Recalling fake news during real news corrections can impair or enhance memory updating: the role of recollection-based retrieval.

Fake news can impair memory leading to societal controversies such as COVID-19 vaccine efficacy. The pernicious influence of fake news is clear when ineffective corrections leave memories outdated. A key theoretical issue is whether people should recall fake news while reading corrections with contradictory details. The familiarity backfire view proposes that recalling fake news increases its familiarity, leading to interference. However, the integrative encoding view proposes that recalling fake news promotes co-activation and binding of contradictory details, leading to facilitation. Two experiments examined if one theory better accounts for memory updating after participants recalled actual fake news details when reading headlines that corrected misinformation. In Phase 1, participants read real and fake news headlines of unclear veracity taken from various internet sources. In Phase 2, participants read real news headlines that reaffirmed real news and corrected fake news from Phase 1. When they detected that Phase 2 real news corrected fake news, they attempted to recall Phase 1 fake news. In Phase 3, participants first recalled real news details. When they remembered that those details were corrections from Phase 2, they attempted to recall fake news from Phase 1. Recalling fake news when noticing corrections in Phase 2 led to better memory for real news in Phase 3 when fake news was recalled again and worse memory for real news in Phase 3 when fake news was not recalled again. Both views explain part of the memory differences associated with recalling fake news during corrections, but only when considering whether people recollected that fake news had been corrected.

The role of prior-event retrieval in encoding changed event features.

When people experience everyday activities, their comprehension can be shaped by expectations that derive from similar recent experiences, which can affect the encoding of a new experience into memory. When a new experience includes changes-such as a driving route being blocked by construction-this can lead to interference in subsequent memory. One potential mechanism of effective encoding of event changes is the retrieval of related features from previous events. Another such mechanism is the generation of a prediction error when a predicted feature is contradicted. In two experiments, we tested for effects of these two mechanisms on memory for changed features in movies of everyday activities. Participants viewed movies of an actor performing everyday activities across two fictitious days. Some event features changed across the days, and some features violated viewers' predictions. Retrieval of previous event features while viewing the second movie was associated with better subsequent memory, providing evidence for the retrieval mechanism. Contrary to our hypotheses, there was no support for the error mechanism: Prediction error was not associated with better memory when it was observed correlationally (Experiment 1) or directly manipulated (Experiment 2). These results support a key role for episodic retrieval in the encoding of new events. They also indicate boundary conditions on the role of prediction errors in driving new learning. Both findings have clear implications for theories of event memory.

Reminders of Everyday Misinformation Statements Can Enhance Memory for and Beliefs in Corrections of Those Statements in the Short Term.

Fake-news exposure can cause misinformation to be mistakenly remembered and believed. In two experiments (Ns = 96), we examined whether reminders of misinformation could improve memory for and beliefs in corrections. Subjects read factual statements and misinformation statements taken from news websites and then read statements that corrected the misinformation. Misinformation reminders appeared before some corrections but not others. Subjects then attempted to recall facts, indicated their belief in those recalls, and indicated whether they remembered corrections and misinformation. In Experiment 1, we did not constrain subjects' report criteria. But in Experiment 2, we encouraged conservative reporting by instructing subjects to report only information they believed to be true. Reminders increased recall and belief accuracy. These benefits were greater both when misinformation was recollected and when subjects remembered that corrections had occurred. These findings demonstrate one situation in which misinformation reminders can diminish the negative effects of fake-news exposure in the short term.

Interpolated retrieval effects on list isolation: Individual differences in working memory capacity.

We examined the effects of interpolated retrieval from long-term memory (LTM) and short-term memory (STM) on list isolation in dual-list free recall and whether individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) moderated those effects. Ninety-seven subjects completed study-test trials that included two study lists separated by either an exemplar generation task (LTM retrieval) or a two-back task (STM retrieval). Subjects then completed an externalized free recall task that allowed for the examination of response accessibility and monitoring. Individual differences in WMC were assessed using three complex span tasks: operation span, reading span, and rotation span. Correct recall and intratrial intrusion summary scores showed no effect of interpolated retrieval on either response accessibility or monitoring. However, serial-position curves for correct recall of List 1 showed larger primacy in the two-back than in the exemplar generation task for high-WMC subjects. We interpreted these results from a context change perspective, as showing that interpolated LTM retrieval accelerated context change for subjects who processed the context more effectively. We consider the implications of these findings for models of memory.