Empirical psychology and the repressed memory debate: current status and future directions.
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Adolescent↗
Biomedical subjects
M S Zaragoza
Publications and source records attributed to M S Zaragoza.
Developmental differences in eyewitness suggestibility and memory for source.
To what extent do children who report suggested information believe they actually remember seeing the suggested details they report? Asking whether children misremember seeing suggested items is in essence a question about children's ability to monitor the source of their memories. The current study reports the results of two experiments designed to assess potential age-related changes in subjects' ability to accurately monitor the source of suggested information either immediately or following a 1-week delay. The results of both experiments revealed that although all subjects claimed to remember seeing suggested items, the magnitude of this effect varied with age such that first-graders made more source confusions than third- and fifth-graders, who in turn made more confusions than college subjects. Our findings suggest that these age differences are not simply a function of more general age-related memory or performance deficits, but instead reflect developmental differences in the tendency to confuse suggested information for actually witnessed events.
Adolescent↗
The recollective experience of cross-modality confusion errors.
There are at least two qualitatively different types of subjective experience that can accompany accurate recognition memory. Sometimes recognition is accompanied by conscious recollection of the learning episode (i.e., it is remembered), and in other cases it is not (i.e., it is simply known that the item is old). In the present study, we assessed the subjective experience that accompanies cross-modality confusion errors (misidentifying words as pictures) by measuring the extent to which subjects claimed to remember versus know that the item was presented as a picture. The results of two experiments demonstrate that cross-modality confusion errors are often accompanied by conscious recollection, although not to the same extent as accurate memories. The findings also show that there is considerable overlap in the recollective experience that accompanies accurate and erroneous memories. Finally, the results support the contention that recollective experience cannot be directly inferred from test performance.
Adult↗
Source misattributions and the suggestibility of eyewitness memory.
Although the suggestibility of eyewitness memory is well documented, previous studies have not clearly established the extent to which misled Ss might come to believe they actually remember seeing the suggested details they report. To assess whether Ss confuse misleading suggestions for their "real memories" of a witnessed event, Ss were asked specific questions about their memory for the source of suggested items. The results of 5 experiments showed that misled Ss do sometimes come to believe they remember seeing items that were merely suggested to them, a phenomenon we refer to as the source misattribution effect. Nevertheless, the results also showed that the magnitude of this effect varies and that source misattributions are not an inevitable consequence of exposure to suggestions.
Humans↗
Misled subjects may know more than their performance implies.
Many studies have demonstrated that subjects exposed to misleading postevent information are likely to report the misinformation with confidence on subsequent tests of memory for the event. The purpose of the present studies was to determine whether subjects exposed to misleading postevent information come to believe they remember seeing the misinformation at the original event. A second question addressed by the present studies is whether exposure to misinformation reduces subjects' ability to remember the source of items they witnessed at the original event. In two experiments, subjects viewed a slide sequence depicting an event, were subsequently exposed to misleading information or neutral information about selected aspects of the event, and were later tested on their memory for the source of original and misleading details. The results showed that exposure to misinformation did not lead subjects to believe they remembered seeing the misinformation, nor did it reduce subjects' ability to accurately identify the source of originally seen details. The same pattern of results was obtained whether subjects were tested immediately (Experiment 1) or after a 1-day delay (Experiment 2). Collectively, the results suggest that subjects may report misinformation even if they know they do not remember seeing it.
Adult↗
Similarity of encoding context does not influence resistance to memory impairment following misinformation.
Several recent studies have shown that exposure to verbal misleading post-event information does not impair subjects' ability to retrieve originally seen details. Two experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that subjects would be more susceptible to memory impairment if the original and misleading information were presented in similar contextual formats. The results showed that misleading information did not lead to memory impairment when both original and misleading information were presented in the context of slides (Experiment 1) or when both original and misleading information were presented in the context of narratives (Experiment 2). Furthermore, resistance to memory impairment was observed both at relatively low levels of memory for the original information (Experiment 1) and at relatively high levels of memory for the original information (Experiment 2). The implications of the present results for interference principles of forgetting are discussed.
Cues↗