How Do You Know Your Memories Are Real
Can people tell whether a particular memory is true or false? In a review of the literature, researchers have pointed out that there are two ways of looking at this question – "focusing on the memories reported or the person reporting the memories" (Bernstein and Loftus, 2009, p. 370). Inside this review, information technology was argued that there were no reliable neurophysiological, technological, or psychological ways to discern between true and fake memories – and that telling the difference between true and false memories is one of the biggest challenges in retentiveness research. However, this hasn't stopped researchers from continuing to wait for differences, with express success.
Some researchers have argued that the phenomenology of imitation memories is different from truthful memories, advocating that participants are able to identify their ain false memories if they focus on source monitoring decisions (where people think they know things from), confidence ratings, and explicit warnings near memory fallibility (Anastasi et al., 2000). Others have argued that providing questionnaires that help people systematically examine the characteristics of their memories can slightly improve false retentiveness detection (Ost et al., 2002). Proponents of this phenomenological line of work broadly argue that true memories feel "richer" than false ones (Marche et al., 2010), and that false memories are "weaker" forms of truthful memories (Jou and Flores, 2013).
However, this seems an incomplete answer to the differences between true and false memories, as research also shows that the realism of false memories depends on the method through which they were generated (Jou and Flores, 2013). Near studies on simulated memories involve brusque timeframes, and false memories that are neither very circuitous, nor particularly emotional. Research has also focused about entirely on assessments of one's own fake memory business relationship, rather than assessments of someone else's account. Research shows that the methodologies that utilise longer encoding periods, repetition, emotion, and a lot of detail and complexity create false memories that feel and wait more real (Jou and Flores, 2013). Such methodology is typical of studies that try to implant rich false memories of autobiographical events, through a method called the familial informant imitation narrative paradigm (Loftus and Pickrell, 1995). This technique involves using a combination of trust, misinformation, imagination exercises, and repetition to convince participants that they experienced events that never happened. By using this technique, individuals accept been shown to generate complex faux memories of autobiographical events (Scoboria et al., 2017).
An autobiographical false memory is an incorrect recollection of function of an event, or an incorrect recollection of an entire event. The person recalling a fake memory believes that they are accessing a real memory – it is non an attempt to prevarication (e.yard., Loftus, 2005). Memories that accept been implanted using the familial informant false narrative technique – and related techniques – include getting lost in a shopping mall (Loftus and Pickrell, 1995), spilling a punch bowl at a family nuptials or existence left in the car as a kid and releasing the parking break so it rolled into something (Hyman et al., 1995). More than serious false memories that have been implanted include being punched or punching someone else (Laney and Takarangi, 2013), or being the victim of an creature attack (Porter et al., 1999). Additionally, researchers take implanted a number of faux memories of committing offense, including of assail, assail with a weapon, and theft (Shaw and Porter, 2015). Rich false memories of highly emotional or criminal events are of item interest to practical psychologists, legal professionals, and law enforcement, as they can accept catastrophic consequences. Because they can become distorted or fabricated show, such false memories tin can seriously threaten the integrity of a criminal investigation or legal case (e.grand., Loftus, 2003).
Enquiry on autobiographical false memories typically involves asking the participants themselves to rate the realism of their ain (false) memories, and participants consistently written report that such false memories feel incredibly existent (eastward.g., Shaw and Porter, 2015; Scoboria et al., 2017). If autobiographical fake memories feel largely the same as real memories, then they may as well look like real memories to others. In mayhap the just study to directly examine this, participants were asked to watch videos of complex emotional true and false memories being recalled, to see if they could tell the difference (Campbell and Porter, 2002). Observers correctly identified lx% of false memories, and 53% of truthful memories – with l% representing run a risk. This study was the inspiration for the nowadays research. While there has been evidence to show that false memories of important emotional and criminal events tin be created (due east.k., Shaw and Porter, 2015; Scoboria et al., 2017), there has been little research investigating the ability of observers to distinguish between true and simulated memories, and no evidence on false memories of crime.
Two studies examined whether participants could correctly place faux memories. The 3 chief hypotheses were (H1) people are no amend than adventure at identifying false memories, (H2) people are no meliorate than hazard at identifying false memories of criminal events, (H3) people are better at comparative judgments than absolute ones (once they know one of two memories is false, they tin can identify the "richer" retentivity). Study two adds an exploratory component to this, to examine whether information technology would make a difference if people could merely see (video with no sound), hear (audio with no video), or come across and hear (video with sound) the fake retentivity accounts. This was examined for two reasons. Get-go, it is possible that visual cues are distracting, so participants might be ameliorate able to place false memories when they only take sound and can focus on content. Conversely, in Campbell and Porter (2002) memory nomenclature accuracy was meliorate for those who relied on non-verbal cues, and so possibly verbal or content cues are distracting, which could get in easier to identify false memories without sound. Additionally, evidence in legal cases is sometimes only available as audio recordings or every bit video footage with no sound, and so examining this consequence likely has practical applications. The present studies further our understanding of the realism of simulated memories, and whether false memories tin exist identified past observers.
Materials and Methods
Participants
Report 1
Participants were recruited for a study called "evaluating emotional memories" and told "The purpose of this project is to examine whether participants are able to distinguish betwixt different kinds of memories." Participants were recruited through posters that indicated entry into a $l draw, and from the Academy of British Columbia Okanagan (Canada) research pool. Participants (n = 124) completed the study between January and March 2013. Most identified as women (n = 103), 21 as men. Age categories were provided, and 116 participants were historic period xviii to 24, the balance were over 25. The categories from the Canadian Census at the time were adopted; of the participants 88 were White, xiv Chinese, 7 South Asian, 7 Southeast Asian, two Aboriginal, 2 Blackness, 2 Filipino, 1 Japanese, and 1 Korean. Almost all were undergraduate students (n = 122). Mean number of psychology courses taken was 3.694 (SD = 3.121). Participants were asked whether they had taken any related classes – 104 indicated they had never taken a grade on memory, 110 had never taken a forensic psychology course, 97 had never taken either.
Report 2
Participants were recruited to "participate in memory enquiry" through emails and posters on the University of Bedfordshire campus (United Kingdom), where they could enter a draw to win one of four £50 prizes. Participants (n = 82) completed this study between February 2014 and May 2015, of these 61 identified equally women, 21 as men, and i as neither. The mean age was 22.13 years (Range = 18–43, SD = 5.871). The breakdown from the United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland regime at the time was used to measure ethnicity; 46 participants were White, 16 Asian, 16 Black, three Mixed-race, and 1 person did not specify. Most participants were undergraduate students (due north = 77), 4 were masters students, and 1 had a PhD. Most participants (northward = 56) had previously taken a class on retention, 18 on forensic psychology, and 21 had taken neither.
Design
Study i
Participants were randomly assigned to one of 2 conditions; to watch a video of false memory of an emotional event or a crime. The influence of the independent variable 'type of memory' on the dependent variable 'classification accuracy' was measured.
Study 2
Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions; to watch memory videos with audio and video, as audio-just (with no video), or video-only (no sound). The influence of the independent variable 'media blazon' on the dependent variable 'classification accuracy' was measured.
Materials
Written report 1 and Written report 2
This enquiry used videos collected by Shaw and Porter (2015). The eight participants whose videos were used provided permission for the interviews to be used in time to come research. The videos used for the present research involve each participant recalling two split accounts in structured interviews. One of the emotional autobiographical events described really occurred during the participants' adolescence (betwixt the ages of xi and xiv), information nearly which was obtained from the participants' parents. The 2nd account was generated through the familial informant imitation narrative procedure (Loftus and Pickrell, 1995), and each account was classified as a rich false memory by Shaw and Porter (2015). The imitation memories involved accounts of emotional or criminal events from the participants' adolescence, the events allegedly happened between the ages of 11 and xiv, and those recalling them were on average 20 years onetime. All videos included were also classified as false memories in the Shaw and Porter data re-analysis by Wade et al. (2018). For a word of this coding disagreement see Shaw (2018).
Four criteria were used to select these eight participants from the threescore who took role in the original Shaw and Porter (2015) study. (i) The participants recalled a diverse set up of false memories, including complex emotional and criminal events occurring during adolescence. (2) The true and fake memories told by the participant were of a similar length, as to minimize length as a confound. (3) Half of participants were selected to be female and half male, to account for potential gender furnishings. (4) The nature of the false memories for the men and women was selected to exist comparable.
Each participant in the nowadays studies saw the aforementioned person recalling a true and a false memory. This was done because there are individual differences in how individuals remember accounts. Had videos from dissimilar individuals been used (e.thou., showing a man in i video and a woman in the other), it is probable that the participants would have been distracted by differences between who was recalling the account, rather than focusing on what they were recalling and whether the accounts were true or false. See Table 1 for a brief description of the nature of each video set used.
Table 1. Content of false retentiveness and true memory videos used for both studies.
Procedure
Study ane
Ethical clearance was granted by the University of British Columbia Okanagan inquiry ethics board (reference: H12-03340). Participants scheduled an date using the academy participant recruitment tool to participate in a lab-based study. This system enabled automatic exclusion of participants who had been part of the related, previous, false retentivity written report that was conducted on the same campus (Shaw and Porter, 2015). Once in the lab, participants were given a consent form, and all written report procedures were explained to them.
Side by side, participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions – to watch a false retentiveness that was criminal or one that was emotional. In each condition, participants watched a video of an individual recalling a false memory and video of the aforementioned individual recalling a true memory. Videos were counterbalanced.
Immediately before each video was viewed, all participants were told;
"All, some, or none of the videos you lot are about to sentry involve memories of existent accounts. Your task is to identify after each video whether you call back the account described actually happened or not. Consider each video carefully, and make note of any cues you lot are using to brand your conclusion. These cues can involve the content of the accounts provided, verbal or behavioral cues, or any other cues you recall are relevant."
This instruction was crafted with generalisability in mind. It is rare that individuals are asked outside of a research setting whether an business relationship is a false memory, merely information technology is common to inquire whether someone thinks a described result actually happened. It is possible that some participants took this didactics to hateful that they should evaluate whether the private is lying – if so so the aforementioned individuals would probable also do this when faced with a similar job outside the lab. This is too true for legal settings. If an eyewitness or defendant describes an upshot, the key question by police force or lawyers is usually "did this happen" rather than "is this a simulated retentivity."
Participants in report i were asked at the showtime of the first video if they had seen the individuals depicted in the videos before, every bit those in the videos were students on the same campus. If they said yes, participants were randomly given a new set of videos (this was not recorded by the research assistants, but anecdotally it was only necessary once).
Participants spent almost 10 min watching video ane, then were asked questions almost video 1, then spent about 10 min watching video 2, and were asked questions about video 2. After each video, participants were asked to requite an accented judgment regarding whether the video they just watched actually happened. Participants were then asked to select all that applied from a list of cues that they may have used to make their decision, synthesized from cues often cited every bit existence related to identifying faux memories and deception. Although it might exist clear looking at the list of items that these were based partly on the charade detection literature, this was unlikely to be noticed by lay participants equally the items were wide. Participants were also asked to rate how confident they were in each determination, by selecting an integer betwixt 0 (not confident) and 100 (entirely confident).
Later on viewing both of the videos participants read "One of the videos you lot watched involved a real retentivity and i of the videos involved a faux memory." And they were asked which i they thought was false. The participants were not able to review the videos a 2nd time to aid in their determination, and the participants were asked to identify the cues that they used to brand this comparative decision, and their confidence in it. Although this is not an ecologically valid situation, as individuals almost never accept enough ground truth for memories to know that one of two memories is faux, this was done to see whether the ability to compare two memories would brand information technology easier to identify a false memory. Finally, participants were asked to consummate a demographics questionnaire and debriefed.
Study two
The method for written report ii was almost identical to study 1. The but methodological modification was the atmospheric condition to which participants could be assigned. Participants were randomly assigned to one of iii atmospheric condition. In condition one (acoustic), participants watched a video with sound randomly selected from one of the eight sets shown in Table ane. This condition served every bit a replication of written report one. In status two (audio only), participants were asked to listen to i of the eight sets of videos, merely they could only hear the audio recordings from the videos with no movie. In condition three (video only), participants were asked to watch i of the eight sets of videos, merely could merely see the recording of the videos with no sound.
Ethical clearance for study 2 was granted past the University of Bedfordshire enquiry ethics lath (reference: "Differentiating between true and false emotional memories"). Two inquiry assistants ran all participants in a lab space on the University of Bedfordshire campus.
Results
Information were analyzed using the open source software JASP Squad (2019). All Bayes Factors were interpreted as described by Jarosz and Wiley (2014) (and originally suggested past Raftery, 1995) using the recommended labels: weak (inverse Bayes factor: i–3), positive (three–20), stiff (20–150), or very strong show (>150). All data are available in Supplementary Material.
False Memories
Participants classified 57.26% of false retentivity accounts correctly in report 1, and 43.90% in written report 2. A Bayesian multinomial exam with expected proportions was conducted for each study separately. Evidence for both was in favor of the nothing hypothesis that participants score no different from chance when classifying fake memories: study 1 provided weak support for this (BF01 = two.44), and report 2 provided positive back up for this (BF01 = 3.99). Tabular array 2 displays the percentage of participants for each status for both studies who classified the retention videos correctly and incorrectly.
Table two. Participant classification accuracy for true memories and imitation memories.
False Memories of Crime
Criminal false memories were classified correctly by 55.00% of participants in written report i, and 43.59% in report 2. A Bayesian multinomial test with expected proportions was conducted for each study separately. Evidence from both studies was in favor of the nix hypothesis that participants scored no better than risk at accurately classifying simulated memories of crime: study 1 provided weak support for this (BF01 = ii.12), and study two provided positive support for this (BF01 = three.71).
Media Type
In study 2 the type of media participants engaged with varied. Participants were most accurate when they saw videos with audio, with 53.thirteen% correctly classifying fake memories, and worst (32.14%) when they were given only audio. A binomial logistic regression was conducted and no significant clan between media type and accuracy for absolute memory judgments was found (χ2 = 1.08, p = 0.298, specificity = 73.9%, sensitivity = 27.8%).
Comparative Judgments
Later both videos were rated (absolute judgments), participants were asked to judge which one of the two was simulated (comparative judgment). Two Bayesian multinomial tests with expected proportions were conducted, separately for report 1 and report 2. Testify for both studies was strongly in favor of the hypothesis that participants were classifying memories different from hazard. Yet, the direction of the divergence was opposite. In study 1, 64.52% of participants correctly comparatively identified the false retention (BF10 = 21.49), while in study 2 just 31.71% did and so (BF10 = 35.14).
Confidence
Confidence for both studies was rated past participants as an integer between 0 and 100, and accuracy was binary (right/wrong). 2 binomial logistic regressions were completed, ane for each report. Results point a significant association betwixt confidence and accuracy across all decisions (combining decisions for video one, video two, and the comparative judgment) for study one (χ2 = 9.58, p = 0.002, specificity = 15.8%, sensitivity = 92.9%), but not for study 2 (χ2 = 3.76, p = 0.056, specificity = 69.7%, sensitivity = 41.2%).
Cues
Participants could indicate whether they relied on specific cues when judging the memories. Effigy one shows the breakdown of cues participants indicated they relied on when classifying false memories for study 1 and study 2, broken down by whether the participants accurately classified them as false, or inaccurately classified them equally true. The largest departure for written report one was for verbal cues, so a chi-squared test was conducted to examine this human relationship and a significant but weak positive relationship was plant, x ii(one, due north = 124) = 6.86, p = 0.009, Φ = 0.235, just the same human relationship was not found for study 2, ten 2(1, north = 82) = 0.114, p = 0.735, Φ = 0.037. No cues were consistently related to accurateness.
Effigy 1. Cues participants indicated they used when deciding how to classify false memories for both studies. This table includes percentages of the people who chose each cue taking into account (omitting) those who had no access to those cues. For instance, omitting audio-only participants from the calculation for the percentage of "tone of voice" cue.
Order Effects
A Bayesian binomial test with expected proportions tested against 0.5 was conducted for each study. For report, i evidence was in favor of the nothing hypothesis that participants did non have a response bias for either video ane (weak support, BF01 = 1.28) or video 2 (positive support, BF01 = iv.07). The same was truthful for study ii, where both video 1 and 2 had the verbal same outcome (positive support, BF01 = v.87).
Discussion
This enquiry provides evidence that fake memories look real. Participants were no amend than adventure at identifying rich emotional fake memories, and no amend than risk at identifying rich false memories of committing crime. These results are in line with previous research (Campbell and Porter, 2002), and back up the sentiment that false memories experience existent, so they should look real (Bernstein and Loftus, 2009). The nowadays research adds to the literature in two ways; information technology was the beginning to investigate observer accuracy for (i) rich imitation memories of crime, and (ii) rich simulated memories of adolescent events (well-nigh rich imitation memories implanted past researchers are of early childhood events).
Even when participants knew that one of the memories was false and the other true, they were unable to reliably tell the divergence. While in report 1 comparative judgments were more authentic than chance, in written report 2 they were less accurate than take a chance. This suggests that perhaps there is no real difference betwixt absolute and comparative judgments, but future enquiry is needed to analyze this.
Whether participants were hearing, seeing, or hearing and seeing the accounts, participants did not score significantly better or worse than take chances. Yet, the design of results suggests that it is possible that audio-just fake retention accounts would exist constitute to be at highest adventure of beingness misclassified as true memories. This would benefit from further exam with a larger sample as there are some situations, particularly in legal contexts, where an sound recording may be the only available evidence. If people are significantly more likely to judge false memories as true in such contexts this could present a take a chance.
Did participants who correctly classified memories as imitation rely on any detail cues to do then? Previous research on simulated memory nomenclature showed that accurate judges reported using more cues overall, and more non-verbal cues, than inaccurate judges (Campbell and Porter, 2002). This was not found in the nowadays research. In all conditions, across both studies, self-reported cues used to make the retention judgments showed no informative patterns. This may help to explain the finding that participants were no better than gamble at identifying false memories – because the cues they relied on were either uninformative, counter-productive, or both. This is consequent with related enquiry on deception detection, which shows that individuals often rely on misconceptions and ineffective cues when deciding whether an business relationship is true or false (Levine, 2018).
A possible limitation is that the studies were conducted betwixt 2013 and 2015, so replication using a contemporaneous sample would be helpful every bit sensation about the existence of imitation memories may have further permeated social consciousness. That being said, there is no prove that participants who know more about false memories can meliorate identify a memory as simulated simply by looking at an account, and in that location is some evidence that exposure to educational material on faux memories tin impair judgment (Campbell and Porter, 2002). Future studies could as well consider looking at the power to identify faux memories with more than diverse, and not-student, populations.
The results presented here take direct implications for police and legal contexts. In improver to the risk of misidentifying false memories equally true, the results presented hither show the take chances of misidentifying true memories as simulated – participants were no amend than chance at correctly classifying truthful memories. In legal contexts, if the issue is raised that a particular witness is mistaken, this suggests that people may quite readily accept that a true memory is faux, or that a fake retentivity is truthful. Integrating this insight into legal documents, skilful reports, and training for police and other investigators would be useful. Such understanding would help individuals be skeptical about their ain assumption as to whether a item memory is true or false, and assist to contextualize memory prove when presented to judges, juries, and investigators. Overall, this research is in line with findings by Bernstein and Loftus (2009), and the answer to the question: "Do simulated memories look real?" continues to be "yes."
Data Availability Statement
All datasets generated for this report are included in the article/Supplementary Fabric.
Ethics Statement
The studies involving human participants were reviewed and canonical by Study 1: Academy of British Columbia Okanagan research ethics board (reference: H12-03340), and Study 2: University of Bedfordshire research ethics lath (reference: "Differentiating between true and false emotional memories"). The participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.
Author Contributions
The writer confirms beingness the sole contributor of this piece of work and has approved it for publication.
Conflict of Involvement
The author declares that the inquiry was conducted in the absence of whatsoever commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my research assistants for their support with these studies: Skyler Rabbit, Medan Udala, Kimberly Crosby, and Lauren Currie at the University of British Columbia, and Calum Jones and Chloe Chaplin at the University of Bedfordshire. I would also similar to thank Dr. Stephen Porter for input into the blueprint of study 1 in 2014.
Supplementary Material
The Supplementary Fabric for this article can be institute online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00650/full#supplementary-fabric
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Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00650/full
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