Effects of visual imagery on false memories in DRM and misinformation paradigms

Abstract

This study is an extension of recent research, which examined the possibility that false memories in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm predict the occurrence of false memories in misinformation paradigm. The purpose was to determine in which extent an imaging instruction reduces false memories in DRM and Misinformation paradigms. A sample of young adults was assigned to the DRM or the misinformation tasks, either in control conditions or in conditions including an imaging instruction. Findings confirm that an imaging instruction decreases false memories in DRM whereas it is not possible to conclude about such a reduction in the misinformation task. Overall, this pilot study suggests that the nature of the stimuli in each paradigm gives rise to quality differences in encoding processes, which in turn have consequences on the monitoring process at retrieval, leading to a weaker misinformation effect than DRM false recognition. In conclusion, while one has argued that the monitoring process is common to both paradigms, false memories in the DRM paradigm would be based on semantic association of words that is, on activation processes in semantic memory, whereas misinformation would rather rely on recollection process in episodic memory. Nevertheless, this hypothesis should be specifically tested in further experiments.

Neurocognitive bases of self-monitoring of inner speech in hallucination prone individuals

“…Individuals with high visual imagery scores probably made visual mental images of the familiar words that were presented, thereby de-activating the brain regions usually recruited for verbal processing. This observation is compatible with studies which used the Deese–Roediger–McDermott paradigm and demonstrated that the instruction to form visual mental images of target words at encoding resulted in fewer false recognitions of non-target words 84 – 86 .…”

The Impact of Enactment and Imagery Encoding on False Memory

“…It is well known that visual-motor imagery and enactment-encoding strategies increase correct memorization performances. In accordance with the distinctiveness heuristic hypothesis (Dodson & Schacter, 2001;Schacter, Israel, & Racine, 1999) explaining the effects of visual imagery encoding on DRM false memories (see Foley, 2012;Robin, Ménétrier, & Beffara-Bret, 2021), we expected that visual-motor imagery and enactment as encoding strategies compared to a control condition (listening to the action lists) should reduce false memories. Indeed, the distinctiveness heuristic hypothesis suggests that reductions in false recollection result from the monitoring decision based on a distinctive detail of the encoding context, which allows participants to decide whether an event has been previously experienced.…”

“…However, the results showed that enactment and visual-motor imagery did not reduce false memories, contrary to what was expected. These findings led us to question the classical models of memory which assume that the enactment effect and visual imagery favour distinctive conceptual processing to the detriment of relational processing, with the consequence of reducing false recognitions (see Foley, 2012;Goff & Roediger, 1998;Robin & Mahé, 2015;Robin et al, 2021).…”

“…The recognition of each action sentence consisted in evaluating on a 4-point scale the certainty with which the participant believed they had or had not heard the action sentence: 1 point "I am sure I did not hear this action"; 2 points "I am almost sure that I didn't hear this action"; 3 points "I am almost sure that I heard that action"; 4 points "I'm sure I heard that action". We used the same scale as in previous studies with DRM wordlists (see Robin & Mahé, 2015;Robin et al, 2021). For each answer, participants had to indicate their level of consciousness by responding to the Remember/Know test (Tulving, 1985).…”