The Effect of Limited Attention and Delay on Negative Arousing False Memories

Previous research has shown that, in comparison to neutral stimuli, false memories for high arousing negative stimuli are greater after very fast presentation and limited attention at study. However, full compared to limited attention conditions still produce comparably more false memories for all stimuli types. Research has also shown that emotional stimuli benefit from a period of consolidation. What effect would such consolidation have on false memory formation even when attention is limited at study? The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of fast presentation on false memory production for negatively-arousing and neutral items over time using the DRM paradigm. Sixty-Eight participants studied Negative and neutral DRM lists with fast or slow presentation conditions. Half completed a recognition test immediately and half completed a recognition test after one-week. Results revealed that, for fast presentation, negative critical lures increased after one week and were comparable to negative critical lures in the slow presentation encoding conditions. Neutral critical lures in the fast presentation condition did not change and remained lower compared to the slow presentation condition. These findings are the first demonstration that arousing negative false memories can increase over time when attention at encoding is limited

Get the gist? The effects of processing depth on false recognition in short-term and long-term memory

Gist-based processing has been proposed to account for robust false memories in the converging-associates task. The deep-encoding processes known to enhance verbatim memory also strengthen gist memory and increase distortions of long-term memory (LTM). Recent research has demonstrated that compelling false memory illusions are relatively delay-invariant, also occurring under canonical short-term memory (STM) conditions. To investigate the contributions of gist to false memory at short and long delays, processing depth was manipulated as participants encoded lists of four semantically related words and were probed immediately, following a filled 3- to 4-s retention interval, or approximately 20 min later, in a surprise recognition test. In two experiments, the encoding manipulation dissociated STM and LTM on the frequency, but not the phenomenology, of false memory. Deep encoding at STM increases false recognition rates at LTM, but confidence ratings and remember/know judgments are similar across delays and do not differ as a function of processing depth. These results suggest that some shared and some unique processes underlie false memory illusions at short and long delays

Déjà vu and the entorhinal cortex: dissociating recollective from familiarity disruptions in a single case patient

Past research has demonstrated a relationship between déjà vu and the entorhinal cortex in patients with wider medial temporal lobe damage. The aim of the present research was to investigate this crucial link in a patient (MR) with a selective lesion to the left lateral entorhinal cortex to provide a more direct exploration of this relationship. Two experiments investigated the experiences of déjà vécu (using the IDEA questionnaire) and déjà vu (using an adapted DRM paradigm) in MR and a set of matched controls. The results demonstrated that MR had quantitatively more and qualitatively richer recollective experiences of déjà vécu. In addition, under laboratory-based déjà vu conditions designed to elicit both false recollection (critical lures) and false familiarity (weakly-associated lures), MR only revealed greater memory impairments for the latter. The present results are therefore the first to demonstrate a direct relationship between the entorhinal cortex and the experience of both déjà vu and déjà vécu. They furthermore suggest that the entorhinal cortex is involved in both weakly-associative false memory as well as strongly-associative memory under conditions that promote familiarity-based processing

False memories are impacted by semantic pairing of DRM lists.

In the DRM paradigm, experience of semantically related words leads to false memories of related words called critical lures. These false memories serve as evidence that the relationship between items in a DRM list contribute to an overall gist or central concept for the experience. The present studies aim to investigate whether the higher-order semantic relationship that exists between different DRM lists can also influence recognition memory. Study 1 compared memory confidence ratings for list items and critical lures to two metrics: “Temporal Contiguity”, how closely in time lists appeared to each other at encoding, and “Semantic Distance”, the semantic association between lists. Findings suggest slight effects on alignment of confidence ratings when list are contiguous or related. In Study 2, participants were presented with pairs of lists, alternating between pairs with a high or low degree of semantic association. Subsequent tests of memory included list items, critical lures, paired lures generated using an LSA semantic generation tool. Findings indicate that confidence in list items is greater when the lists they belong to are strongly paired with another list, compared to list items for low-similarity pairings. Critical lures do not differ across semantic similarity conditions for either testing phase. Paired lures remain different between similarity conditions after delay. Findings indicate noticeable effects of list pairing on the strength and content of memory, and results are discussed in terms of their alignment with predictions according to two major theories for false memory, Fuzzy Trace Theory (FTT) and Activation/Monitoring Theory (AMT)

False memory guided eye movements::insights from a DRM-Saccade paradigm

The Deese-Roediger and McDermott (DRM) paradigm and visually guided saccade tasks are both prominent research tools in their own right. This study introduces a novel DRM-Saccade paradigm, merging both methodologies. We used rule-based saccadic eye movements whereby participants were presented with items at test and were asked to make a saccade to the left or right of the item to denote a recognition or non-recognition decision. We measured old/new recognition decisions and saccadic latencies. Experiment 1 used a pro/anti saccade task to a single target. We found slower saccadic latencies for correct rejection of critical lures, but no latency difference between correct recognition of studied items and false recognition of critical lures. Experiment 2 used a two-target saccade task and also measured corrective saccades. Findings corroborated those from Experiment 1. Participants adjusted their initial decisions to increase accurate recognition of studied items and rejection of unrelated lures but there were no such corrections for critical lures. We argue that rapid saccades indicate cognitive processing driven by familiarity thresholds. These occur before slower source-monitoring is able to process any conflict. The DRM-saccade task could effectively track real-time cognitive resource use during recognition decisions

Analyzing false memories in children with associative lists specific for their age

Two experiments attempted to resolve previous contradictory findings concerning developmental trends in false memories within the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm by using an improved methodology-constructing age-appropriate associative lists. The research also extended the DRM paradigm to preschoolers. Experiment 1 (N = 320) included children in three age groups (preschoolers of 3-4 years, second-graders of 7-8 years, and preadolescents of 11-12 years) and adults, and Experiment 2 (N = 64) examined preschoolers and preadolescents. Age-appropriate lists increased false recall. Although preschoolers had fewer false memories than the other age groups, they showed considerable levels of false recall when tested with age-appropriate materials. Results were discussed in terms of fuzzy-trace, source-monitoring, and activation frameworks

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

An emerging area of memory research is showing that a certain type of false memory called spontaneous false memories 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. That is, participants were presented with semantically-related words lists that are commonly used to evoke spontaneous false memories (i.e, Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm). Furthermore, they were presented with a video in which related details were not shown but were presented during a recognition task. Our 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

The role of language proficiency in producing false memories

[ENG]We report three experiments examining the role that language proficiency plays in the production of false memory. We constructed Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm lists using both English and Spanish free association norms, which enabled us to control the associations between studied items and critical words. Experiment 1 showed that native English speakers who were learning Spanish produced more false memory when DRM critical words were studied and tested in English compared to Spanish. Experiment 2 showed that native Spanish speakers who were learning English produced more false memory when DRM critical words were studied and tested in Spanish compared to English. Experiment 3 showed that native Spanish speakers who were highly proficient in English produced more false memory for DRM critical words studied and tested in English compared to native Spanish speakers who were lower in English proficiency. Collectively, these results support the role that the automaticity of concept access plays in producing false memory

Aumento de retenção das memórias falsas através de estimulação emocional negativa durante reconsolidação

Tese de mestrado, Ciência Cognitiva, Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências, Faculdade de Letras, Faculdade de Medicina, Faculdade de Psicologia, 2013Finn and Roediger and collaborators (2011, 2012) found that emotionally arousing negative pictures presented to subjects in the period immediately following a retrieval of a veracious memory enhances subsequent cued-recall test performance in comparison to non-arousing neutral pictures or blank screen had been shown. This finding suggests that the period just after retrieval, called reconsolidation, together with negative emotion influence, plays a significant role in enhancing memory performance. In the present study, we investigated whether such effect would be valid for the phenomenon of false memories. Participants studied lists of associated words (DRM lists). On a subsequent free-recall test, participants’ generation of non-presented critical items (false memories) was immediately followed by pictures inducing a negative or neutral emotion or by a blank screen. Although we did not observed the expected significant memory enhancement for false memories followed by arousing images the results revealed less decline of memory retention (less forgetting effect) for those items compared to other retrieved words followed by neutral pictures or blanks. The results and their possible theoretical implications are further analyzed and discussed.A presente dissertação visa examinar a hipótese de que a retenção de falsas memorias - ou seja a retenção de experiências mentais consideradas erradamente como representações verídicas de um acontecimento do passado (Johnson, 1998) - é susceptível de melhoria por meio da manipulação de emoções negativas no período de reconsolidação após recuperação. O objectivo do estudo é assim investigar se emoções negativas podem facilitar o processo de recuperação e aumentar a retenção das memórias falsas quando estas ocorrem. O presente estudo pode ser visto como uma tentativa de continuação e extensão dos estudos precursores de Finn and Roediger (2011, 2012) que exploraram o efeito acima mencionado para as memórias verídicas. Com o intuito de contextualizar o objectivo de estudo deste trabalho, começa-se por explicar em que consiste o fenómeno de falsas memórias e apresenta-se um panorama dos estudos pioneiros nesta área. Em seguida, explica-se o paradigma DRM (acrónimo de Deese-Roediger-McDermott) que usa listas de palavras semanticamente associadas e é actualmente um dos principais procedimentos de evocação de falsas memórias em condições laboratoriais. Seguidamente, descreve-se de forma breve as teorias e os mecanismos causais que fundamentam e esclarecem a ocorrência de falsas memórias. A primeira teoria, de activação-monitorização, aborda a estimulação de representações conceptuais preexistentes na memória semântica quando um item é processado dentro do mesmo domínio conceptual. Enquanto a activação converge para itens semanticamente relacionados e pode levar à recuperação de uma informação errada, a monitorização refere-se aos processos de correção e tomada de decisão que possibilitam a identificação da fonte da informação falsamente recordada (Gallo, 2010). A teoria do traço difuso faz por seu lado a distinção entre traços perceptuais (verbatim) e conceptuais (gist) de uma experiência subjectiva de codificação de informação. De acordo com esta teoria, a ocorrência de falsas memórias baseia-se na recuperação de traços gist (no paradigma DRM corresponde à extração temática do significado das palavras da lista). A recuperação é causada pela interrelação semântica entre os itens. A investigação em neurociências tem revelado, ao nível neuronal, fortes relações entre o funcionamento de zonas cerebrais particulares e a ocorrência de falsas memórias no paradigma DRM. Nos estudos que utilizaram a técnica de ressonância magnética funcional (fMRI) descobriram-se bases neurais diferentes de processos de activação e monitorização das falsas memórias. Esta investigação fundamentou os resultados obtidos nos estudos cognitivos, proporcionando e aprofundando ideias relativas aos processos de codificação, recuperação e de tomada de decisão nas falsas memórias. Em seguida, reflecte-se sobre a importância da prática de recordação na facilitação de recuperação de memórias. Esboça-se o efeito de melhoria de memorização baseada sobretudo na variante activa de recuperação, explica-se o conceito do efeito de teste (testing effect) e os processos que ocorrem na recordação livre dos itens. Contudo, o presente estudo concentra-se no período que segue a recuperação. Finalmente, o fenómeno de reconsolidação (onde uma informação recuperada da memória de longo prazo entra num estado breve e instável e é susceptível a modificações) é considerado como uma parte relevante e integral dos processos de retenção de memória. São analisadas correlações entre excitação, stress e emoção, e desempenho mnésico através das quais se mostra que a indução de excitação, causada pelas emoções negativas, pode melhorar a memória. Papel particular parecem ter as hormonas de stress que activam a amígdala – zona do cérebro responsável pelo conteúdo emocional das memórias. A activação da amígdala modula processos mnésicos no hipocampo, onde ocorre a consolidação das informações da memória de curto para memória de longo prazo. Em seguida, apresenta-se os primeiros estudos que mostraram melhoria da memória através de excitação causada pelas emoções negativas na fase de reconsolidação da informação (Coccoz et al., 2011; Finn & Roediger, 2011, 2012). O presente estudo é depois introduzido como uma tentativa de verificar se também as falsas memórias são susceptíveis de sofrer o mesmo efeito de melhoria da memória. A primeira tarefa do estudo é baseada no paradigma DRM clássico para gerar memórias falsas. Com este propósito usam-se listas DRM portuguesas (Albuquerque, 2005). Numa primeira tarefa de recordação livre, cada vez que uma palavra crítica foi recuperada, uma imagem de carga emocional negativa ou neutra foi apresentada imediatamente depois. Um teste final de recordação livre de todas as palavras das listas é utilizado para verificar se falsas memórias, obtidas na primeira tarefa e seguidas de imagens negativas (condição facilitadora), eram melhor recordadas em comparação com as seguidas por imagens neutras.Com base nos estudos anteriores, que mostraram melhor desempenho mnésico quando a recuperação de uma memoria verídica é acompanhada por um acontecimento negativo (em comparação com um positivo ou neutro), espera-se obter um efeito de reconsolidação também para itens críticos (falsas memórias). Na análise dos resultados o foco centra-se no efeito de retenção das palavras críticas e verídicas nas duas condições principais do estudo – de tarefa (recuperação inicial e final) e de imagem (recuperação em função de valência de imagem). Por conseguinte, examina-se a interação entre estas duas variáveis. Ao examinar os resultados de memórias falsas o segundo item crítico (IC2) tornou-se impossível de analisar. Ocorreram somente quatro únicos casos de recuperação deste item na tarefa inicial e nenhum na tarefa final. Consequentemente, ficou excluído da análise. Os dados da análise estatística (ANOVA) revelam o efeito principal significativo para condição de recuperação, indicando uma melhor recordação das memórias falsas na tarefa inicial do que na tarefa final. Estes dados estão de acordo com a curva de esquecimento que demonstra a queda de retenção da memória com a passagem de tempo. O efeito principal de imagem é marginal, o que indica uma incongruência inexplicável entre a taxa de falsas memórias seguidas de imagem negativa ou neutra. Contudo, a análise de resultados revelou, em linha com o esperado, uma maior queda de memórias falsas seguidas de imagens neutras do que negativas. Todavia, um teste adicional, onde se controla a discrepância inicial entre a proporção de memórias falsas seguidas de imagens neutras ou negativas, mostra que a condição de imagem não tem o efeito de consolidação esperado. A análise de resultados das memórias verídicas foi consideravelmente limitada por causa do pequeno número de targets obtido, devido ao uso do paradigma oddball (ver Finn e Roediger, 2011). Agregando os dados por sujeito e por item, de forma a aumentar o número de respostas, não se obtiveram diferenças significativas na recuperação entre memórias verídicas nas três condições de imagem (negativa, neutra e ecrã em branco). Deste modo, os resultados do presente estudo não replicam os obtidos por Finn e Roediger (2011, 2012). Por fim discutem-se os presentes resultados, as limitações assim como sugestões para as ultrapassar em estudos futuros

Analyzing False Memories in Children With Associative Lists Specific for Their Age

[EN]Two experiments attempted to resolve previous contradictory findings concerning developmental trends in false memories within the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm by using an improved methodology--constructing age-appropriate associative lists. The research also extended the DRM paradigm to preschoolers. Experiment 1 (N = 320) included children in three age groups (preschoolers of 3–4 years, second-graders of 7–8 years, and preadolescents of 11–12 years) and adults, and Experiment 2 (N = 64) examined preschoolers and preadolescents. Age-appropriate lists increased false recall. Although preschoolers had fewer false memories than the other age groups, they showed considerable levels of false recall when tested with age-appropriate materials. Results were discussed in terms of fuzzy-trace, source-monitoring, and activation frameworks