The Effects of Delayed Recall on False Memory Effect - Research Paper Example

Dissertation Discussion – The effects of Delayed recall on False Memory effect. This part of the dissertation provides an opportunity to discuss on the effect of delayed recall on the false memory effect and how it has been applied to participants within the study. As a part of dissertation discussion, it is important to narrate the complete dissertation outcome and procedure so that there is understanding regarding the whole study. As an assistance to the readers, this part of the dissertation provides a brief insight of the study and also includes a statement of the problem and major outcome regard to it. Summary of the Study Problem and Methodology a) Study Problem We all know the fact that human function on daily basis with the help of our memory but many people do not realize the importance of it in our survival. If the memory is false or else we have false memory then the life of common men is at stake. False memory is a common problem among men and it is fairly inconsequential in many cases. Researchers have found that false memory can bring in many atrocities to human life like false identification, false self- perception and memory distortion. According to ( Cherry) “A false memory is a fabricated or distorted recollection of an event that did not actually happen. People often think of memory as something like a video recorder, accurately documenting and storing everything that happens with perfect accuracy and clarity. In reality, memory is very prone to fallacy”. However it has been studied through research that false memory can be improved with suggestion and for the same reason a research was conducted to study on the subject. b) Methodology In this study, as a part of the discussion it is essential to make an explanation regarding the methodology of the research. There was two conditions used for this study, they were as follows. 1 Immediate test 2 Delay test There were 40 participants recruited for the study, with 20 participants allotted for each condition. The participants recruited for the study were undergraduate students who were unknown to the false memory effect. Participants were recruited through SONA, with participants in the immediate test condition receiving 0.5 credits and participants for the delay test condition receiving 1 credit for their participation. The experiment was programmed on psyscope which will run on a MAC. The participants were firstly presented with 6 DRM lists which contained 12 items each. These were shown to the participants for 1500msec. Following the study phase, there was a recognition test, in which participants were presented with 60 words one by one, the words include were 30 old words and 30 new words. The new words included critical lure words similarly to Roediger and McDermott’s paradigm. During the recognition test, each word were presented and participants were to decide whether the word is a new (not presented during study phase) or old word (presented during the study phase), for new words they will press the ‘N’ key and for old words they will press the ‘O’ key. If they recognize a word as an old word, they were asked whether recognition was due to remembering, knowing or a guess. Participants in the immediate test condition will take the recognition test immediately after a 10 minute interval in which they will complete suduko as a distractor whereas participants in the delay test condition, will be taking part in the recognition test 24 hours after the study phase. The primary purpose of the present research was to determine whether subjects could avoid creating false memories (Gallo,1997, pg.271-276). Review and Discussion of the Main Conclusions of the Study c) The aim of this study was to examine the effects of delayed recall on false memory effect. In order to look at the effect that delay has on false memory effect, there will be two conditions, with test time acting as the independent variable. A number of other theoretical accounts have been proposed to explain dissociations of this kind, in addition to the memory systems account. (Brandt,2005,pg .1-13).Here, it is hypothesized that participants that will take part in the delay test after 24 hours will show an increase in the false memory effect. So we can see that in this study there is one hypothesis laid out but the study was conducted with two conditions in order to derive at the best results. In the following section of discussion the effort would be to lay out the main findings of the hypothesis and it will be followed by a discussion of these findings and an analysis of the same too. Also the implication these findings have on the future studies will be looked in to. Age and Sex - Hypothesis The hypothesis argue that the participants that will take part in the delay test after 24 hours will show an increase in the false memory effect. And the age and sex of the participant has some relevance to the study as it is a study with both aged group involved. Conclusions The hypothesis is fully supported for the age, which was the important and consistent predictor for the intention of the participants to attend to various tests. However when it came to sex , it is not a good predictor as it failed to give any encouragement to the false memory behavior of the participants. Discussion and implications In this study, 6 DRM lists were used in order to test the effect of delayed recall on the false memory . The first part of the study for both condition was the study phase, which was a slideshow of 48 words from the 6 DRM lists shown one by one on the screen. The second part for both conditions was the test phase, this involved a slideshow of the 48 old words, with 6 critical lure words ( words that are closely related to old words.), 24 FA words (NEW words, that were not related at all) and 24 Weak words ( new words which are weakly related to old words ) Participants during test phase were asked to respond to each word, whether it is old/new. Old (being words that were in study phase) New (being words that were not in the study phase). If participants responded as old then they were asked to respond whether remember/ know/guess. The difference between the two conditions were that in the immediate condition, participants took part in the test phase 10 minutes after the study phase, whereas participants in the delayed condition took part in the test phase 24 hours after the study phase. In the second phase, which was test based, the test were primarily conducted with the help of one way and two way ANOVA test . The test was conducted with regard to old words and their respective remember/guess/know status. In this phase critical lure words and hits ( old words) were presented to the participants to assess their guess status. Here , the output of the one way Anova test regarding FA guess can be analyzed from the table presented below: Estimates Measure: MEASURE_1 Condition Mean Std. Error 95% Confidence Interval Lower Bound Upper Bound immediate .029 .010 .010 .049 delay .040 .010 .021 .060 Table 1 : FA guess output by One Way Anova Test Here we can see that the mean were low among immediate test participants in comparison to delay test participants. This means in the delay participants the ability to recall words were weak because there was a delay of 24hrs after the study phase. Frankly speaking, the word type main effects were seen in participants who appeared for delayed tests. Basically, the mean proportion was higher in delay condition participants with regard to FA guess and this directly raises a false memory effect. The results for measure of the false memory effect gave a good support in relation to first condition which was immediate one. This result is consistent as the words in test phase included, Old words (Hits) and Critical lure words. Now , if we look at the ‘know’ status among the immediate and delay participants we can see a different result. The below table would be appropriate to understand the ‘know’ status among both condition participants. Descriptive Statistics Condition Mean Std. Deviation N FAKnow immediate .0710 .08747 20 delay .3005 .13586 20 Total .1858 .16194 40 WeakKnow immediate .1415 .11713 20 delay .3225 .12315 20 Total .2320 .14991 40 Table 2 : FA Know output by Two Way Anova Test Actually, to estimate the effects of probe type and delay on recognition confidence and accuracy Two Way ANOVA was utilized among the participants. The analysis was conducted by calculating the standard deviation for both condition mean and this is evident in the Table 2.The table above confirms that there was an observation of high level of false memory effect in the delay condition participants. It was noticed that critical distractors were recalled at about the same level as the old words. It was also observed that there was more false alarms for delay condition compared to immediate and this significant difference is evident in the table above. Next test performed to analyze the delay condition participants response was the t- test. The t- test was conducted between immediate and ALL false alarms ( new and weak) Here we can see that in both condition they were changes with regard to false memory effect. It is more evident with the below detailing with regard to immediate and delay conditions. Condition 1.00 – NEW FALSE ALARMS NOT RELATED Condition 2.00 – False alarms, weakly related In the case of paired t – test conducted there was evidence that delay condition participants fared low in comparison to immediate condition participants. This can be more evident in the table shown below: Paired Samples Statisticsa Mean N Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean Pair 1 FAAll .2085 20 .23385 .05229 WeakALL .3155 20 .22554 .05043 a. Condition = immediate Paired Samples Statisticsa Mean N Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean Pair 1 FAAll .6230 20 .22583 .05050 WeakALL .6315 20 .20610 .04609 a. Condition = delay Table 4 : Paired t – test output regarding immediate and delay condition From a theoretical perspective, it can be understood that these results have important implication on the study. Actually, as mentioned earlier the two conditions namely; immediate and delay have been projected to showcase that the effects of delayed recall on false memory effect is high in comparison to immediate condition Here, when analyzing all the tests results one can understand that participant in delayed condition fare greatly on the false memory effect . In this study, it is observed that in the immediate condition, the participants were able to recall memory with regard to new/old and Critical lures. While in the delay condition there was seen a greater false alarms responses as they could not recall much words from the memory like immediate condition participants. It could be found during study that individuals in immediate condition were better than the people in the delay condition and also they raised less false alarms after Sudoku distracters. According to (Payne,1996 ,pg.261-285) “ Subjects in both the immediate and delayed recognition testing conditions responded to items from all 16 study lists and 8 distracter lists”. The entire study results indicate that the delay of 24 hrs in participants raised much false alarms effect in comparison to immediate condition participants. Conclusion In the present experiment, the two condition was involved in testing the effects of delayed recall on false memory effect. On the two recognition test, the participants showcased varying results. The participants have falsely recognized words in the one condition while in another condition the participants overall fared well. It could be stated that the participants in delayed condition would perform better if the forewarning was given to them .The false memory effect was more evident among delayed test due to the fact that the participants were fooled by the critical lures that were unconsciously alerted during the study but not recognized by not studied words. Here we can understand that errors are relevant to certain conditions as the delay test. The findings of the study suggest that understanding words by knowledge might achieve less success as they can only partially control the remembering of the words. References Brandt, K. R. (2005). The distinctiveness effect in forenames: The role of subjective experiences and recognition memory. British Journal of Psychology, 4(1), 1-13. Cherry, K. (2015). What Is a False Memory?. In http://psychology.about.com. Retrieved April 23, 2015, from http://psychology.about.com/od/findex/g/false-memory-definition.htm Payne, D. G. (1996). Memory Illusions: Recalling, Recognizing, and Recollecting Events that Never Occurred. Journal of Memory and Language, 35(3), 261-285. Gallo, D. A. (1997). Remembering words not presented in lists: Can we avoid creating false memories? Psychonomic Bulletin &Review, 4(2), 271-276. Read More