False Memory Lab - Grade: A PDF

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False Memory Lab Report...

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Running head: FALSE MEMORY

False Memory Analyses Lauren Mance Fordham University

FALSE MEMORY

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The concept of memory has been a focal point of research in the field of cognitive psychology for decades. The idea that memories are continuously modified following recall has led researchers to believe that certain memories that are excessively amended may not even exist to be true at some point. This phenomenon is known as false memory, where an individual recalls something that did not happen or happened differently from the way in which it was recalled and recognized. This cognitive sensation has been investigated by psychological pioneers including Pierre Janet and Sigmund Freud, who defined this anomaly as a distorted recollection of events, which never actually occurred due to the incorporation of new information. The concept of false memory holds particular importance when studying reliability of eyewitness testimonies in the justice system. Several factors affect eyewitness accuracy including unconscious transference, source monitoring errors, post-misinformation effects, and schematic inaccuracies. All of these variables relate to false memory via memory distortion. For example, Loftus and Loftus (1974) studied the creation of false memory by implementing retroactive interference and offering post-misinformation evidence. After subjects viewed an event, they were given misleading information about the event, which then caused them to mistakenly recall the misleading information rather than the actual event itself. In this study specifically, participants witnessed a car hitting a pedestrian through a series of slides, and before hitting the pedestrian, participants saw either a stop sign or a yield sign. Later, participants were asked follow up questions that were consistent, inconsistent, or neutral to what they actually saw. If given inconsistent information, participants selected the slide based on the questionnaire information rather than the original slide, which illustrates the detrimental effects of misleading

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post-event information. The creation of false memories can lead to false accusation and conviction of potentially innocent people. Thus, research on false memory continues in order to better comprehend this phenomenon and its effects. In regards to false memory in a more general sense, Roediger and McDermott (1994) conducted several experiments to test the creation of false memories. Their purpose was to expand on earlier work that pertained to intrusions and word association and false recall and recognition in order to provide a more concrete and reliable set of materials to support future testing. A study based on this work found that people are more likely to falsely identify a word when the list presented to them previously was a list of items directly associated with the conjectured word. This study led researchers to believe that undeviating associations with key words influences individuals to falsely conclude what the key word is (Huff, Coane, Hutchison, Grasser, & Blais 2012). Despite this research, more research on this topic is indispensable. The Huff et al., (2012) study included participants from various tertiary education institutions across the United States. Despite a relatively large sample size (N = 160), this study lacks external validity since the studied population was only undergraduate students. In regards to the Loftus and Loftus (1974) study, the ethical issue of planting false memories into an individual’s mind continues to be controversial in the fields of cognition and justice, and how the adverse effects they have on each other may lead to countless injustices. Thus, further research is obligatory to extend external validity and humaneness of past findings. The current study attempts to imitate past findings of false memory. Participants in this study were presented a list of words that had a general theme. Following the completion of the presented words, participants were asked to recall (on no specific order) which words were

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presented. When choosing specific words, related and non-related distractor words that were not present in the original list trial were included .The independent variable was word type (word presented in the list, related distractor lure, and unrelated distractor lure) and the dependent variables were percentage of each category of item the participants believe were originally presented in the list. The purpose of this study is to determine if individuals report false memories at a significant rate. The primary hypotheses include that, the average percentage of related lure reports will be significantly different than zero, individuals will report significantly more related lures than unrelated lures, and there will not be a significant difference in the percentage of related lures reported compared to original list words, as related lures will be identified as present in the original list due to similarity. Methods Participants The sample consisted of fifteen participants (10 females, 5 males). The average age of the participants (n = 15) was 20.80 years old (SD = 0.56). The average number of years of college education completed among the participants (n = 15) was 2.87 (SD = 0.35). All participants were recruited from the Fordham College Rose Hill’s undergraduate cognition laboratory class. Materials/Measures Coglab, which is experimental control software that runs cognitive experiments, was used in this study. ). A DRM paradigm was utilized within the Coglab experiment. SPSS Statistics Software was used for all data analyses. More specifically, a one-sample t-test was used to

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compare the means of the related lure condition to zero, and a paired-samples t-test was used to compare the means of two conditions: if average percentage of related lures reported significantly differed from the average percentage of unrelated lures reported and if average percentage of related lures reported significantly differed from average percentage of original list words reported. Procedure Once the participants had logged on, they saw a rectangle below the background and instructions sections. On each trial, a sequence of words appeared, with each word presented for one second. After the full sequence had been presented, a set of buttons were shown, each labeled with a word. Some of the words presented were on the list, and some were not. Items in the original list were shown, related distractors not in the list were shown, and unrelated distractors that were not in the list were shown in each trial. Their task was to click or tap no the buttons to indicate which words were in the sequence. Participants were allowed to click or tap on the buttons in any order. Additionally, there was no way to correct mistakes. The experiment included 6 trials, 6 general themes, and took approximately 10 minutes. At the end of the experiment, all participants were asked if they wanted to save their data to a set of global data. After they answered the question, a new Web page window appeared that included debriefing, their individual data, their group’s data, and the global data. Upon the experiment’s total completion, all data was entered into SPSS and descriptive statistics and demographic frequencies were calculated. One sample and paired sample t-tests were also used to compare means of the data to find significance.

Results

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A paired-samples t-test was used to determine if there were significant differences between the average percentage clicked of each of three word types. There was a significant difference between the means of the related lures and unrelated lures condition, (t(15)=10.56, p < .001). This means that the percentage of times clicked for related distractor condition (M=75.00, SD=26.53) is greater than the percentage of times clicked in the unrelated distractor condition (M=5.86, SD=9.81). There was not a significant difference between the means of the original condition and related distractor condition, (t(15)=0.99, p = .34). This means that the percentage of times clicked for the original condition (M= 81.10, SD= 11.94) is not greatly different than the percentage of times clicked for the related distractor condition (M= 75.00, SD= 26.53). A onesample t-test was conducted to determine if there was a significant difference between the related lure condition and zero. The percentage of times clicked for related lures compared to zero was statistically significant (t(15)= 11.31, p < .001). This means that the percentage of times clicked in the related distractor condition (M= 75.00, SD= 26.53) is greater than zero.

References

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Huff, M. J., Coane, J. H., Hutchison, K. A., Grasser, E. B., & Blais, J. E. (2012). Interpolated task effects on direct and mediated false recognition: Effects of initial recall, recognition, and the ironic effect of guessing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 38(6), 1720–1730. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028476 Loftus, E. F., & Loftus, G. R. (1974). Changes in memory structure and retrieval over the course of instruction. Journal of Educational Psychology, 66(3), 315–318. doi: 10.1037/h0036506 Roediger, H. L., & Mcdermott, K. B. (1994). Creation of false memories: Remembering words not presented in lists. PsycEXTRA Dataset. doi: 10.1037/e537272012-273...