False memories: A kind of confabulation in non-clinical subjects

Garry, Maryanne; Loftus, Lauren French amp; [], Elizabeth

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199208913.003.02

Cited by 13 publications

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“…The majority of previous research on confabulation has described it as a clinical spectrum disorder (Fotopoulou, Conway, & Solms, 2007; Hirstein, 2009). Confabulation has also been implicated in (false) memory formation (Bernstein, Laney, Morris, & Loftus, 2005; Loftus & Zanni, 1975), and there are indications that it might be prevalent in typical peoples’ everyday lives (French, Garry, & Loftus, 2009). This possibility is strengthened by the lack of semantic and emotional differences found in CBP contrast analysis between the nonmanipulated and manipulated verbal reports (for detailed analyses of such reports, see Johansson et al, 2005, 2006 and Hall et al, 2012).…”

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False beliefs and confabulation can lead to lasting changes in political attitudes.

Strandberg

Sivén

Häll

et al. 2018

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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In times of increasing polarization and political acrimony, fueled by distrust of government and media disinformation, it is ever more important to understand the cognitive mechanisms behind political attitude change. In two experiments, we present evidence that false beliefs about one's own prior attitudes and confabulatory reasoning can lead to lasting changes in political attitudes. In Experiment 1 (N = 140), participants stated their opinions about salient political issues, and using the Choice Blindness Paradigm we covertly altered some of their responses to indicate an opposite position. In the first condition, we asked the participants to immediately verify the manipulated responses, and in the second, we also asked them to provide underlying arguments behind their attitudes. Only half of the manipulations were corrected by the participants. To measure lasting attitude change, we asked the participants to rate the same issues again later in the experiment, as well as one week after the first session. Participants in both conditions exhibited lasting shifts in attitudes, but the effect was considerably larger in the group that confabulated supporting arguments. We fully replicated these findings in Experiment 2 (N = 232). In addition, we found that participants' analytical skill correlated with their correction of the manipulation, whereas political involvement did not. This study contributes to the understanding of how confabulatory reasoning and self-perceptive processes can interact in lasting attitude change. It also highlights how political expressions can be both stable in the context of everyday life, yet flexible when argumentative processes are engaged. (PsycINFO Database Record

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confidence: 99%

False beliefs and confabulation can lead to lasting changes in political attitudes.

Strandberg

Sivén

Häll

et al. 2018

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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“…A distinction was made between details that were inaccurate, and those that were confabulated. Confabulated details were those that participants fabricated (i.e., they reported something that never actually occurred; consistent with French, Garry, and Loftus [2009] and ). For example, if a participant reported that the subject was holding scissors when there is, in actuality, no scissors present, it counted as a confabulated detail.…”

Section: Analyses Examining Overall Recallsupporting

confidence: 59%

Examining the Impact of Body Worn Cameras on Police Officer Memory Following a Critical Incident

Blaskovits¹

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Numerous high-profile events have contributed to an increase in public scrutiny of police performance; this has resulted in many agencies considering the use of body worn cameras (BWCs). However, some research suggests that having access to saved information can have a negative effect on memory, particularly when an individual experiences stress during the recorded event. Therefore, the aim of the current research was to: (1) examine how BWCs impact the quality of an officer's encoding and retrieval of event details, (2) determine the benefits and challenges associated with officers viewing BWC footage when writing their reports, and (3) attain a better understanding of the efficacy of cognitive interviewing (CI) as a means to enhance memory retrieval of use-of-force events.More specifically, Study 1 examined the recall of officers who were aware that they could "offload" memory encoding tasks to their BWC. Interestingly, regardless of whether officers believed they could rely on a camera, or not, a similar amount of information was recalled. In Study 2, differences between officers who provided a statement before watching their BWC footage were compared to officers shown their footage first. The findings indicated that officers allowed to preview their footage before reporting included more details about the subject in their statement. Moreover, higher levels of stress were associated with an increase in the amount of moderate and major errors made by officers who were barred from seeing their footage. Lastly, the goal of Study 3 was to investigate the efficacy of the CI as a means to improve recall. The comparison found that officers recalled more information and confabulated less information if they completed a CI.Broadly speaking, the current research answers important questions about the impact of BWCs on officer's ability to recall use-of-force events; thereby adding to the cognitive BODY WORN CAMERAS AND MEMORY iii psychological literature, as well as the legal field. The research may also have an applied impact namely by: (1) assisting police agencies in developing more informed policies around BWCs, and (2) by educating police officers and juries about the impact of BWCs on memory to ensure the critical appraisal of this controversial technology.

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“…In this research, we investigated the effect of exposure to false information on later memory reports; the use of false information and the focus on memory errors was a deliberate attempt to maintain experimental control of the processes under investigation. However, the processes underlying memory conformity are likely to be adaptive and to produce outcomes that are typically beneficial by enabling people to absorb extra information from different sources, to extend their knowledge, and to create a shared understanding with other people (French, Garry, & Loftus, 2009;French et al, 2008French et al, , 2011Hardin & Higgins, 1996;Jaeger, Lauris, Selmeczy, & Dobbins, 2011;Meade & Roediger, 2002). Speaking order may play a role in this process by providing an accessible cue that speaks to the likely accuracy of shared information; as a result, people may be better able to monitor shared information, rejecting information when it is unlikely to be accurate and relying on the information when it is likely to be accurate.…”

Section: Processes Underlying Memory Conformitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Speaking order predicts memory conformity after accounting for exposure to misinformation

2013

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When people discuss their experiences, they can later report seeing things that they never saw, simply because they heard about those things in the discussion. One factor that may contribute to this effect is the order in which people speak; some research has investigated this issue, but it remains unclear whether a relationship exists between memory conformity and speaking order. We explored this question using data from five previous memory conformity experiments. The results provide evidence of an association between speaking order and memory conformity, such that people who spoke first in a discussion were misled less often than people who did not. These results build on previous research by demonstrating that the association could not have been caused by differences in opportunities to be misled. We could not draw conclusions about causality from the exploratory analyses, but ruled out several simple explanations of the results, and considered a variety of social and cognitive mechanisms that might account for the association. Further investigation will be required to tease apart the possible mechanisms that underlie the relationship between speaking order and memory conformity.

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False memories: A kind of confabulation in non-clinical subjects

Cited by 13 publications

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False beliefs and confabulation can lead to lasting changes in political attitudes.

False beliefs and confabulation can lead to lasting changes in political attitudes.

Examining the Impact of Body Worn Cameras on Police Officer Memory Following a Critical Incident

Speaking order predicts memory conformity after accounting for exposure to misinformation

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