The Influence Of The Television Advisements On The False Memories Of Competing Brands

The study of false memories is state of the art in the field of memory research, and meanwhile its application in real daily lives also expands the study of memory. In the laboratory the Deese-Roediger-McDermott(DRM) paradigm has been used to stimulate false memories effectively, not only for introductory words and images, but also for brand names. Therefore, in the present study, two experiments following the classic DRM paradigm were conducted, to examine whether television advisements could stimulate false memories for competing brands' names, and to explore their contributing factors.Experiment 1 used the DRM paradigm to examine the effects of the television advisements with different presenting ways on the participants, who were tested by the R(emember)/K(now)/G(uess) recognition tests. The experiment showed the following results. The recognition rate of the visual-audial group in the recall and the maze tests was significantly higher than that of the visual group. Both the visual-audial group and the visual group's recognition rates were higher in the maze tests than those in the recall tests. The visual-audial group's error rate was higher in the recall tests than in the maze tests, whereas there was no significant difference between the recall tests and the maze tests done by the visual group. In the maze tests, the error rate of the visual group was higher than the visual-audial group, while in the recall tests, there was no significant difference between the error rates of the both groups. Experiment 1 demonstrated that participants had false memories when watching television advisements by the competing brands. However, there are various differences between the laboratory environment and the real-life situation, and thus Experiment 2 was designed to imitate the real-life situation.Experiment 2 also used the DRM paradigm to test the effects of the advisements with different presenting ways on participants in different time intervals. The experiment showed the following results. The presenting ways had no significant effect on the recognition rates and the error rates of both group in Time 1(immediately) and Time 2(after a week). The recognition rates of both the manipulated-order group and the randomized-order group in Time 1(immediately) were significantly higher than in Time 2(after a week). The error rates of the both group in Time 2(after a week) were higher than in Time 1(immediately), and the error rates increased significantly as the time extended. After a week, the error rates become higher than the recognition rates. This indicated that television advisements would promote the competing brands unknowingly, and that the false memories would increase gradually.