A Study Of False Memory On Visually Impaired Adolescent Adopting DRM Paradigm

False memory refers to inaccurate recall or recognition of events that do not occur in the past.Studies on false memory could contribute to the understanding of memory.So far,most studies of false memory focused on sighted population.Several studies which investigated the false memory of visually impaired people focused on adults rather than adolescents,and demonstrated that visually impaired adults seemed to show increased true memory and reduced false memory when engaging in auditory learning.However,little is known about characteristics and psychological mechanisms of false memory among visually impaired adolescents.Deese-Roediger-McDermott(DRM)paradigm is an important paradigm which has been used widely in investigating false memory.DRM paradigm typically includes a study phase in which participants would be asked to memorize associated words(e.g.,bed,tired,awake etc.)and a test phase in which participants would be required to recall or recognize these words.Results showed that critical nonpresented lures(e.g.,sleep)which were associated with learned words tended to be falsely recalled or recognized.Using DRM paradigm in three studies(totally five experiments),the current study aimed to investigate characteristics of false memory among visually impaired adolescents,and the difference of false memory between that of visually impaired and sighted adolescents by adopting both recognition rates and indexes of Signal Detection Theory as dependent variables.Based on prior studies on false memory among visually impaired adults,Study 1(experiment 1)examined the existence of false memory among visually impaired adolescents under the auditory learning context.Both visually impaired and sighted participants were presented with words auditorily and then were asked to recognize these old words from new ones,both of which were auditorily presented.The results revealed false memory among both groups,and visually impaired adolescents may have less false memory than sighted adolescents.Study 2 examined whether false memory among visually impaired adolescents was susceptible to repeated study-test and warning under auditory learning context.Repeated study-test and warning were two key variables to study the encoding and retrieval processes of memory.Study 2 included experiment 2 and experiment 3,both of them were carried out with auditorily presented words.In experiment 2,participants were asked to go through study-test trails twice.The results confirmed the existence of false memory during either initial or repeated study-test trials for both groups.Further analyses indicated that visually impaired participants had significantly lower false memory than that of sighted adolescents,and this effect was not influenced by repeated study-test.Experiment 3 further examined the effect of warning by informing participants before learning that new yet associated words may appear in the recognition tests.Results revealed false memory on both groups in warning condition.Further analyses also showed that visually impaired participants showed significantly lower false memory than that of sighted participants and this effect was not influenced by warning.Study 3 examined whether false memory of visually impaired adolescents was affected by different learning styles,including experiment 4 and experiment 5.Braille reading is an important learning style for visually impaired adolescents due the lack of vision.Study 3 focused on the effect of Braille reading on false memory.In experiment 4,participants were asked to study words by reading(visually impaired:Braille reading;normally sighted:reading the words on computer screen).Compared with auditory learning style,experiment 4 aimed to the different impacts of learning styles on false memory of two groups.Results revealed that false memory on both groups.Further analyses showed significant lower false memory of visually impaired participants than that of sighted participants and this effect was not influenced by auditory/reading learning style.In experiment 5,both groups were asked to learn words through"listening" and "reading" simultaneously(multiple learning style).Results also confirmed false memory on both groups.We further explored the impact of multiple vs single learning style(auditory or reading learning style)on false memory of visually impaired adolescents.The visually impaired adolescents also showed lower false memory than normally sighted participants when taking either auditory or reading learning style as baseline condition and these effects were not affected by the existence of multiple learning style.Additionally,DRM paradigm also provided indexes to test true memory.Results showed ordinary true memory effect both groups in all conditions.Warning could increase the true memory of visually impaired(but not sighted)participants.Compared with auditory learning style,reading learning style increased the true memory of visually impaired(but not sighted)participants.When adopting multiple learning style and compared with auditory learning baseline,increased true memory were found for both groups;when compared with reading learning baseline,the increased true memory were only found for sighted participants.Taken together,both visually impaired and sighted adolescents have false memory.Visually impaired adolescents reported lower false memory than sighted ones and this effect was relatively robust and not influenced by repeated study-test,warning or the change of learning style.True memory of visually impaired adolescents could be improved by warning and the existence of reading learning style;true memory of sighted adolescents could be improved by multiple learning style.