The Generation Of Observation-inflation Effect In Action Memory : The Role Of Action Simulation

Observation-inflation effect is a kind of false memory phenomenon,which means that only observing another’s actions can make people falsely remember that they have performed the action.The discovery of observation-inflation effect has aroused the interest of researchers.They began to explore its mechanism from different theoretical perspectives,but failed to reveal the key to observation-inflation effect.Recently,some researches have explained the appearance of observation-inflation effect from the perspective of action simulation,and they think that action simulation of individuals during action observation is an important condition to influence the observationinflation effect.However,there are few studies in this field,and the conclusions need to be further tested.Further analysis found that there are still defects and deficiencies in previous studies,which can not explain the role of action simulation in the observation-inflation effect,and did not explore how action simulation plays a role in the observation-inflation effect.To solve these problems,three experiments were carried out in the current study,aiming to further explore the role of action simulation in the observation inflation effect and how it works on the basis of previous studies.Experiment 1 made up for the design defects of previous research and added baseline conditions.That is,by manipulating three experimental conditions: only observation with no action,observation with the same action and observation with different action,it is found that impeding action simulation(observation with different action condition)can reduce observationinflation effect,which further verifies that action simulation plays an important role in the observation-inflation effect.In Experiment 2,by manipulating the degree of action simulation,namely,high degree of action simulation condition(observing familiar action)and low degree of action simulation condition(observing unfamiliar action),we found that compared with the high degree of action simulation condition,the observation-inflation effect under the low degree of action simulation condition was significantly reduced,indicating that different degrees of action simulation can affect the magnitude of observation-inflation effect.It also further shows that action simulation plays an important role in the observation-inflation effect.Based on Experiment 1 and Experiment 2,Experiment 3 further discussed how action simulation plays a role in the observation-inflation effect by manipulating the completion of action simulation,that’s complete video and partial video.The results showed that there was no significant difference in the observation-inflation effect between partial video and complete video,indicating that only observing part of the action information,the individual can automatically simulate the observed action,resulting in the observation-inflation effect.Taken together,this study proved the action simulation hypothesis and made it clear that action simulation is the main reason for the observation-inflation effect.On this basis,it’s proved that it is not necessary for an individual to simulate all the action information to observation-inflation effect,but only part of the action information.