Importing perceived features into false memories
- 1 February 2006
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Taylor & Francis Ltd in Memory
- Vol. 14 (2), 197-213
- https://doi.org/10.1080/09658210544000060
Abstract
False memories sometimes contain specific details, such as location or colour, about events that never occurred. Based on the source-monitoring framework, we investigated one process by which false memories acquire details: the reactivation and misattribution of feature information from memories of similar perceived events. In Experiments 1A and 1B, when imagined objects were falsely remembered as seen, participants often reported that the objects had appeared in locations where visually or conceptually similar objects, respectively, had actually appeared. Experiment 2 indicated that colour and shape features of seen objects were misattributed to false memories of imagined objects. Experiment 3 showed that perceived details were misattributed to false memories of objects that had not been explicitly imagined. False memories that imported perceived features, compared to those that presumably did not, were subjectively more like memories for perceived events. Thus, perception may be even more pernicious than imagination in contributing to false memories.Keywords
This publication has 50 references indexed in Scilit:
- Test formats change source-monitoring decision processes.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 1998
- Judgements of other people's memory reports: differences in reports as a function of imagery vividnessApplied Cognitive Psychology, 1998
- Individual Differences and the Creation of False Childhood MemoriesMemory, 1998
- Misleading suggestions can impair eyewitnesses' ability to remember event details.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 1990
- Trivial persuasion in the courtroom: The power of (a few) minor details.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1989
- Degree of Detail of Eyewitness Testimony and Mock Juror Judgments1Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 1988
- Qualities of the unreal.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 1986
- Memory and consciousness.Canadian Psychology / Psychologie canadienne, 1985
- False recognition produced by implicit verbal responses.Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1965