TRUE, FALSE OR JUST SUGGESTED? COMPARISON OF REMEMBERING EXPERIENCE OF TRUE AND FALSE MEMORY TRACES IN DRM STUDIES

Abstract

However research focused on human memory – as expected to bring further insight into the entire mind architecture - captured scientists attention many years ago, still very few is known about mechanisms underlying some of crucial memory phenomena, such as e.g. false memories creation FM . The main aim of presented study is to shed some light onto this issue by establishing which factors enhance FM creation, what are their general characteristics and whether we are able to avoid them by providing correct distinguish between true and false To achieve these goals 2 experiments were conducted, with use of procedure enabling to evoke false memories under the laboratory condition Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm . First study allows to describe false memories as a long-lasting, sustainable memory traces, which are comparable to true ones, as accompanied by a similar level of confidence and subjective sense of remembering declared by participants 43% and 33% , respectively, compared to 4% for random mistakes . Second study was designed to verify whether subjects show significant difference among tendency to generate FM under influence of suggestion-content differing conditions positive, negative or neutral . Obtained results demonstrated vast impact of suggestion on a tendency to generate false memories: both – positively 63% and negatively 58% suggested groups notably extended false memories production compared to neutral 50% and control conditions 50% and 38%, respectively . Interestingly, level of memoryaccuracy confidence estimated by participants was stable across all the conditions 79% and remained significantly higher compared to the actual memory accuracy mean: 68% . Additionally, analysis revealed interesting findings among “sense of remembering” under the negativesuggestion condition, which induced rate of remembering achieving 100% false recollection Recent findings, interpreted in terms of source monitoring biases Johansson & Stenberg, 2002 and general discrimination ability Zhu et. al., 2013 SUGGEST we should pay more attention to what we memorize. It is not impossible at least some of our memories were entirely made up by our own minds or created under the influence of extensive factors, such as outward suggestion Loftus, 2005

Keywords

• memory, false memories, suggestion, suggestibility, DRM, mind

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