Nowadays, we consider two types of memory operation. According to Corson and Verrier (2013), we have on one side, the reproductive memory, that is to say, as we said before, an exact return of what happened to us. And we have on the other hand, the reconstructive memory, the reconstruction of what was really perceived. These reconstructions have been the subject of various research and have been defined as “false memories” (Roediger & McDermott, 1995). False memories are either memories, they have been memorized and have been distorted or memories of events that never happened, but that was suggested to the participant (Carmichael & Gutchess, 2015; Loftus & Pickrell, 1995).
In our study we wanted to evaluate the production of false memories during the passing of a specific paradigm, the DRM paradigm, (Deese 1959, Roediger & McDermott, 1995). In this paradigm, it is about learning a list of words to participants. These words are all interrelated and linked to a word “critical lure” not presented. Roediger and McDermott (1995) highlight that in free recall the critical lure are as likely to be remembered by the participants as the words in the middle of the list and are as much remembered as the words actually presented during the recognition task.
In our research we are particularly interested in producing these « critical lure » among older participants. Most studies have shown that older participants produce more false memories than younger participants when passing a DRM paradigm (Balota et al., 1999, Norman & Schacter, 1997).
We have studied different studies that set up methods to try to reduce this production of false memories among older participants (Dehon & Brédart 2004, McCabe and Smith 2002, Watson McDermott & Balota 2004).
In view of the mixed results of these studies, we looked at studies that had implemented a method to improve the performance of older participants on simple word-list learning tasks (Geraci & Miller, 2013; Geraci , Miller, & De Forrest, 2016). It was for the participants, to carry out an easy prior cognitive task that they succeeded every time before carrying out the task of memory. Geraci and Miller (2013) showed that completing the prior task had allowed older participants to improve their performance, but that this method had no impact on younger participants. For these authors, older participants would be anxious and activate a stereotype threat effect regarding their memory skills. That is, they would have preconceived negative ideas about the memory capacity of older people in general and that belief would diminish their performance (Steele & Aronson, 1995). The prior task would be to restore self-confidence to older participants and erase their anxiety and stereotype threat.
In this study, we expected that a successful prior task would have a facilitating effect in reducing the production of false memories among older people. We also expected these improvements to be because older people were able to gain self-confidence and reduce their anxiety and stereotype threat effect.
To test our hypotheses we realized two experiments.
In the first we compared 37 young participants with 36 older participants. We first introduced them to DRM paradigm word lists followed by a recognition task. Then, we made them do a prior task of image recognition before they were taught multiple word lists of the DRM paradigm and subjected them to a recognition task.
In a second experiment we wanted to understand more precisely how the prior task works and whether it reduces the anxiety and the stereotype threat effect of older participants. We compared 33 elderly participants and 31 young participants. We measured their anxiety rate and stereotype threat effect before and after the pictures recognition task.
The results of the first experiment show, as we expected, that older participants reduced their production of false memories after having completed the prior task and that it had no impact on the young. The results of the second study them, highlight that the anxiety and activation of the stereotype threat effect did not change before and after the passing of the prior task. We have therefore reversed the hypothesis that the former task would allow older participants to regain self-confidence, and we therefore favor the hypothesis of Lemaire & Brun (2018), according to which, the previous task would allow older participants to put in place more effective strategies to reduce the production of false memories.
Keywords : False memories, Critical Lure, DRM Paradigm, Prior Task, Anxiety, Stereotype Threat Effect
Words I have learned :
Implemented : Mis en œuvre
Memory operation : Fonctionnement de la mémoire
Bibliography :
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Maëlis Durand