Person and Event Characteristics Affect False Recognitions that Occur in the Absence of Explicit Suggestion

Abstract

Recently, Gerrie, Belcher, and Garry (2006) showed that people systematically falsely recognize parts of an event they have never experienced. Furthermore, this false recognition effect was more likely to occur for certain parts of the event. Gerrie et al.showed subjects a movie of woman making a sandwich with either the most crucial parts removed or the least crucial parts removed. In a later memory test, were more likely to claim they had seen the missing noncrucial parts than the crucial parts. Gerrie et al. explained their results using the Source Monitoring Framework (SMF; Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay,1993). According to the SMF,people use qualitative characteristics of memories to determine their source and to decide whether those memories are real or imagined, true or false, orâ as in the Gerrie et al. caseâ old or new. The overarching goal of this thesis is to examine the role of source monitoring processes in false recognition of missing aspects of events. To achieve this goal, in Chapters l & 2,I review different false memory paradigms and draw on the SMF to account for these false memories. Then, in Chapter 3-6 I present four studies showing that altering people's abilities to monitor the source of their memories changes their susceptibility to false recognition. In Study 1 (Chapter 3), I disrupted the event's coherence to reduce people's ability to identify missing clip, thereby impairing subjects' ability to engage in more effective source monitoring. Study 1a showed that when people watch an event out of its natural order they identify fewer missing crucial clips than when the event was played in its correct order. However, event order did not affect people's ability to identify missing noncrucial clips. Similarly, Study 1b showed that when people watch an event out of order, they are more likely to falsely recognize missing crucial clips than when the event is played in its correct order. Study 2 (Chapter 4) describes the development a new set of materials and replicate Gerrie et al.'s (2006) effects with these new materials. In Study 3 (Chapter 5), I warned subjects against false recognition to examine whether people can improve their source monitoring when recognizing missing aspects of events. In Study 3a, forewarning people about false recognition reduced false recognition more than postwarnings. In Study 3b, the missing clips' importance changed the effectiveness of the warning. More specifically, forewarnings reduced false recognition of noncrucial clips, but postwarnings had less of an effect. However, both forewarnings and postwarnings reduced false recognition of crucial clips at a similar rate. Study 4 (Chapter 6), examines individual differences in source monitoring errors. The higher people's working memory capacity, the less likely they were to falsely recognize missing crucial clips. However, working memory did not affect false recognition of noncrucial clips. Finally, in Chapter 7,I draw some general conclusions about the studies presented here and discuss them in light of other research In particular, I draw parallels between this and other source monitoring research, the event cognition literature and similar memory effects demonstrated in other areas of psychology. I also suggest some possible future directions for research into false recognition of missing aspects of events and possible applications of the results.