Psyc2081 Assessment 1 - Grade: HD PDF

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Received HD. Exemplary sample report for the first assessment of Psyc2081...

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Emotional Content Reduces False Memory of Critical Lures in the DRM Paradigm Student Name The University of New South Wales

Emotional Content Reduces False Memory of Critical Lures in the DRM Paradigm Over the past three decades, research has established the constructive nature of human memory (Zhang, Gross, & Hayne, 2017). We may remember events differently to how they have actually occurred, or events that have never occurred in reality, sometimes in great detail and with great confidence (Loftus, 2005); this is known as false memory (FM). Although everyday implications of FM may be trivial, they at times present severe consequences, particularly in forensic and legal settings (Zhang et al., 2017). Given the implications of memory errors, it has become imperative to understand the mechanisms underlying (Zhang et al., 2017). One paradigm that has been developed for this purpose is the Deese-Roediger–McDermott paradigm (DRM; Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995), which involves studying lists each consisting of 12 conceptually related words, all also associated with a critical unpresented word, or lure (Roediger & McDermott, 1995). It has been shown that lures are falsely remembered in both free recall tests immediately following each list presentation, and in a later recognition test, at levels similar to, or above, list words positioned in the middle of the list (Roediger & McDermott, 1995). This FM effect is robust and has been replicated across a large number of studies (Gallo, 2010). One influential account of how FM is induced in DRM is the spreading activation account (Roediger, Balota, & Watson, 2001). By this account, presented list words are linked to related concepts, including the related lure, in a semantic network; when a list word is presented, the network receives activation, which ‘spreads’ to the lure word – that is, the lure is activated through associative processes (Roediger et al., 2001). Thus, the lure is encoded despite never having been presented during study, and falsely remembered at the retrieval phase. This activation account of FM has been supported by findings that FM increases with

the number of semantic associates studied (Meade, Watson, Balota, & Roediger, 2007), and that memory of lures is heightened when list words are strongly associated both with each other and with the lure – that is, when there is a high Backwards Associative Strength (BAS; Hicks & Starns, 2006). Given this ease with which false memories can be created, it is important that the factors that underlie such errors are understood. Existing literature has established emotion as a variable influencing the FM of non-studied events, although findings regarding its effect have been conflicting, showing that emotional content both increases (Gallo, Foster, & Johnson, 2009) and decreases (Kensinger & Corkin, 2004) FM. More recently, it has been shown that, when controlling for conceptual relatedness between items, negatively valenced high-arousal content generally reduce FM compared to neutral items (Choi, Kensinger, & Rajaram, 2013). However, the nature of this modulation – in particular, in DRM lists – remains largely unclear. Recently, it has been proposed that the distinctiveness of emotional content may be responsible in this modulation of FM (Palmer & Dodson, 2009). It is well established that healthy individuals display attentional bias towards emotional content (Calvo & Lang, 2004). Meanwhile, it has been proposed that studying distinctive information encourages itemspecific processing, therefore disrupting the encoding of associative information, resulting in reduced FM effects (Hege and Dodson, 2004). Thus, it is possible that the salience of emotional content causes it to be distinctive, hence driving item-specific processing, disrupting the associative-encoding processes involved in FM (Palmer & Dodson, 2009). Indeed, this would explain findings that both positively- and negatively-valenced higharousal content reduce FM more than low-arousal content, as the former would have a higher salience (Van Damme, 2013). This distinctiveness account is also consistent with findings that inclusion of other emotional items during encoding – thereby reducing distinctiveness –

increases FM of items (Dehon, Larøi, & Linden, 2010), accounting for conflicting results in the literature. Further, if the distinctiveness of emotional stimuli is responsible for FM reduction, it follows that inclusion of an emotional distractor should disrupt the associative network created by list words, therefore reducing activation of the lure, but that the true memory of list items should not be affected. Despite the theoretical soundness of this prediction, there has not yet been an attempt to examine this issue in the literature. Hence, the current study aimed to examine whether the inclusion of an emotional distractor word in a DRM paradigm will influence the FM of lures, and the true memory of presented list words. We also aimed to replicate the finding that DRM induces FM of critical lures. Consistent with aforementioned literature in support of the distinctiveness account of the role of emotion in FM modulation, we hypothesised that the addition of an emotional distractor to DRM lists would lead to a reduction in false recall of unpresented lures, but not in the correct recall of presented list words, in comparison to lists which did not have a distractor added. This prediction was also consistent with findings in support of the spreading activation account, as the addition of an unrelated emotive distractor should weaken BAS, and hence disrupt the associative activation of lures. Likewise, we also hypothesised that the addition of an emotional distractor would lead a reduction in the false recognition of lures, but not in the correct recognition of list words, compared to lists which did not have a distractor added. Additionally, congruent with the body of literature replicating FM effects in DRM, we hypothesised that individuals would falsely report having seen the critical lure in both the recall tests and the final recognition test.

Method Participants The participants in this study were 349 students enrolled in course PSYC2081 at the University of New South Wales. The mean age of participants was 20.3 years. The experiments were conducted as part of regular tutorial classes for the course. Individuals absent from the class were excluded from participation. Design The current study utilised a fully within-subjects design. The independent variable was the condition (emotive distractor or control). The dependent variables were false memory as operationalised by the mean proportion of lures recalled and recognised, and true memory as operationalised by the mean proportion of list words recalled and recognised. Materials 18 DRM lists were used for list presentation, with 9 lists in the emotive distractor condition, and 9 lists in the control condition. In the control lists, each list contained 12 words, which were semantically related to a non-presented lure word. This was also the case in the emotive distractor lists, but a negatively-valenced emotive distractor word was added in the 4th position. During each list presentation, each word was presented for 250 ms with an inter-stimulus interval of 32 ms, until all words in the list were presented. The in-trial filler task was a maths interference task, timed for 30 seconds by the tutor. The recall test was computer-based, and required participants to enter as many words as they could remember from the presented list, for 20 seconds. The final filler task was a 5-minute period where participants discussed the experimental methodology of the present study with the tutor. The final recognition test contained 90 words presented consecutively. Participants were initially shown an instruction screen, describing that they were to decide whether or not

they recognised each word from the previously presented lists by pressing the appropriate response keys. The stimulus words in the final recognition test were 36 words consisting of 2 words chosen from each of the 18 presented lists, 9 previously presented emotional distractor words, 18 lure words, 18 new, non-lure words, and 9 new words matched in valence to the emotional distractors. Each word was presented until a response was made. The DRM lists were written and presented using MATLAB via the Psychtoolbox extension, and presented on standard Dell desktop PCs, with standard monitors and keyboards. Procedure First, informed consent forms were distributed, and participants provided consent to participate in the study. Then, each participant was given the material for the in-trial filler task. At the beginning of each trial, participants viewed the first word list. After each participant had been presented the last word of the list, they notified the tutor; when all participants had indicated that list presentation was complete, they completed the in-trial filler task. After this, they completed the recall test. This process was repeated for another 17 trials. Each subject was presented the same 18 DRM lists during the experiment, but in a randomised order for each participant. After participants had completed the last trial, they completed the final filler task, then the recognition test....