Relationship between Trait Mindfulness and False Memory: A Bilingual Deese-Roediger-McDermott Paradigm

Abstract

Mindfulness-based interventions are known to increase false memory. However, high trait mindfulness is associated with an external encoding style and field independence, which in turn are associated with low false memory. The present study used a bilingual context to disentangle these contrasting findings. Sixty ChineseEnglish bilinguals completed a Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) false recognition task and were evaluated using the Mindfulness Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS). Results showed negative and positive correlations between trait mindfulness and false recognition in Chinese-Chinese and Chinese-English conditions, respectively. The polar directions of the observed correlations suggest that trait mindfulness is associated with direct and analytical perception of objects and with cognitive flexibility in activating semantic information. The former improves source monitoring, whereas the latter increases the likelihood of generating false memories in the DRM paradigm.

Mindfulness and false memories: state and dispositional mindfulness does not increase false memories for naturalistic scenes presented in a virtual environment

“…However, more recent conceptualizations consider mindfulness as a multidimensional construct (Baer et al, 2006). In the context of studied items possessing higher distinctiveness, we expect to observe a positive correlation between dispositional mindfulness and memory sensitivity, but a negative correlation with response bias, as suggested by Yeh and Lu (2017) observations.…”

“…To our knowledge, only one study investigated the impact of dispositional mindfulness on false memory in the DRM context (Yeh & Lu, 2017 ). In this study, a set of Chinese and English words were used in the encoding and the retrieval phase, either in congruent (e.g., English at encoding and retrieval) or incongruent (e.g., Chinese at encoding and English at retrieval) conditions.…”

Association of trait mindfulness with the false recognition of emotional words in bilinguals

“…In the cross-language condition, only a marginal difference was observed between the false recognition of positive and negative CLs, suggesting a trend of valence effect caused by the mix of two languages; moreover, similar to the results in English condition, the false recognition of CLs was not associated with trait mindfulness. Furthermore, we compared the results in the present study with those of another previous study (Yeh & Lu, 2017); a similarity was observed in that both assessed the relationship between trait mindfulness and DRM false memory for Chinese-English bilinguals. However, the negative correlation of trait mindfulness with false memory under within-language conditions and positive correlation with false memory in cross-language conditions were results that were not replicated in the present study.…”

“…One possible reason for this discrepancy is the difference between these two studies regarding source-monitoring requirements at retrieval. In a study conducted by Yeh and Lu (2017), participants were asked to form "old" decisions based on language-specific measurements (i.e., being instructed to only respond "yes" if a word appeared in the same language); therefore, the verbatim trace was essential for establishing a distinction between old and new words. In this study, however, language-specific recognition was encouraged in participants, but if they could not retrieve the vivid verbatim trace then they were permitted to select one option from the two "old" decisions (i.e., respond "1" if a test word was presented in the same language in the study or "2" if a test word was presented in a different language in the study).…”

“…Additionally, Yeh and Lu (2017) discovered that a high demand for source monitoring at retrieval alters the correlation between mindfulness and false memory. In their study, the false memory of bilinguals was measured through language-specific inquiry (i.e., responding "old" only when a test word was presented in the same language during study); trait mindfulness was revealed to be negatively associated with false memory under within-language conditions and positively associated under cross-language conditions, suggesting that high trait mindfulness may enhance the engagement of verbatim traces to reduce false memory, if even only when the study and test words share the same language.…”