The Difference Between True and False Memories In Contexts

OU Yang-MengHun; GUO Feng-Bei; WEI Lian-Hua

PDF(583 KB)

Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2013, Vol. 36 ›› Issue (3) : 600-605.

The Difference Between True and False Memories In Contexts

Author information +

History +

Abstract

The current study investigated the cognitive and neural electrophysiological processes of true as well as the false memories in story contexts. The results from studies of human memory suggested that recognition memory performance reflected two distinct memory processes: familiarity and recollection. Familiarity was to assess the overall similarity between test items and all study items during 300-500ms.FN400 ERP was related to familiarity. Recollection involved the retrieval of special details of the study items during 400-800ms.LPC was related to recollection. Moreover, an additional old/new ERP (800-1100ms) tended to be most prominent over frontal scalp sites, which was considered to be related to post-retrieval processing, such as evaluation of the products of retrieval for source and specific item features. This study chose four story contexts as the material and adopted the learning and testing experimental paradigm. In the studying phase, participants were asked to remember story context which appeared on the computer screen. Then, the participants were required to do an old/new recognition test. There were three types of target words during the testing stage including old words, critical words and new words. Critical words were new and highly associated with the story contexts, in addition new words were unassociated with the contexts. Event-related potential（ERPs）and RT were measured when 22 healthy right-handed undergraduates did an old/new recognition test. None of them had history of mental illness or brain disease. After the experiment, we gave certain degree of compensation to subjects. Two subjects were rejected because of the lack of the number of artifact-free trials. The instrument for the statistical analysis used in the experiment is SPSS15.0. The results showed that（1）The critical items produced high rate of false memory. Moreover, false recognition demanded more RT than true recognition.（2）The FN400 which reflects familiarity-based process revealed no significant differences between true and false recognition, but there were more negative than Correct-Rejection recognition.（3）During the recollection-based process（400-800ms）,the amplitude of LPC elicited by false recognition and true recognition was not different, while there were more positive than Correct-Rejection recognition. （4）During the post-retrieval process（800-1110ms）,the difference among the ERPs amplitude elicited by recognition about three target words got remarkably significant difference. The amplitude of LSW elicited by false recognition was greater than true recognition and Correct-Rejection recognition. In conclusion, the results demonstrated that true and false memories had showed the same information processing models in story contextual cuing effect during recollection-based process and familiarity-based process. However the information processing models changed during the post-retrieval process: false memory needed much more information process than that of true memory for retrieval and comparing, so it took longer time to recognize. This study provided a new evidence for the Source – Monitoring Framework.

Key words

False Memory / Story Contexts / FN400 / LPC / LSW

Cite this article

EndNote

Ris (Procite)

Bibtex

Download Citations

The Difference Between True and False Memories In Contexts[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2013, 36(3): 600-605

References

黄贤军,张钦,丁锦红,郭春彦. (2011) .不同延迟条件下语音词的重复效应.心理学报,43(6),599-607.
沈汪兵,刘昌,张小将,陈亚林. (2011) .三字字谜顿悟的时间进程和半球效应:一项ERP研究.心理学报,43(3), 229-240.
张积家, 董昌锋. (2006). 范畴变量对虚假记忆的影响. 心理学报, 38(3) ,324-332.
Allan,K., &Rugg,M.D.(1998). Neural correlates of cued recall with and without retrieval of source memory. NeuroReport ,9, 3463–3466.
Bentin, S., Moscovitch,M., &Heth,I. (1992). Memory with and without awareness: performance and electrophysiological evidence of savings. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition,18,1270–1283.
Craik,F.I.M.,&Tulving, E.(1975).Depth of processing and the retention of words in episodic memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology:General ,104, 268–294.
Curran, T.(1999). The electrophysiology of incidental and intentional retrieval: ERP old /new effects in lexical decision and recognition Memory.Neuropsychologia,37, 771–785.
Curran, T.(2004). Effects of attention and confidence on the hypothesized ERP correlates of recollection and familiarity. Neuropsychologia,42, 1088–1106.
Curran,T., &Cleary, A.M. (2003).Using ERPs to dissociate recollection from familiarity in picture recognition. Cognitive Brain Research 15 ,191–205.
Curran, T., &Friedman, W.J.（2004）. ERP old/new effects at different retention intervals in recency discrimination tasks. Brain Res. Cogn. Brain Res,18, 107–120.
Curran, T., & James,W. (2001). A neural basis for expert object recognition. Psychological Science, 12 (1),43–47.
Curran, T., Schacter, D.L., Johnson, M.K., &Spinks, R.（2001）.Brain potentials reflect behavioral differences in true and false recognition. J. Cogn. Neurosci, 13, 201–216.
David, A. W., Daniel, L. S., Melissa, L., Mandu, S., Phillip, J. H., Kirk, R. D., &Andrew, E. B.（2006）. ERP correlates of recognition memory: Effects of retention interval and false alarms. Brain Research,1096,148–162.
Daniel, M. B., &Loftus,E. F. (2009). How to tell if a memory is true or false. Perspectives on Psychological Science ,4,370–374.
Daniel, L. S., Eric, R., Curran,T., Lang, S. Y., Dan,B., McDermott, K. B., &Roediger, H. L. (1996). Neuroanatomical correlates of Veridical and illusory recognition memory:Evidence from positron emission tomography. Neuron, 17,267–274.
Deese, J. (1959). On the prediction of occurrence of certain verbal intrusions in free recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 58, 17–22.
Donaldson, D.I., &Rugg, M.D.（1998）. Recognition memory for new associations: electrophysiological evidence for the role of recollection. Neuropsychologia ,36, 377–395.
Duzel, E., Yonelinas, A.P., Mangun, G.R., Heinze, H., &Tulving, E.（1997）. Event-related potential correlates of two states of conscious awareness in memory. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A.,94, 5973–5978.
Finnigan, S., Humphreys, M.S., Dennis, S., &Geffen, G.（2002）. ERP’old/new’ effects: memory strength and decisional factor(s). Neuropsychiologia ,40, 2288–2304.
Friedman,D., &Johnson,R. (2000) .Event-related potential(ERP) studies of memory encoding and retrieval: A selective review. Microscopy Research and Technique,51,6–28.
Goldmann, R.E., Sullivan, A., Droller, D.B.J., Rugg, M.D., Curran, T.,Holcomb, P.J., Schacter, D.L., Daffner, K.R., &Budson, A.E.（2003）.Late frontal brain potentials distinguish true and false recognition. NeuroReport ,14, 1717–1720.
Henson, R. N. A., Rugg, M. D., Shallice, T., Josephs, O., & Dolan, R. J. (1999). Recollection and familiarity in recognition memory: An event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging study. The Journal of NeuroNeuroscience, 19 (10) ,3962–3972.
Jacoby, L.L., & Whitehouse, K.(1989). An illusion of memory: false recognition influenced by unconscious perception. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General,118, 126–135.
Johnson, M. K. , Hashtroudi, S., &Lindsay,D. S. (1993) .Source monitoring. Psychological Bulletin,114, 3–28.
Johnson, M. K., & Kim, J. K. (1985) .Recognition of pictures by alcoholic Korsakoff patients. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 23(6) ,456–458.
Kutas,M., &Federmeier,K.D.（2000）. Electrophysiology reveals semantic memory use in language comprehension. Trends in Cognition Sciences, 4(2),463-470.
Mark, L.H., &Wilkinson, S.(2011). Using story contexts to bias children’s true and false memories. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. 108 , 77–95.
Nordhielm, C.(2002) . The influence of level of processing on advertising repetition effects. Journal of Consumer Research,29,371–382.
Okado, Y., & Stark, C.(2003). Neural processing associated with true and false memory retrieval. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 3(4) ,323-334.
Paula, C., & Angel, F.(2010). Age differences in the rejection of false memories: The effects of giving warning instructions and slowing the presentation rate. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology,105, 81–97.
Rubin, S., Van,P.C., Glisky, E., &Newberg, W.（1999）.Memory conjunction errors in younger and older adults: event-related potential and neuropsychological data. Cognitive Neuropsychology , 16,459–88.
Rugg, M.D., Otten, L.J., &Henson, R.N.(2002) .The neural basis of episodic memory: evidence from functional neuroimaging. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. London, Ser,B ,357, 1097–1110.
Roediger, H. L., &McDermott, K. B. (1995) .Creating false memories: Remembering words not presented on lists. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 21, 803–814.
Schacter, D.L., Alpert, N.M., Savage, C.R., Rauch,S.L., &Albert, M.S.(1996). Conscious recollection and the human hippocampal formation: evidence from positron emission tomography. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA,93,321–325.
Underwood , B. J.(1965) .False recognition produced by implicit verbal responses. Journal of Experimental Psychology,70,122–129.