Study On The Factors Influencing False Memory Caused By Missing Information

Studies have shown that people can falsely remember some parts of an event after being exposed to misleading suggestion about it. However,few researchers have examined whether people falsely remember some parts of an event when there is no such misleading suggestion.In the present study, the author explored that the effects of three factors, delay, warning, and memory load on false memory in 3 experiments by using slide paradigm, which is a paradigm of false memory based event and uses structured events without misleading information. The final purpose of the research is to demonstrate further which factors can reduce the false memory so as to understand false memory deeply.In this study, three experiments were conducted: (1) experiment 1 studied differences of the false memory between crucial present version and crucial absent version under the different delay, which adopted a 2×3×3 mixed factorial design, video versions (crucial present version, crucial absent version) and delay (0 minute, 20 minutes, 1 hour) were between subject design and clip types (old clips, missing clips, control clips) was a within subject design; (2) experiment 2 studied differences of the false memory between crucial present version and crucial absent version under the different warning conditions, which adopted a 2×3×3 mixed factorial design: video versions (crucial present version, crucial absent version) and warning types (no warning, pre-warning, post-warning) were between subject design, clip types (old clips, missing clips, control clips) was a within subject design; (3) experiment 3 studied differences of the false memory between crucial present version and crucial absent version under the different memory load, which adopted 2×2×3 mixed factorial design: video versions (crucial present version, crucial absent version) and memory load (low memory load, high memory load) were between subject design and clip types (old clips, missing clips, control clips) was within subject design.Results of the three experiments indicated that:(1) After short delay (0min, 20min, one hour), false memory or true memory didn't change, but the level of confidence increased with delay.(2) Compared with no warning condition, both pre-warning and post-warning could reduce false memory effect rather than affect true memory, but have no effect on the level of confidence.(3) Memory load did not affect true memory but affect false memory. Under the condition of crucial present, low memory load (two events) could reduce false memory effect compared to high memory load (four events); under the condition of crucial absent, memory load had no influence on false recognition while low memory load (two events) could reduce the level of confidence compared to high memory load (four events).(4) false memory and ture memory were both higher in the crucial present condition than that in the crucial absent condition, but there weren't different effects on the level of confidence between the two conditions.