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Running head: FALSE MEMORIES False Memories: Paradigms for studying the creation and reduction of false memories Miranda L Trecroce Algoma University College False memories 2 Abstract In recent years, the study of false memory and memory distortion has become an area of particular interest for psychologists. A false memory can be operationally defined as a memory for a word that a participant has not been presented, or memories for an event which has never occurred. There are different types of false memories explored in the laboratory, with different experimental techniques used to induce them. The present literature review examines three different paradigms for studying the effect of false memories: the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) (1995) paradigm, the Loftus paradigm, and the ALT paradigm, developed by Kassin and Kiechel. Of the three paradigms, only research using the DRM framework has examined whether instructional warnings are effective in reducing or preventing the creation of false memories. Further research is required using the Loftus paradigm and the ALT paradigm to determine whether instructional warnings will effectively reduce the occurrence of false memories. False memories 3 False memories: Paradigms for studying the creation and reduction of false memories A wealth of past research indicates that human memory is prone to distortions (e.g., Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995; Loftus & Pickrell, 1995; Kassin & Kiechel, 1996). The study of false memory and memory distortion has become an area of particular interest for psychologists in recent years. A false memory is a memory which is a distortion of an actual experience, or a confabulation of an imagined one. Many false memories are created by confusing or mixing fragments or memory events, some of which may have happened at different times but which are remembered as occurring together. This growing interest in false memory has also been accompanied by laboratory studies (e.g., Loftus & Pickrell, 1995; Roediger & McDermott, 1995; Kassin & Kiechel, 1996) that have provided clear evidence of false memories under controlled conditions. In experimental research settings a false memory occurs when participants in an experiment come to remember an event which has never actually occurred (Loftus, 1997; Kassin & Kiechel, 1996), or remember the presentation of a word which was never actually presented (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995). Research about false memories is important because of its psycho-legal applications regarding recovered memories, eyewitness testimony, and individual differences in the formation of false memories. The eyewitness plays a crucial role in a large number of court cases, particularly robberies and rapes. In these cases, identification of a suspect by an eyewitness or other personal testimony about an event False memories 4 often provides important evidence on which a prosecution is based. Faulty eyewitness testimony is a major source of wrongful convictions (Greene & Loftus, 1984). Many influences can cause memories to change or even be created anew, including our imaginations, leading questions, or different recollections of others. The knowledge that we cannot rely on our memories, however compelling they might be, leads to questions about the validity of criminal convictions that are based largely on the testimony of victims or witnesses (Loftus, 2003). Psychological science has informed the legal system about memory and enabled productive changes in the handling of eyewitness evidence attempting to reduce or prevent the false memory effect from occurring. A number of paradigms have been proposed to study the false memory effect. The present literature review has two main purposes: (a) to describe and analyze three various paradigms for studying false memories, and (b) to examine research within each of these three paradigms. Paradigms for False Memories There are different types of false memories explored in the laboratory, with different experimental techniques used to induce them. Three particularly interesting paradigms are the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) (1995) paradigm, the Loftus paradigm, and the ALT paradigm, developed by Kassin and Kiechel. In research studies, a false memory is often operationally defined as a memory for a word that a participant has not been presented, or memories for an event which has never occurred. The DRM paradigm produces formation of false memory for words, while the Loftus paradigm False memories 5 produces false memories for perceiving objects or events, and the ALT paradigm produces false memories for events. The Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm The DRM paradigm is a common and useful technique for studying false memories in a controlled laboratory setting (Deese, 1959). Roediger and McDermott (1995) reintroduced a paradigm originally developed by Deese (1959). Because the paradigm is reliable and easy to use, it has been adopted by a number of researchers interested in studying the characteristics of false memories. In the original version of this paradigm, participants are presented with lists of thematically 'related' words (e.g., bed, rest, awake) that are all associated with a 'critical' non-presented (CNP) item (e.g., sleep) that is actually not presented. When participants study lists of words, they often falsely report recognizing a never presented associate word as appearing in the list. In the recognition version of this paradigm, participants are subsequently given an old/new recognition test, which includes a subset of the presented related words and the nonpresented critical words. Typically, memory performance is measured by calculating the hit rate for the words presented on the list (related words) and the false-alarm rate for the words that had not been presented on the list (critical words). Participants are asked whether they "know" (i.e., are confident that the word was presented but do not remember the actual presentation) or "remember" (i.e., are confident the word was presented and remember something about the actual presentation) seeing the word presented on the list. In this paradigm, participants have a memory for a certain word which they think they have heard, although in reality, the word has not been presented (Gallo et al., 2001). False memories 6 Prior research has also asked whether different variables can influence the false memory effect. For example, McDermott (1996) gave subjects multiple study and recall tests with the same word lists presented in either a blocked or a random manner. Both forms of presentation yielded false recalls after multiple study-test trials or a final recall test given 24h later but the random presentation produced less false recall than blocked presentation. Researchers proposed that just as lists of semantic associates can produce associative responses to a critical, non-presented item, lists composed of phonological associates such as bat, beat, bet, bit, etc., can produce false memories to phonologically related CI's such as but. False memory research in the DRM paradigm using semantically related words led researchers to question whether word lists composed of phonological, rather than semantic, associates would also produce significant amounts of false recall and recognition. One of the principal factors motivating this research was that a number of the mechanisms that have been proposed to account for false memories with semantic associates are similar to processes that have been used to explain listeners' ability to distinguish phonologically similar words (i.e., lexical discrimination). Sommers and Lewis (1999) conducted a study within the framework of the Neighbourhood Activation Model (NAM) to examine whether word lists composed of phonological, rather than semantic, associates would also produced significant levels of false recall and recognition. The NAM provides a method for quantifying the degree of association between lists items and critical items and therefore provides a direct comparison to the studies of false memory with semantic associates. The findings suggest that similar False memories 7 mechanisms may induce false memories with lists of semantic and phonological associates. The DRM paradigm has been widely recognized as an excellent way to produce false memories in a laboratory setting without creating a stressful situation for the participant, while excluding some confounds sometimes present in other false memory tasks, such as social demand and compliance. Roediger and McDermott (1995) argue that false memories for words may have similar mechanisms as those that underlie the formation of false memories for perceiving events. Current theories of memory are derived largely from experiments involving lists of words or sentence, however many memories occurring in everyday life involve complex, largely visual, and often fast-moving events. In some instances such recall is required, as when one has witnessed a crime or an accident. The Loftus Paradigm Memory for perceiving events has been considered an important research topic because of its psycho-legal applications concerning eyewitness testimony. Loftus and Pickerell (1995) have demonstrated that people can come to believe they were witness to events which actually never occurred. This happens most frequently through misleading postevent information that alters people's memory. Often after witnesses have perceived an important event, they are exposed to new information about it. Examples of the effects of misleading post event information come from early research (i.e. Lindsay, 1993; Loftus, 1997; Loftus & Pickrell, 1995). Evidence has accumulated to indicate that post-event experiences such as exposure to newly released information can dramatically affect the memory of the False memories 8 original event. Post-event information can enhance existing memories but it can also change a witness's memory in a powerful way, even leading to the creation of false memories by incorporating objects and events that never in fact existed into a previously acquired memory. For example, Loftus and Pickerell (1995) showed that after receiving misleading information 29% of participants came to believe that they were lost in a shopping mall at the age of 5. Hyman, Husband, and Billings (1995) showed that 20% of participants came to believe an event had occurred in their childhood such as a hospital visit when, in fact, the event had never occurred. Most of the experimental research on memory distortion has involved deliberate attempts to change memory for an event that actually was experienced. An important issue is whether it is possible to implant an entire false memory for something that never happened. Loftus's basic procedure consists of three phases: In Phase 1 subjects view an event; in Phase 2 they receive verbal information about the event (with or without misleading suggestions about certain "critical" details); in Phase 3 they take a memory test that includes questions about the critical details (Lindsay, 1993). A classic experiment by Loftus and her colleagues (1978) demonstrates how nonexistent objects can be introduced into people's recollections. Nearly two hundred participants viewed a series of thirty color slides depicting successive stages in an automobile-pedestrian accident. The automobile was a red Datsun shown travelling along a side street toward an intersection. The intersection was shown to have a stop sign for one half of the participants but a yield sign for the other half of participants. The Datsun became involved in an accident with a pedestrian. Immediately after viewing the slides, False memories 9 the subjects were asked some questions, one of which was critical. For about half of the participants the critical question asked was, "Did another car pass the red Datsun while it was stopped at the stop sign?" The remaining participants were asked the same question with the words "stop sign" replaced by "yield sign". For some of the participants the sign mentioned in the question was the sign that had actually been seen; therefore the question gave them consistent information. For the remaining subjects the question contained misleading information. After completing the questionnaire, the participants took part in a twenty-minute filler activity, which required them to read an unrelated short story and answer some questions about it. Finally, a recognition test was administered. Pairs of slides were presented to the participants and they had to indicate which member of each pair they had seen before. The critical pair was a slide depicting the Datsun stopped at a stop sign and a nearly identical slide depicting the Datsun at a yield sign. The results indicated that when the intervening question contained consistent information, 75 percent of participants responded accurately. When the question contained misleading information, only 41 percent of the participants responded accurately. If the participants had been simply guessing, they would have been correct about half the time, so the misleading question reduced their accuracy below that which would have been expected from a person who was merely guessing. In the mid 1990's researchers went beyond changing memory for a detail in a previously experienced event; they demonstrated that it is possible to plant an entire false memory into the mind Autobiographical memories represent a particularly useful set of experiences for exploring the possibility that there are characteristically distinct attributes False memories 10 for false memories. Simply put, memories for the experiences of one's own life are often rich and complex representations (Heaps & Nash, 2001).Using fairly strong suggestions, investigators succeeded in getting people to believe that when they were children they had been either lost in a shopping mall for an extended time, hospitalized overnight, or involved in an unfortunate accident at a family wedding (Loftus, 1997). The "strong suggestion" involved recruiting the help of family members to construct scenarios describing true and false experiences and feeding these scenarios to the subjects as if they were all true. This method is most commonly referred to as the "lost in the mall" procedure and was developed by Loftus and Pickrell (1995). Loftus and Pickrell asked participants ranging in age from 18 to 53 years to try to remember childhood events that had been recounted by their parents, older sibling or other close relative. Each participant received a booklet containing one-paragraph stories about three events that actually happened to him or her, and one that had not but was presented as if it had. Researchers constructed the false event about a shopping trip. A relative also verified that the participant had not actually been lost at about the age of five. After reading each story in the booklet, the participants wrote what they remembered about the event. If they did not remember it, they were told to write, "I do not remember this." In two follow-up interviews, researchers told the participants that they were interested in examining how much detail they could remember, and how their memories compared with those of their relative. Portions of the event paragraphs were provided to participants as retrieval cues. After reading the booklet, 29% of participants reported they remembered (either partially or fully) the false event; in the two follow-up interviews, 25% of participants continued to claim that they remembered the fictitious False memories 11 event. The findings reveal that people can be led to believe that entire events happened to them after suggestions to that affect. Braun, Ellis and Loftus (2002) took the "lost in the mall" study one step further and developed a procedure for implanting "impossible" memories about experiences. They investigated whether suggestive referencing in advertisements can cause people to believe that they had experiences as children that are mentioned in the advertisements. Participants viewed an advertisement for Disneyland that suggested that they shook hands with an impossible character (e.g., Bugs Bunny). After evaluating either this advertisement or a control advertisement subjects were asked about their own childhood experiences at Disneyland. About 16% of those who had been exposed to the fake Bugs advertisement later said they had personally met Bugs Bunny at Disneyland. Later studies showed that with multiple exposures to fake Disney ads that mentioned Bugs Bunny the percentages rose even higher. Many of those subjects who fell sway to the suggestion remembered the impossible encounter in quite a bit of detail (e.g., they reported that they hugged Bugs or touched his ear). Of course, this memory is impossible because Bugs Bunny is a Warner Bros. character and would not be found at a Disney theme park. The study shows that suggestive methods are indeed capable of leading to false beliefs or memories. Wade, Garry, Read and Lindsay (2002) used the Loftus and Pickerell (1995) "lost in the mall" method but replaced narratives with photographs. The question was simply whether showing subjects a doctored photograph (with no supporting narrative) would lead them to remember a false experience. Each subject viewed four photographs. Three were real childhood photos and one was fake, showing the subject taking a hot-air- False memories 12 balloon ride. The doctored photos were created using Photoshop and an assortment of childhood photos. Wade et al. "cut" the subjects and at least one family member out of photographs and "pasted" them into a dummy photo of a hot-air-balloon ride. Family members verified that the balloon ride never happened. After subjects reviewed each photograph three times over a period of 2 weeks, 50% remembered something about the ride. Often the reports were rich with detail and at the end of the study subjects tended to express genuine astonishment when they learned the photographs were fake (Garry & Genie, 2005). In the lost-in-the-mall study, implantation of a false memory occurred when another individual, usually a family member, claimed that the event happened. Corroboration of an event by another person can be a powerful technique for instilling a false memory. In fact, merely claiming to have seen a person do something can lead to a false confession of wrongdoing (Loftus, 1997). The ALT paradigm One study that is frequently cited in the false memory literature is Kassin and Kiechel's experiment (1996) which examined the role of social compliance in the formation of false memories for a specific event. The researchers showed that participants were likely to form false memories when accused of experiencing the event by an associate witness. Participants were asked to type the letters they heard on a computer, but were asked not to press the ALT key, which they were told was causing problems. Unknown to the participants the computer was programmed to crash after a minute of typing. A distraught experimenter accused the participant of ruining all his data by pressing the ALT key. Half the participants were told by a research associate that they False memories 13 had witnessed the participant press the ALT key prior to the computer crashing. The remaining participants were not accused by an associate witness. Participants who were accused of hitting the ALT key by an associate witness were more likely than those participants not accused to sign a confession. Moreover they were also more likely to internalize guilt and to confabulate details consistent with events. Internalization of guilt and confabulation of details indicate that participants did not just comply with the experimenter and admit to pressing the ALT key, but that they actually formed a memory about the event. Attempts to reduce or avoid the creation of false memories The ease with which false memories can be generated highlights the need to understand how they can be reduced or prevented. Previous research has addressed whether warning participants about the nature of the DRM paradigm can reduce false memory expression in that paradigm (Gallo, Roberts & Seamon, 1997; Gallo, Roediger & McDermott, 2001). Past research (e.g., Gallo, Roberts & Seamon, 1997; Westerberg & Marsolek, 2006) indicates that warning participants of this memory illusion in the DRM paradigm can reduce false recognition of critical words. Westerberg and Marsolek (2006) investigated the impact of instructional warnings given prior to reading the word list on false recognition in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995). They used signal detection measures of memory performance to find whether warnings specifically affect the processing of the critical words. The results indicate that warnings do not improve the processing of critical words False memories 14 in particular; rather warnings increase memory performance in general, across all word types. Gallo, Roberts and Seamon (1997) conducted a study to determine whether the false recognition of critical lures in the DRM paradigm could be diminished or eliminated by the use of forewarning instructions. Subjects were presented with an auditory tape containing eight lists of 15 words presented in blocked fashion and instructed to remember the words for a recognition memory test that would follow. The test was composed of studied words, semantically-related nonstudied words (critical lures), and unrelated nonstudied words. The independent variable was the foreknowledge of the false memory effect. Three groups of 16 subjects received different instructions at study or test. One group was uninformed about the false recognition affect, a second group was urged to minimize all false alarm (cautions), and a third group was forewarned about falsely recognizing critical lures (forewarned). Compared with the uninformed and cautious subjects, the forewarned subjects reduced their false alarm rate for critical lures. However, forewarning did not eliminate the false recognition effect; these subjects and those in the other groups made numerous false recognitions in this task. The findings suggest that inoculation by knowledge may achieve only limited success because knowledgeable people can only partially control their susceptibility to remembering events that never occurred. Furthermore, results suggest the DRM effect may possibly be due to automatic processing. Researchers have informed subjects about the nature of the false memory phenomenon, even giving subjects a sample trial. In a study by McDermott and Roediger (1998) subjects were informed about the false memory effect and then tested on False memories 15 recognition when the critical items were sometimes present in the list and sometimes not. Subjects who were informed about the nature of the false memory phenomenon and instructed to attempt to avoid it become more cautious, reducing both their hit rates and their false alarm rates. Informing subjects about the nature of the effect and asking them to avoid false recognition does not come close to eliminating the effect. In summary, there is now ample evidence from multiple paradigms that people can be led to believe that they experienced things that never happened. However, only research within the framework of the DR1VI paradigm has tested whether warning instructions have an effect on the avoidance or reduction of false memories. It is imperative that further research is conducted within the framework of both the Loftus paradigm and the ALT paradigm, as results of these studies are more likely to be generalized to real life situations, for example eyewitness testimonies. Research using the Loftus paradigm demonstrates that false memories can be implanted deliberately, but does not indicate whether or not these memories have a long lasting influence on behaviour, or, whether warning participants of the false memory effect would reduce or avoid present distortions in memory. Similarly, Kassin and Kiechel (1996) developed the ALT paradigm to demonstrate that corroboration of an event by another person can be an influential technique for instilling a false memory. Furthermore, false incriminating evidence can induce people to accept guilt for a crime they did not commit and even to develop memories to support their guilty feelings. Further research within this paradigm should focus on whether warning instructions will effect the reduction or prevention of false memories. False memories 16 Mental health professionals and others should be aware of how much they can influence the recall of events and of the great need for maintaining restraint in situations in which imagination is used as an aid in recovering presumably lost memories (Loftus, 1997). Finding which paradigm is most effective in studying the false memory phenomenon and which is best for generalizing results to real life situations will help researchers to further investigate the underlying processes of the creation of false memories, as well as effective ways to reduce or avoid the creation of such memories. False memories 17 References Deese, J. (1959). On the prediction of occurrence of particular verbal intrusions in immediate recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 58, 17-22. Gallo, D.A., Roberts, M.J., & Seamon, J.G. (1997). Remembering words not presented in lists: Can we avoid creating false memories? Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 4, 271-276. Gallo, D.A., Roediger, H.L. III, & McDermott, K.B. (2001). Associative false recognition occurs without strategic criterion shifts. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 8, 579-586. Greene, E., & Loftus, E. (1984). Solving the eyewitness problem. Behavioral Sciences & the Law, 2, 395-405. Hyman, I.E., Jr., Husband, T.H., & Billings, J.F. (1995). False memories of childhood experiences. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 9, 181-197. Loftus, E. (1997). Creating false memories. Scientific American, 277, 1-7. Loftus, E., & Pickerell, J. (1995). The formation of false memories. Psychiatric Annals, 25, 720-725. Loftus, E. F., Miller, D. G. & Burns, H. J. (1978). Semantic integration of verbal information into a visual memory. Human Learning and Memory, 4, 19-31 Neuschatz, J.S., Benoit, G.E., & Payne, D.G. (2003). Effective warnings in the DeeseRoediger-McDermott false-memory paradigm: The role of identifiability. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 29, 35-41. McDermott, K.B. (1997). Priming on perceptual implicit memory tests can be achieved through presentation of associates. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 4, 582-586. False memories 18 McDermott, K.B., & Roediger, H.L. III (1998). Attempting to avoid illusory memories: Robust false recognition of associates persists under conditions of explicit warnings and immediate testing. Journal of Memory and Language, 39, 508-520. Roediger, H.L. III, & McDermott, K.B. (1995). Creating false memories: remembering words not presented in lists. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 21, 803-814. Roediger, H.L. III, & McDermott, K.B. (2000). Tricks of Memory. Current Directions in Psychological Science, Department of Psychology, Washington University Seamon, J., Luo, C., & Gallo, D. (1998). Creating false memories for words with or without recognition of list items: Evidence for nonconscious proceses. Psychological Science, 9, 20-26. Tulving, E. (1985). How many memory systems are there? American Psychologist, 40, 385-398. Westerberg, C.E., & Marsolek, C.J. (2006). Do instructional warnings reduce false recognition? Applied Cognitive Psychology, 20, 97-114. 1 Running head: EYEWITNESS TESTIOMONY AND FALSE MEMORY Eyewitness Testimony and False Memory: Attempting to reduce false memories for events using the Loftus paradigm Miranda L Trecroce Algoma University College Eyewitness testimony and false memory 2 Abstract The purpose of this experiment was to investigate how warning instructions informing participants about the false memory phenomena could reduce the recall of false memories of an event. A total of 60 undergraduate students saw a 40 second video clip depicting an auto-motorcycle accident. Participants received either neutral instructions or warning instructions prior to watching the video clip. Later, participants were exposed to either correct or misleading post-event infounation embedded in questions. Participants who received misleading post-event information and warning instructions correctly recalled more events than those who did not receive a warning. Results suggest that warning instructions given prior to the encoding of an event to participants who received misleading post-event information can help reduce the occurrence of false memories. Further, warnings given to participants who received correct post-event information resulted in an increase in false recall. Eyewitness testimony and false memory 3 Eyewitness Testimony and False Memory: Attempting to reduce false memories in the Loftus paradigm The eyewitness plays a crucial role in a large number of court cases, particularly robberies and rapes. In these cases, identification of a suspect by an eyewitness, or other personal testimony about an event, often provides an important piece of evidence on which a prosecution is based. Faulty eyewitness testimony is a major source of wrongful convictions (Greene & Loftus, 1984). Jurors have been known to accept eyewitness testimony pointing to guilt even when it is far outweighed by evidence of innocence (Loftus, 1979).Wells and his colleagues (1978) concluded that eyewitness testimony is likely to be believed by jurors, especially when it is offered with a high level of confidence, even though the accuracy of an eyewitness and the confidence of that witness may not be related to one another at all. The evidence points rather noticeably to the conclusion that there is almost nothing more convincing than a live human being who takes the witness stand, points the finger at the defendant, and says "That's the one!" (Loftus,1979). There are questions about the validity of criminal convictions that are based largely on the testimony of victims or witnesses (Loftus, 2003). When a witness perceives a complex event, a number of factors, such as the exposure time, or the witness's prior expectations, will affect the accuracy of what is perceived and stored in memory. To further complicate the problem, once the material has already been encoded, further changes can take place. Many influences can cause memories to change or even be created anew, including our imaginations and the leading questions or different Eyewitness testimony and false memory 4 recollections of others. The time between a complex experience and a witness's recollection of that experience is a crucial period. False Memories A wealth of past research indicates that human memory is prone to distortions (e.g., Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995; Loftus & Palmer, 1974). The ability to create a false memory has been demonstrated in various experiments with participants who come to remember an event which has never actually occurred (Loftus, 1997). Evidence from the false memory literature indicates that questioning techniques used on participants can influence their memories. Similar experiences might occur to eyewitnesses based on police questioning techniques (Greene & Loftus, 1984). Paradigms for False Memories A false memory can be operationally defined as a memory or memories for an event which has never occurred. There are different types of false memories explored in the laboratory, with different experimental techniques used to induce them. Two particularly interesting paradigms are the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) (1995) paradigm and the Loftus paradigm (1974). The DRM paradigm produces the formation of false memory for words, while the Loftus paradigm produces false memories of objects or events. The Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm The DRM paradigm is a common and useful technique for studying false memories in a controlled laboratory setting (Deese, 1959). This paradigm shows that when participants study lists of words, they often falsely report recognizing a never presented associate word as appearing in the list. In the original version of this paradigm, Eyewitness testimony and false memory 5 participants are presented with lists of thematically 'related' words (e.g., bed, rest, awake) that are all associated with a 'critical' nonpresented (CNP) item (e.g., sleep) that is actually not presented. In the recognition version of this paradigm, participants are subsequently given an old/new recognition test, which includes a subset of the presented related words and the nonpresented critical words. Typically, memory performance is measured by calculating the hit rate for the related words and the false-alarm rate for the critical words. Participants are asked whether they "know" (are confident that the word was presented but do not remember the actual presentation) or "remember" (are confident the word was presented and remember something about the actual presentation) that the never presented word was on the list. In this particular paradigm, participants have a memory for a certain word which they think they have heard, although in reality, the word has not been presented (Gallo, Roediger & McDermott, 2001). The ease with which false memories can be generated highlights the need to understand how they can be prevented. Warning participants about the nature of the DRM paradigm can reduce false recognition of critical words in that paradigm (Gallo, Roberts & Seamon, 1997; Gallo, Roediger, & McDermott, 2001).Gallo, Roberts and Seamon (1997) conducted a study to detemtine whether the false recognition of critical lures in the DRM paradigm could be diminished or eliminated by the use of forewarning instructions. They presented participants with an auditory tape containing eight lists of 15 words presented in blocked fashion and instructed the participants to remember the words for a recognition memory test that would follow. The test was composed of studied words, semantically-related nonstudied words (critical lures), and unrelated nonstudied words. The independent Eyewitness testimony and false memory 6 variable was foreknowledge of the false memory effect. Three groups of 16 subjects received different instructions at the study or test phase. One group was uninformed about the false recognition effect, a second group (cautions) was urged to minimize all false alarms, and a third group was forewarned about falsely recognizing critical lures. Compared with the uninformed and cautious subjects, the forewarned subjects reduced their false alarm rate for critical lures; however forewarning did not eliminate the false recognition effect; these subjects and those in the other groups made numerous false recognitions in this task. The findings suggest that inoculation by knowledge may achieve only limited success because knowledgeable people can only partially control their susceptibility to remembering events that never occurred. The DRM paradigm has been widely recognized as an excellent way to produce false memories in a laboratory setting without creating a stressful situation for the participant, as well as excluding other confounds present in other false memory tasks such as social demand and compliance. Roediger and McDermott (1995) argue that false memories for words may have similar mechanisms as those that underlie the formation of false memories for perceiving actual events. Memory for perceiving events has been considered an important research topic because of its forensic applications concerning eyewitness testimony. Loftus and Pickerell (1995) have demonstrated that people can come to believe they were witness to entire events which actually never occurred. This happens most frequently through misleading post-event information which alters people's memory. Often after witnesses have perceived an important event, they are exposed to new information about it. Evidence has accumulated to indicate that post-event experiences Eyewitness testimony and false memory 7 such as exposure to newly released information can dramatically affect the memory of the original event. Post-event information can enhance existing memories but it can also change a witness's memory in a powerful way. Misleading post-event information can alter a person's recollection, even leading to the creation of false memories by incorporating objects and events that never in fact existed into a previously acquired memory. Examples of the effects of misleading post event information come from early research (Loftus & Palmer, 1974; Loftus, Miller & Bums, 1978). Researchers have developed innovative paradigms to examine the malleability of human memory. For example, Loftus and Pickerell (1995) showed that after receiving misleading information 29% of participants came to believe that they were lost in a shopping mall at the age of 5. Hyman, Husband, and Billings (1995) showed that 20% of participants in their study came to believe an event (such as a hospital visit) had occurred in their childhood when, in fact, the event had never occurred. The Loftus paradigm Elizabeth Loftus' basic procedure consists of three phases: In Phase 1, subjects view an event; in Phase 2, they receive verbal infaurration about the event (with or without misleading suggestions about certain "critical" details); in Phase 3, they take a memory test that includes questions about the critical details (Loftus & Greene, 1984). A classic experiment by Loftus and her colleagues (1978) demonstrates how nonexistent objects can be introduced into people's recollections. Nearly two hundred participants viewed a series of thirty color slides depicting successive stages in an automobile-pedestrian accident. The automobile was a red Datsun shown travelling along Eyewitness testimony and false memory 8 a side street toward an intersection. The intersection was shown to have a stop sign for half of the participants and a yield sign for the remaining participants. The Datsun became involved in an accident with a pedestrian. Immediately after viewing the slides, the subjects were asked some questions, one of which was critical. For about half of the participants the critical question asked was, "Did another car pass the red Datsun while it was stopped at the stop sign?" The remaining participants were asked the same question with the words "stop sign" replaced by "yield sign". For half of the participants, the sign mentioned in the question was the sign that had actually been seen; therefore the question gave them consistent information. For the remaining subjects, the question contained the sign that had not been seen (misleading information). After completing a twenty-minute filler activity a recognition test was administered. Pairs of slides were presented to the participants and they had to indicate which member of each pair they had seen before. The critical pair was a slide depicting the Datsun stopped at a stop sign and a nearly identical slide depicting the Datsun at a yield sign. The results indicated that when the intervening question contained consistent information, 75 percent of participants accurately responded. When the question contained misleading information, only 41 percent of the participants accurately responded. If the participants had been simply guessing, they would have been correct about half the time, so the misleading question reduced their accuracy below that which would have been expected if they had been merely guessing. After a witness experiences a complex event, he or she may be exposed to new information about that event. The new information may come in the powerful form of Eyewitness testimony and false memory 9 questions or in the form of a conversation, a newspaper story, etc. The implication of these results for courtroom examinations, police interrogations and accident investigations is fairly obvious: interrogators should do whatever possible to avoid the introduction of any external information into the witness's memory (Loftus, 1997). Present Study Previous experiments have demonstrated that when participants are warned about the false memory effect before the encoding phase in the DRM paradigm, the ability to differentiate old and new critical words improves (Gallo et al., 1997, 2001; McDermott & Roediger, 1998; Neuschatz et al., 2003). Though these results are useful in demonstrating the effect of warnings on reducing false memories, the DRM paradigm creates an artificial lab setting that can't be generalized to real-life eyewitness situations. To my knowledge, no experimental studies have been done with instructional warnings to reduce the effect of false memories for events, for example, by implementing warnings in the Loftus paradigm. If warnings can improve the recall of accurate memories in a word list, can they also improve the recall of memories for an actual event? More specifically, will warning witnesses about the power of suggestive questioning and the effect of such misinformation on memory help them to reduce or avoid making false memories of an event? The goal of the present investigation was to deteinfine whether warning instructions are effective measures to reduce false memories for events by using the Loftus paradigm. The main prediction is that warning instructions given to participants in the misleading information condition will increase the accurate recall of that event. A second outcome to consider is whether warning instructions will have the opposite effect Eyewitness testimony and false memory 10 for the condition receiving correct post-event information and a warning, that is, whether warning instructions in the correct post-event information condition will decrease participants' correct recall. It is expected that the participants in the misleading information condition receiving the warning instruction would have a higher number of hits and a lower number of false alarms for the critical items (those items containing misleading information). Method Participants Sixty undergraduate students who were enrolled in a degree program at Algoma University College, ranging from ages 18-24, volunteered to participate in this experiment. Participants were randomly assigned to the warning condition or to the no warning condition and to one of two post-event information conditions, either receiving consistent or inconsistent post-event information in the form of suggestive questioning (15 in the misleading information and warning condition, 15 in the misleading information and no warning condition, 15 in the correct information and warning condition, and 15 in the correct information and no warning condition). Design A 2 (instruction condition: warning, no warning) X 2 (post-event information: correct, misleading) factorial design was used. Materials and Procedure Upon arrival the participants were told that they were taking part in an honours thesis study, but were not informed of the goal of the study. All participants signed a consent form and were assured of complete confidentiality and the right to withdrawal from the Eyewitness testimony and false memory 11 study at any time. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four groups. The experiment consisted of an encoding phase (presentation of the video with instructions) immediately followed by a test phase. Prior to the encoding phase, one-half of participants (no warning condition) were simply told to pay close attention to the events in the video segment that was going to be presented because their memory and confidence in these memories would be tested later. The other half of participants in the warning condition were given similar instructions regarding the procedure but were also told the following: When one witnesses an important event, such as a crime or accident, one may be exposed to subsequent information that can influence the memory of that event. For example, in a previous study, participants saw films of complex fast-moving events such as automobile accidents. Immediately afterward, the subjects were asked a series of questions, some presenting misleading information by suggesting the existence of an object that did not exist in the original scene. For example, the participant might have been asked, "How fast was the car going when it ran the stop sign?" when a stop sign did not actually exist in the scene. It was found that such questions increased the likelihood that subjects would later report having seen these objects. The information from these misleading questions became integrated into one's memory of the event, thereby causing an alteration of the actual information stored in memory. After participants read all instructions, the experimenter played the video clip. The video clip was approximately forty seconds in length and depicted an automotorcycle accident in which a white car, while turning into a gas station, is struck by an oncoming motorcycle. The clip was found on the website www.cbaumsworld.com . Following the presentation of the video segment, the participants filled out a 12item questionnaire containing questions about details from the video clip. For the Eyewitness testimony and false memory 12 participants in the correct post-event information condition, all questions contained infon iation consistent with what occurred in the video. For the remaining half of participants in the misleading post-event information condition, 2 out of the 12 questions contained inconsistent or misleading information about the scene in the video segment. The first misleading question, Question 6 was "Did you see the third witness run over to the accident?" when in fact there were only two witnesses present in the video. The second misleading question, Question 11 asked "Was there an empty trashcan beside the man pumping gas?" There was no man in the video clip and no one pumping gas. Each question was accompanied by a confidence rating scale with the numbers one through 3 (1 for certain, 2 for intermediate levels of confidence and 3 for guess). The participants were instructed to make a certain or guess judgment for each recognized scene by circling a number from 1 to 3 on their answer sheets. The participants were told to circle 1 if they were certain of the memory; they had a conscious recollection of the scene from the video, such as the way the scene was presented or what they were thinking about at the time, or 3 if they were not confident in remembering the scene, but they could not recollect its actual occurrence or any related details. The participant was told to circle 2 if they were unsure of the memory. After completing the questionnaire, the participants participated in a 15-min filler activity that required them to read an unrelated passage and answer questions about it. The passage was approximately one page in length and was followed by six multiple choice questions. Finally, a forced-choice recognition test consisting of 10 statements was administered. Each statement included 2 scenarios: one scenario that was included in Eyewitness testimony and false memory 13 the video (old) and one that was not (new). The critical pair of statements was the same scenario depicted in the misleading questions. Item #3 presented the choice between: There were two witnesses at the gas station when the accident occurred. There were three witnesses at the gas station when the accident occurred. The second pair of statements was related to the misleading post-event information from Question 11 of the first questionnaire. Item #5 presented participants with the choice between: There was a man pumping gas at the time the accident occurred. There was no one pumping gas at the time the accident occurred. Participants were to choose the statement that corresponded with what they had seen earlier in the video and also to rate their confidence on the same scale used in the first questionnaire. Analysis For each participant, the correct responses of the critical items (those items containing misleading information) were measured as a hit. The incorrect responses were measured as a false alarm, or false memory. The participants' correct recall on the critical items, #3 and #5 on the forced-choice recognition test, were examined both separately and together and compared among the four different conditions. The mean confidence rating for both critical items was also calculated for each participant. The criterion for statistical significance was set at p <.05 for all analyses. Results Correct Recall on Forced-choice Recognition Test Item #3. Of the 60 participants who completed the forced-choice recognition test, 53 chose the correct statement; 7 chose the incorrect statement. Accuracy depended on Eyewitness testimony and false memory 14 whether the participant had been given correct or misleading post-event information on the initial questionnaire This relationship can be seen in Table 1. Participants who received misleading post-event information and a warning were less confident in their response (M = 1.60) than participants who received misleading post-event information and no warning (M= 1.13). Participants who received correct post-event information and a warning were slightly less confident (M= 1.40) in their response than participants who received correct post-event information and no warning (M= 1.53). Table 1. Number of Hits and Mean Confidence Rating for Item #3 Post-event information Warning Instruction No Warning Hits Confidence (M) Hits Confidence (M) Correct 14 1.40 14 1.53 Misleading 14 1.60 11 1.13 Note: n = 15 in each cell Item #5. For Item #5 on the forced-choice recognition test, 32 out of the 60 participants chose the correct statement; 28 chose the incorrect statement. As with Item #3, accuracy depended on whether the participant had been given correct or misleading post-event infolination. Results for Item #5 are shown in Table 2. Participants who received correct post-event information and a warning (M = 2.07) were slightly less confident than those participants who did not receive a warning (M =2.13). Those participants who received misleading post-event information were more confident than those who received correct post-event information. Participants who received misleading Eyewitness testimony and false memory 15 post-event information and a warning (M= 1.67) were slightly more confident than those who did not receive a warning (A 1 = 1.87). Table 2. Number of Hits and Mean Confidence Rating for Item #5 Instruction Warning No Warning Post-event information Hits Confidence (M) Correct 7 2.07 9 2.13 Misleading 10 1.67 6 1.87 Hits Confidence (M) Note: n = 15 in each cell Both critical items, #3 and #5, were examined together to measure the mean hit rate. A 2 (instruction: no warning, warning) X 2 (information: correct, misleading) univariate analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed. A statistically significant interaction was found, F (1, 56) = 4.050,p =.049, for type of post-event information and instruction (warning, no warning) The mean hit rate for participants who received misleading information and a warning (M=1.60) was greater than the mean hit rate for participants who received misleading information and no warning (M=1.13). For those participants in the correct post-event information condition, those who received a warning had a lower mean hit rate (M= 1.40) than those who did not receive a warning (M= 1.53). These results are shown in Table 3. Eyewitness testimony and false memory 16 Table 3. Mean Hit Rates for Critical Items Post-event information Warning Instruction No warning Correct M= 1.40 M= 1.53 Misleading M= 1.60 M= 1.13 SD = .507 SD = .507 SD = .516 SD = .743 Note: n = 15 in each cell Discussion The goal of this experiment was to determine whether warning participants of the false memory phenomenon would result in a reduction in the rate of false recognitions. To examine this issue, the mean percentage of hits (correct recall) was examined between participants who received either correct or misleading post-event information and either a warning instruction or neutral instruction. As predicted, the act of warning participants in the misleading information condition reduced the false-memory effect, compared with participants in the misleading information condition who did not receive a warning. Overall, the mean hit rate for the half of the participants in the warning condition (M=1.50) was greater than the mean hit rate for the half of the participants in the no warning condition (M=1.33). There were no main effects found in the data that were statistically significant however there was an interaction for the independent variables: instruction (warning, no warning) and post-event information (consistent, misleading) information. The predicted hypothesis was shown to be correct; warning instructions in the misleading condition did increase accuracy by reducing false memories. The accuracy Eyewitness testimony and false memory 17 mean was higher for the participants in the misleading information condition who received the warning instruction than for those in the misleading information condition who did not receive a warning The second part of the hypothesis, which predicted that warning instructions in the correct information condition will decrease accuracy by increasing false memories also proved to be true. The group of participants who received correct information and a warning (M = 1.40) had a lower accuracy mean on the recognition test than the group receiving misleading information and a warning (M = 1.60). Therefore these findings present somewhat of a cost and benefit dilemma. Obviously, the benefit of warning participants in the presence of misleading information is the higher accuracy of correct recall. The cost, however, is the reduced accuracy as a result of a warning when postevent information is correct, or consistent. Results from the present experiment confirmed that misleading post-event information can produce false recall of an event and demonstrated that providing a witness with a warning about false recall can: (a) reduce false recall when post-event information is misleading, and (b) reduce correct recall when post-event information is correct. A possible explanation for the reduction of false recall when post-event information is misleading is that the warning made the participants aware of suggestive questions and their ability to discriminate such questions and ignore the false information. Thus, those participants who received a warning were able to retain their original memory of the event, without incorporating false post-event information into the memory, resulting in more accurate recall of the event. As for the participants in the correct postevent information condition that received a warning, the warning may have made the Eyewitness testimony and false memory 18 participants overly cautious when choosing a response on the forced-choice recognition test. The warning may have had the opposite effect than was intended because it may have primed participants to believe that the post-event information they received was false, thus causing the participants to second guess themselves or doubt the infoimation that was embedded in the questions. Future Research There are several improvements that could be made for future research in the investigation of reducing false memories. The present experiment examined the effect of warning instructions on recall only when the warning instructions were given to participants prior to the encoding of an event. Future research should investigate the effects of similar warning instructions when given to participants following the encoding of a witnessed event. These findings may be better generalized to real-life situations, as witnesses can not always be warned of the dangers of misleading post-event information and false memories prior to observing a crime or accident. It would be both interesting and of much benefit to the criminal justice system to examine whether warnings given to witnesses immediately after observing an event would have the same effect as when given prior to observing an event. In order to create more of a real-life situation in an experimental setting, it would be useful to stage an actual event instead of using a video clip to show an event. This would make the situation more realistic and may have more of an impact on those who are witness to the event. Also, in future research, it may be beneficial to include more than one measure of memory. Eyewitness testimony and false memory 19 Results from the present experiment indicate a strong trend in the right direction. A similar study conducted with a larger sample of participants may yield results of statistical significance. General Discussion Previous experiments have demonstrated that when participants are warned about the false memory effect before the encoding phase in the DRM paradigm, the ability to differentiate old and new critical words improves (Gallo et al., 1997; McDermott & Roediger, 1998; Neuschatz, Benoit & Payne, 2003). However, no previous studies have investigated the use of warning instructions in the Loftus paradigm. The goal of the present investigation was to determine whether warnings given to participants prior to witnessing an event would increase memory performance by reducing false recall of the event. To conclude, there were two main findings in this experiment. First, the results indicate that warnings do reduce the false recall of an event when participants are given misleading information. Second, providing a witness with a warning about false memories can reduce correct recall when the post-event information is correct. The present findings have implications concerning the accuracy of memory in everyday life, specifically to eyewitness testimony. First, they suggest that warning people of the dangers of false recognition and the false memory phenomenon can be effective at reducing false alarms. For example, consider a witness to a robbery who is asked to identify the thief in a line-up, or recall important details from the event. The witness will most likely have encountered some sort of post-event information from the event, whether it is correct or misleading, and therefore may have an altered memory of the actual witnessed event. Without being warned about false post-event infoimation, Eyewitness testimony and false memory 20 there is a high likelihood that the witness may incorrectly identify an innocent individual from the line up, or falsely recall details from the event. However, in a situation in which the post-event information is correct, a witness may doubt the information or become overly cautious to such information, thus creating an inaccurate account of the event. This can be a major problem in our justice system which operates on the principle that it is better to let 10 guilty persons go free than to convict one innocent person. Therefore, in following this important principle, in actual eyewitness situations in the real-world, warning witnesses may have more of a negative effect than a positive effect on the accuracy of recall. Eyewitness testimony and false memory 21 References Deese, J. (1959). On the prediction of occurrence of particular verbal intrusions in immediate recall. 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