Introduction
Several studies demonstrate that people can create false memories about events they witnessed if they are deliberately given wrong information regarding the events (Roediger & McDermott, 1995; Hyman Jr & Pentland, 1996; Hyman & Billings Jr, 1998; Loftus, 2005). It has been demonstrated that informing people that they would be given misleading information often reduces the chances of creating false memories.
DRM false memories occur when people give wrong words that are not presented in a list used in false memory assessments (Blair, Lenton & Hastie, 2002; Zhu, Chen, Loftus, Lin & Dong, 2013). For example, a list of bed, rest, and pillow is related to sleep. When the list is given to some people, they might recall the critical word (sleep) yet it would not be presented in the list.
Hyman, Husband and Billings (1995) investigated whether students would be influenced to create false childhood memories by giving them misleading information. They hypothesised that college students could develop false memories about childhood events if they could be provided with misleading information (Hyman et al., 1995). The study used personal interviews to collect data from the participating students.
Results showed that some students created false memories in both recalling and false memory experiments. It was demonstrated that ages of the participants were not essential in determining results in experimenter-created false event.
In addition, it was found that the students who had discussed childhood events in detail at the beginning of the interviews were more likely to create false memories than those who had not discussed (Hyman et al., 1995).
Hyman and Billings Jr (1998) investigated whether individual variations impacted students in creating false childhood memories. Students were interviewed to assess whether they would give the same information given by their parents. They were requested to recall childhood events in two days which were not consecutive (Hyman & Billings Jr, 1998).
The study found that about 25% of the participants created false childhood memories. Individual abilities in monitoring were essential in defining the differences in creating false memories among participants (Hyman & Billings Jr, 1998). The findings are crucial in the current study because it is known that creation of childhood false memories is based on individual monitoring abilities.
Roediger and McDermott (1995) investigated the patterns of remembering false events and recalling events that never happened. The study used a word list related to sleep. Two experiments were used to study the rates of false recall and false recognition. It was found that 40% of the study participants had false recall while 55% of the participants demonstrated false recognition (Roediger & McDermott, 1995).
Hyman Jr and Pentland (1996) conducted an investigation to determine whether mental imagery would increase the probability of creating false memories and recalling past unremembered true events. The study participants were requested to recall events in comparison with what their parents had given researchers (Hyman Jr & Pentland, 1996).
They were also required to recall a false event created through experiments. The study participants were required to form mental images of the childhood events that they could not describe effectively. The study findings showed that the formation of mental images increased the probability of creating a false event and recovering experiences of previously unremembered true events (Hyman Jr & Pentland, 1996).
The study findings are crucial to the current study because they indicated the implication of forming images in the creation of false memories and remembering previously unrecalled events.
The aim of the current study is to determine whether misinformation (the independent variable) reduces the chances of creating false memories (the dependent variable) in the misinformation effect. The study will also aim to investigate the relationship between DRM false memories (the independent variable) and misinformation (the dependent variable). The proposed study will test the following null hypotheses:
- There is no correlation between misinformation and chances of creating false memories.
- There is no relationship between DRM memories and misinformation.
If the first hypothesis will be supported by the study findings, then it will be concluded that misinformation does not reduce the probability of creating false memories. If the second hypothesis will be accepted, then it will be concluded that DRM memories and misinformation are not correlated.
References
Blair, I. V., Lenton, A. P., & Hastie, R. (2002). The reliability of the DRM paradigm as a measure of individual differences in false memories. Psychonomic bulletin & review, 9(3), 590-596.
Hyman Jr, I. E., & Pentland, J. (1996). The role of mental imagery in the creation of false childhood memories. Journal of Memory and Language, 35(2), 101-117.
Hyman, I. E., & James Billings Jr, F. (1998). Individual differences and the creation of false childhood memories. Memory, 6(1), 1-20.
Hyman, I. E., Husband, T. H., & Billings, F. J. (1995). False memories of childhood experiences. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 9(3), 181-197.
Loftus, E. F. (2005). Planting misinformation in the human mind: A 30-year investigation of the malleability of memory. Learning & Memory, 12(4), 361-366.
Roediger, H. L., & McDermott, K. B. (1995). Creating false memories: Remembering words not presented in lists. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 21(4), 803.
Zhu, B., Chen, C., Loftus, E. F., Lin, C., & Dong, Q. (2013). The relationship between DRM and misinformation false memories. Memory & cognition, 41(1), 1-7.