Creating false memories using real-world objects: an attempt to expand upon a classic study

This study aimed to investigate the relationship between different types of stimulus presentation and their effects on both memory confidence and memory accuracy through researching the phenomenon known as false memories. Investigating ways to raise memory confidence and to still retain accurate memories can help lead to new developments in therapy to assist individuals with memory issues. In addition to this, more accurate memories can lead to more reliable recall of memories for the average person. In the current literature, there have been very few investigations into the creation of false memories outside of the auditory medium. Prior research has found that false memories are developed in both auditory and visual memories, but none of the research has compared the conditions against one another. In this study, we aimed to fill this gap in the literature by comparing these different conditions of stimuli (auditory vs. visual) against one another. We drew 34 participants from the University of Utah's research participant pool. We hypothesized that visual memories would have higher judgments of confidence that the critical lure was not presented as well as more accurate recall. The data revealed that certain lists of items had significant differences compared to the same items in a different stimulus presentation condition, both in memory confidence and accuracy of recall for the critical lure. These findings were consistent with our hypotheses that visual memory recall would be more accurate and have greater confidence judgments. It was found that there was no significant difference in confidence averaged across conditions, but there was for certain lists of stimuli. It was found that for 3 out of the 5 lists of stimuli, the confidence judgments of the participants were more accurate for the visual condition, and 1 out of the 5 lists of stimuli elicited a more accurate recall for iii participants. This implies that visual information is less susceptible to false memories than auditory information.