Study On The Factors Influencing False Memory

Our memories are not as reliable as we usually thought, and conversely they could be easily forgotten or misled by other information. Even they could be changed spontaneously only by internal associative processes. More and more recent experimental investigations have focused on the internally generated false memories and demonstrated the characteristics and the underlying mechanism of false memory effect.In this thesis, a brief history of false memory research and its present study are reviewed first. Then, three experiments are carried out to examine the false memory caused by antonym. In experiment 1, antonyms were used as experimental materials to cause false memory. In experiment 2 and 3, some factors that influenced false memory were investigated. Results of the three experiments showed the following conclusions respectively. Firstly, A false memory effect is apparent as subjects had a higher false alarm rate to nonstudied antonyms than to words that were unrelated to studied words. Moreover, the underlying mechanism of it could be explained by Activation/Monitoring Framework. Secondly, the factors in experiment 2 , having closer relationship with false memory, influenced false memory but not true memory. However, the factors in experiment 3, having more correlation with true memory, influenced both true memory and false memory. Overall, the false memory and true memory were either covariant or disassociated under different conditions. These relationships between false memory and true memory were depended on the characters of factors.