Psychophysiology of False Memories in a Deese-Roediger ... - IGPP

Psychophysiology of Visual False Memories
To conclude, the present study can be regarded as a first step to
investigate false memories, as provoked in a visual DRM study,
with measures of peripheral psychophysiology. Differences in
memorability of stimulus types are an inherent problem of the
classical DRM design. In the present study, this problem was
brought to light and faced by the introduction of a control group,
whereas previous DRM studies did not feature control groups and
could therefore not report such a memorability bias.
Future DRM studies with CIT methodology might account for
this problem by using a categorical design with a random choice of
the related lures. The realization of such a design seems to be
challenging with visual scenes as study material, but it might be
fruitful.
The present peripheral psychophysiology study combines two
fields of research. The phenomena of false memories and
deception overlap conceptually. This is particularly important
when object recognition is investigated psychophysiologically. The
main difference between the two phenomena, false recognition
and information concealment, is the level of awareness concerning
the falseness of a recognition statement. While the detection of
deception has been extensively studied by means of peripheral
psychophysiology, this has scarcely been the case for false
memories.
However, the present study not only contributes to the
understanding of false memories, but from a detection-ofinformation
perspective, the results also provide evidence for the
detectability of implicit knowledge. Thus, it might also be seen as
an applied investigation of ‘‘subception’’. Implicit knowledge might
contribute greatly to the psychophysiological detectability of
deception; there, implicit and explicit knowledge are confounded.
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Supporting Information
Appendix S1 Stimulus material for the study phase
(visual scenes) and extracted related lures/related
controls and studied items (recognition phase).
(DOC)
Appendix S2 Additional stimulus material for the
recognition phase (unrelated lures).
(DOC)
Author Contributions
Conceived and designed the experiments: AB WA DV. Performed the
experiments: AB WA. Analyzed the data: AB BW. Contributed reagents/
materials/analysis tools: AB WA DV. Wrote the paper: AB WA.
Contributed to study design and data discussion: AB WA BW DV.
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PLoS ONE | www.plosone.org 8 January 2012 | Volume 7 | Issue 1 | e30416