Research On The Modality Effect In False Memory

False memory, which is also known as memory illusion, is a kind of psychological phenomenon that someone's memory being deviation from his real experience. Modality effect is a branch research in false memory investigation. When the false remembering is reduced or increased according to the list presentation modality switching from visual to auditory and vice versa, then the modality effect in false memory occurs. There are limited researches about modality effect in false memory with Chinese materials, and these studies yielded inconsistent result with the studies which use English materials. The mechanism underlying the discrepancy is still an uncertainty, and it deserves more researches and further scrutiny on this area.The present study includes two experiments. The author uses within-subjects design in Experiment 1 with seventy-three undergraduates participated in it. Each subject needs to learn lists presented in three ways:visually, auditorily and mix-modality (words were presented visually and auditorily at the same time).At test, all the test items are presented in two ways. Half are presented visually and the other half are presented auditorily. In Experiment 2, both study modality and test modality were by between-subjects, and there are 164 undergraduates participated in it. Unlike Experiment 1,the subjects in Experiment 2 only learn lists presented in one way (visually, auditorily or mix-modality) at study and tested either visually or auditorily.Generally, the results of two experiments indicate that:(1)The modality effect in false memory occurs with Chinese lists under DRM paradigm, yielding an opposite result, which is visual study leading more false memory than auditory study.(2)False memory is reduced following mix-modality study condition, comparing the solo modality study condition. But there are no differences on true memory among three study conditions.(3)Experimental design (within-subjects design or between-subjects design) may play a role in modality effect on false memory.(4)The modality matching effect may occur when the task required subjects to pay more attention on specific modality information. (5)Both encoding phase and retrieval phase affect modality effects on false memory.