Dvelopmental Reversals In False Memory: Effects Of Emotional Valence

The developmental reversal in false memory refers to the phenomenon that false memory increases with age under certain circumstances.Although this effect has been verified by many studies,the researchers are more interested if the effect still exists as for emotional materials.At present,studies about the impact of emotion valence on the developmental reversal in false memory have not gotten consistent results yet.Moreover,the impact of emotion on cognitive mechanism behind the false memory of children of different ages still needs further study.Aiming at the above problems,this study will use two experiments to explore the impact of emotion valence on the developmental reversal in false memory and the cognitive mechanism behind it.In order to make a direct comparison with previous studies,the experimental material cited the negative-emotional lists and Neutral lists of DRM lists.Experiment 1 uses the DRM paradigm,Using this paradigm,participants are presented with word lists that consist of close semantic associates of a non-presented critical lure.For example,a list might consist of the words bed,dream,nap,tired,night,waking,resting,which are all related to the non-presented word sleep.Studies have shown that participants have the tendency to falsely recall and recognize the critical lures during subsequent memory tests.we choose children of 7-8 years,11-12 years old and young adults.The results showed that tthe main effect of age and valance were all significant,and the interaction between age and valance was not significant.In order to explore the cognitive processing mechanism behind the false memory of children of different ages,Experiment 2 employed a simplified conjoint recognition paradigm,the most difference between the two paradigms lies in :if the response is”No”,there will be another question: “is it semantically relevant to the words that have been learned? The paradigm combined with a statistical method of multinomial processing tree model and estimate the parameter.The results showed that tthe main effect of age and valance were all significant,and the interaction between age and valance was significant.Moreover,for every age group of children,the impact of emotion on the cognitive mechanism of false memory is different.The study concluded that:First,In the DRM paradigm,negative false memory also increases with age,following the developmental reversal tendency in false memory.Second,in the simplified conjoint recognition paradigm,the tendency that negative false memory increases with age only exists among 7-8 and 11-12 year-old children,while the increasing tendency disappears among 11-12 year-old children and 18-20 year-old young adults.For children of different age,the cognitive mechanism of emotional false memory is different.For children aged 7-8,negative false memory is more than neutral false memory because negative words lead to a stronger gist memory.While for children aged 11-12,it is the result of response bias that negative false memory is more than neutral false memory.For young adults aged 18-20,there is a tendency that negative false memory is less than neutral false memory,which is hardly impact by essential memory,but only because of response bias.