Did we see someone shake hands with a fire hydrant?: Collaborative recall affects false recollections from a campus walk

Abstract

An experimenter presented familiar and bizarre action statements (e.g., "Rest on the fire hydrant" vs. "Shake hands with the fire hydrant") to a participant and confederate during a campus walk. They watched the experimenter perform half the actions and imagined the experimenter performing the other half. One day later, they took a second walk where actions were only imagined. Some actions from the first walk were repeated, and new actions were added. Two weeks later, the participant and confederate collaboratively recalled whether specific actions were presented in the first walk and, if so, whether they were imagined or performed. For different actions, the confederate was accurate, was inaccurate, or provided no information. When later tested individually, participants demonstrated imagination inflation by falsely remembering familiar and bizarre actions as performed on the first walk that were merely imagined on the second. These memory errors were greatly reduced if the confederate was accurate during collaborative recall.

The dilemma of trauma-focused therapy: effects of imagery rescripting on voluntary memory

“…Afterwards participants were asked to rate how likely the event has occurred. Results show that imagery can induce and increase subjective confidence that imagined events have actually taken place (Goff & Roediger, 1998 ; Nash et al, 2009 ; Seamon et al, 2009 ; Thomas & Loftus, 2002 ). Even when participants were warned about the interfering effects of imagination in advance, imagery still increased the false confidence that certain actions had been performed (Nash et al, 2009 ).…”

“…When comparing imagery-based psychological interventions, such as ImRs, with the experimental manipulations used in the basic memory studies described above (Goff & Roediger, 1998 ; Nash et al, 2009 ; Seamon et al, 2009 ; Thomas & Loftus, 2002 ), it becomes clear that both indeed include strategies to actively modify memory representations. However, a number of differences are also noteworthy.…”