watched a traumatic film with some critical (crux) and non-critical (non-crux) scenes removed. Twenty-four hours later, they completed a memory test. To increase the likelihood participants would notice the film's gaps, we inserted visual static for the length of each missing scene. We then added manipulations designed to affect people's SM behaviour. To encourage systematic SM, before watching the film, we warned half the participants that we had removed some scenes. To encourage heuristic SM some participants also saw labels describing the missing scenes. Adding static highlighting, the missing scenes did not affect false recognition of those missing scenes. However, a warning decreased, while labels increased, participants' false recognition rates. We conclude that manipulations designed to affect SM behaviour also affect the degree of memory distortion in our paradigm.

Prime time news: the influence of primed positive and negative emotion on susceptibility to false memories

We examined the relation between emotion and susceptibility to misinformation using a novel paradigm, the ambiguous stimuli affective priming (ASAP) paradigm. Participants (N = 88) viewed ambiguous neutral images primed either at encoding or retrieval to be interpreted as either highly positive or negative (or neutral/not primed). After viewing the images, they either were asked misleading or non-leading questions. Following a delay, memory accuracy for the original images was assessed. Results indicated that any emotional priming at encoding led to a higher susceptibility to misinformation relative to priming at recall. In particular, inducing a negative interpretation of the image at encoding led to an increased susceptibility of false memories for major misinformation (an entire object not actually present in the scene). In contrast, this pattern was reversed when priming was used at recall; a negative reinterpretation of the image decreased memory distortion relative to unprimed images. These findings suggest that, with precise experimental control, the experience of emotion at event encoding, in particular, is implicated in false memory susceptibility.

Developmental trends in different types of spontaneous false memories: implications for the legal field

In an emerging area of memory research, it is becoming apparent that one particular type of false memory, called spontaneous false memory, follows a developmental trajectory that is the opposite of what is commonly assumed in false memory research - that is, spontaneous false memories are more likely to occur in adults than in children. The present study focused on developmental trends of different types of spontaneous false memories. Specifically, in the current study, 6-8 year-olds, 10-12 year-olds, and adults were presented with two methods to induce spontaneous false memories: (i) semantically related word lists that are commonly used to evoke spontaneous false memories [i.e, Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm]; and (ii) a video in which related details were not shown but were presented during a recognition task. The results showed that children were more likely to form false memories than adults in the video false memory paradigm, whereas DRM false memories were more evident in adults than in children. Furthermore, we found that on a general level, DRM false memories were positively related to video spontaneous false memories. We explain that stimuli that contain obvious themes attenuate or even reverse developmental trends in spontaneous false memories.

Inferential false memories of events: negative consequences protect from distortions when the events are free from further elaboration

The present experiment was conducted to investigate whether negative emotionally charged and arousing content of to-be-remembered scripted material would affect propensity towards memory distortions. We further investigated whether elaboration of the studied material through free recall would affect the magnitude of memory errors. In this study participants saw eight scripts. Each of the scripts included an effect of an action, the cause of which was not presented. Effects were either negatively emotional or neutral. Participants were assigned to either a yes/no recognition test group (recognition), or to a recall and yes/no recognition test group (elaboration + recognition). Results showed that participants in the recognition group produced fewer memory errors in the emotional condition. Conversely, elaboration + recognition participants had lower accuracy and produced more emotional memory errors than the other group, suggesting a mediating role of semantic elaboration on the generation of false memories. The role of emotions and semantic elaboration on the generation of false memories is discussed.

Do distress responses to a traumatic film predict susceptibility to the misinformation effect?

The misinformation effect is defined as an impairment in memory for past events due to exposure to misleading information (E. F. Loftus, 2005 ). Some people may be more susceptible to the misinformation effect than others, and this may also depend on their response to a distressing event. The purpose of the current study was to investigate several key factors that may contribute to misinformation susceptibility for distressing events, namely posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms such as avoidance, intrusions, and dissociation. Participants watched either a neutral or trauma film, rated their level of distress, and completed measures of trait and state dissociation. When participants returned a week later, misinformation was introduced via an eyewitness statement and free recall was assessed. Findings indicated that dissociation was related to higher distress ratings following the film but was not related to acceptance of misinformation. However, avoidance scores were related to increased recall of misinformation items, and reported experiences of intrusions were related to greater accuracy. These results are discussed in light of the paradoxical negative emotion hypothesis.

Seeing photos makes us read between the lines: The influence of photos on memory for inferences

Three studies examined how photos accompanying stories could contribute to people drawing inferences about outcomes from the stories and subsequently claiming that they had read what had actually only been inferred. Subjects read short stories designed to induce inferences about their conclusions (e.g., “Sabrina dropped the delicate vase” invites the inference that the vase broke) accompanied by a photo depicting the likely conclusion (the broken vase), a photo depicting a detail of the story but not the conclusion (the vase before it was dropped), or no photo. Results showed that seeing photographs consistent with inferred conclusions led people to falsely claim that they read those conclusions. Photo-boosted inferences were held with high confidence and were robust over time. Falsely recalled inferences were sometimes accompanied by false claims to have seen a photo depicting the inferred events when another photo or no photo had actually be seen. These findings support the source monitoring framework's prediction that people can mistakenly attribute their internally generated inferences about what occurred to externally derived sources when they have photographic “evidence” consistent with the inferred conclusions.

Mood, motivation, and misinformation: aging and affective state influences on memory

Normative age differences in memory have typically been attributed to declines in basic cognitive and cortical mechanisms. The present study examined the degree to which dominant everyday affect might also be associated with age-related memory errors using the misinformation paradigm. Younger and older adults viewed a positive and a negative event, and then were exposed to misinformation about each event. Older adults exhibited a higher likelihood than young adults of falsely identifying misinformation as having occurred in the events. Consistent with expectations, strength of the misinformation effect was positively associated with dominant mood, and controlling for mood eliminated any age effects. Also, motivation to engage in complex cognitive activity was negatively associated with susceptibility to misinformation, and susceptibility was stronger for negative than for positive events. We argue that motivational processes underlie all of the observed effects, and that such processes are useful in understanding age differences in memory performance.

Terrorists brought down the plane!—No, actually it was a technical fault: Processing corrections of emotive information

It is well known that people often continue to rely on initial misinformation even if this information is later corrected and even if the correction itself is remembered. This article investigated the impact of emotionality of the material on people's ability to discount corrected misinformation. The focus was on moderate levels of emotionality comparable to those elicited by real-world news reports. Emotionality has frequently been shown to have an impact upon reasoning and memory, but the generality of this influence remains unclear. In three experiments, participants read a report of a fictitious plane crash that was initially associated with either an emotionally laden cause (terrorist attack) or an emotionally more neutral cause (bad weather). This initial attribution was followed by a retraction and presentation of an alternative cause (faulty fuel tank). The scenarios demonstrably affected participants’ self-reported feelings. However, all three experiments showed that emotionality does not affect the continued influence of misinformation.

The false memory syndrome: experimental studies and comparison to confabulations

False memories, or recollections that are factually incorrect but strongly believed, remain a source of confusion for both psychiatrists and neurologists. We propose model for false memories based on recent experimental investigations, particularly when analyzed in comparison to confabulations, which are the equivalent of false memories from neurological disease. Studies using the Deese/Roedinger-McDermott experimental paradigm indicate that false memories are associated with the need for complete and integrated memories, self-relevancy, imagination and wish fulfillment, familiarity, emotional facilitation, suggestibility, and sexual content. In comparison, confabulations are associated with the same factors except for emotional facilitation, suggestibility, and sexual content. Both false memories and confabulations have an abnormal sense of certainty for their recollections, and neuroanatomical findings implicate decreased activity in the ventromedial frontal lobe in this certainty. In summary, recent studies of false memories in comparison to confabulations support a model of false memories as internally-generated but suggestible and emotionally-facilitated fantasies or impulses, rather than repressed memories of real events. Furthermore, like confabulations, in order for false memories to occur there must be an attenuation of the normal, nonconscious, right frontal "doubt tag" regarding their certainty.

Elevated false recollection of emotional pictures in young and older adults

Current theories predict opposing effects of emotionally arousing information on false memory. If emotion enhances true recollection, then false recollection might be lower for emotional than for neutral pictures. However, if emotion enhances conceptual relatedness, then false recollection might increase for nonstudied but emotionally related pictures. We contrasted these 2 factors in young and older adults, using the International Affective Pictures Systems set (Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 2005). Although both age groups used recollection in our task, false recollection was greatest for emotional pictures, supporting a conceptual relatedness account. Finally, even after accuracy differences were controlled, age was related to high-confidence false recollection of emotional pictures.

The effects of conformity on recognition judgements for emotional stimuli

Exposure to another's account of a shared event can influence the content of an individual's memory report. We examine whether the emotionality of the to-be-remembered information influences the likelihood that socially encountered post-event information is accepted into memory. Participants were exposed to positive, negative or neutral emotional pictures. Subsequently, they had to discriminate these pictures from new pictures in a 'yes/no' recognition decision either before or subsequent to a confederate providing misinformation, accurate or no information. Post-event information influenced participants' responding in the recognition test. Effects were larger for participants viewing neutral items and persisted for these items on a subsequent private source monitoring test. These findings indicate that people rely more on information from others when encountering non-emotional compared to emotional items. We suggest that increased memory strength in conjunction with access to strong retrieval cues in the recognition test serves to shield emotional items from vulnerability to effects of memory conformity.

A comparison of memory for homicide, non-homicidal violence, and positive life experiences

Defendants commonly claim amnesia for their criminal actions especially in cases involving extreme violence. While some claims are malingered or result from physiological factors, other cases may represent genuine partial or complete amnesia resulting from the psychological distress and/or extreme emotion associated with the perpetration of the crime. Fifty Canadian homicide offenders described their memories of their homicide, a non-homicide violent offense, and their most positive adulthood life experience. Self-reported and objective measures of memories for these events revealed that homicides were recalled with the greatest level of detail and sensory information. Although dissociative tendencies were associated with a self-reported memory loss, objective measures of memory quality did not reflect this perceived impairment, suggesting a failure of meta-memory. Recollections of positive life events were superior to those of non-homicidal violence, possibly due to greater impact and meaning attached to such experiences. Findings suggest that memory for homicide typically is enhanced by the powerful emotion associated with its perpetration.