Does emotional or repeated misinformation increase memory distortion for a trauma analogue event?

In general, memory of highly negative and even traumatic events can distort. However, the effect of misinformation exposure on such memories requires further investigation given the inconsistent past findings. With two experiments, we investigated: (1) whether misinformation distorts memory for highly negative analogue events, (2) whether memory distortion is increased for more emotional and potentially traumatic details compared to unemotional details, and (3) whether repeated misinformation exposure further increases memory distortion for highly negative events compared to single exposure, a possibility that has not been investigated to our knowledge. In both experiments, participants viewed a trauma analogue film with some scenes removed. Twenty-four hours later, they were given three "eyewitness" reports describing the film's events. To manipulate misinformation repetition, either zero, one, or all three of the reports described removed scenes. To determine whether memory distortion is increased for emotional details, half of the removed scenes were more traumatic than the other half. Participants exposed to misinformation falsely remembered more removed scenes compared to participants who were not exposed to misinformation. Further, memory distortion was increased for emotional (vs. unemotional) aspects of the film. Repeated misinformation exposure, however, did not lead to significantly higher error rates compared to single exposure. The lack of perceptual overlap between our written misinformation and film test items may have limited false memories even with repeated misinformation. Alternatively, the repeated vs. single misinformation effect may exist but be very small, as suggested by our raw means and effect sizes.

Look there! The effect of perspective, attention, and instructions on how people understand recorded police encounters.

Now more than ever, body cameras, surveillance footage, dash-cam footage, and bystanders with phones enable people to see for themselves officer and civilian behavior and determine the justifiability of officers' actions. This paper examines whether the camera perspective from which people watch police encounters influences the conclusions that people draw. Consistent with recent findings showing that body camera footage leads people to perceive officers' actions as less intentional (Turner, Caruso, Dilich, & Roese, 2019), our first study demonstrates that participants who watched body-camera footage, compared with people who watched surveillance footage of the same encounter, perceived the officer's behavior as being more justified and made more lenient punishment decisions. In our second study, only one of the four police encounters that participants watched led participants to perceive the officer more favorably when they watched body-camera footage compared with bystander footage. Our results demonstrate that some body-camera footage-specifically videos that capture an officer using his or her body to apprehend a civilian-can lead to biased perceptions of police encounters that benefit the officer. Our findings suggest that this occurs because: (i) in body-camera footage, the civilian is the more easily visible figure, thus making less salient the officer's role in the encounter; and (ii) the body camera-attached to an officer's uniform-is unable to adequately capture certain use of force movements that are important in determining an officer's intent.

Imagining trauma: Memory amplification and the role of elaborative cognitions.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Trauma victims, such as war veterans, often remember additional traumatic events over time: the "memory amplification effect". This effect is associated with the re-experiencing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), including frequent and intrusive images of the trauma. One explanation for memory amplification is that people gradually incorporate new, imagined information about the trauma with what they actually experienced, leading to an amplified memory for what actually happened. We investigated this proposal here. METHODS: Participants viewed highly negative and graphic photographs and recorded their intrusions. Critically, we instructed some participants to elaborate on their intrusions-that is, we asked them to imagine details about the trauma beyond what they actually witnessed. We assessed memory for the traumatic photos twice, 24-h apart. RESULTS: The elaboration condition experienced fewer intrusions about the photos compared to the control condition. Furthermore, the elaboration condition were less susceptible to memory amplification compared to controls. LIMITATIONS: The use of negative photos allowed experimental control, however does not permit generalization of our findings to real-world traumatic experiences. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that effortful imagination of new trauma-related details leads to a reduction in intrusions and an increased tendency to not endorse trauma exposure over time. One explanation for this finding is that elaboration enhanced conceptual processing of the trauma analogue, therefore reducing intrusions. Critically, this reduction in intrusions affected participants' tendency to endorse trauma exposure, which is consistent with the reality-monitoring explanation for memory amplification.

Memory Errors in Alibi Generation: How an Alibi Can Turn Against Us.

Alibis play a critical role in the criminal justice system. Yet research on the process of alibi generation and evaluation is still nascent. Indeed, similar to other widely investigated psychological phenomena in the legal system - such as false confessions, historical claims of abuse, and eyewitness memory - the basic assumptions underlying alibi generation and evaluation require closer empirical scrutiny. To date, the majority of alibi research investigates the social psychological aspects of the process. We argue that applying our understanding of basic human memory is critical to a complete understanding of the alibi process. Specifically, we challenge the use of alibi inconsistency as an indication of guilt by outlining the "cascading effects" that can put innocents at risk for conviction. We discuss how normal encoding and storage processes can pose problems at retrieval, particularly for innocent suspects that can result in alibi inconsistencies over time. Those inconsistencies are typically misunderstood as intentional deception, first by law enforcement, affecting the investigation, then by prosecutors affecting prosecution decisions, and finally by juries, ultimately affecting guilt judgments. Put differently, despite the universal nature of memory inconsistencies, a single error can produce a cascading effect, rendering an innocent individual's alibi, ironically, proof of guilt. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Do meta-cognitive beliefs affect meta-awareness of intrusive thoughts about trauma?

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: People exposed to trauma often experience intrusive thoughts and memories about that event. Research examining people's responses to trauma assumes that people can accurately notice the occurrence of symptoms. However, we know from the broader cognitive literature on 'mind-wandering' that people are not always aware of their current focus of attention. That lack of awareness has implications for our theoretical and practical understanding of how trauma survivors recover from their experience. In the current study we investigated whether people's meta-cognitive beliefs about controlling trauma-related intrusions influenced the occurrence and meta-awareness of those intrusions. METHODS: We recruited participants who scored high (strong beliefs) or low (weak beliefs) on beliefs regarding the importance of controlling intrusive thoughts. Participants viewed a trauma film then-during a subsequent reading task-reported any film-related intrusions they noticed. We also intermittently asked half the participants to report what they were thinking at that particular moment, to "catch" intrusions without meta-awareness. RESULTS: People are not always aware of their trauma intrusions, and importantly, people with strong beliefs are more likely to notice trauma related intrusions both with and without meta-awareness than people with weak beliefs. LIMITATIONS: We used an analogue trauma, and focused on a particular metacognitive belief, both of which somewhat limit generalizability. We also cannot definitively rule out demand effects. CONCLUSIONS: Our data add to existing research showing people may lack meta-awareness of trauma-related thoughts, and suggest that survivors with particular metacognitive characteristics may be more vulnerable to 'mind-wandering' about trauma without awareness.

A mega-analysis of memory reports from eight peer-reviewed false memory implantation studies.

Understanding that suggestive practices can promote false beliefs and false memories for childhood events is important in many settings (e.g., psychotherapeutic, medical, and legal). The generalisability of findings from memory implantation studies has been questioned due to variability in estimates across studies. Such variability is partly due to false memories having been operationalised differently across studies and to differences in memory induction techniques. We explored ways of defining false memory based on memory science and developed a reliable coding system that we applied to reports from eight published implantation studies (N = 423). Independent raters coded transcripts using seven criteria: accepting the suggestion, elaboration beyond the suggestion, imagery, coherence, emotion, memory statements, and not rejecting the suggestion. Using this scheme, 30.4% of cases were classified as false memories and another 23% were classified as having accepted the event to some degree. When the suggestion included self-relevant information, an imagination procedure, and was not accompanied by a photo depicting the event, the memory formation rate was 46.1%. Our research demonstrates a useful procedure for systematically combining data that are not amenable to meta-analysis, and provides the most valid estimate of false memory formation and associated moderating factors within the implantation literature to date.

Trauma memories on trial: is cross-examination a safeguard against distorted analogue traumatic memories?

Trauma memories can feel more disorganised than more mundane memories. That may be problematic in legal contexts. Here we examined: (a) whether that disorganised feeling makes people more susceptible to suggestive questioning during direct examination; and (b) whether cross-examination is the safeguard it is purported to be: that is, we examined whether cross-examination can uncover and correct distorted trauma memories. We showed participants a film depicting a graphic car accident. For some participants, the film unfolded in a temporally disorganised way. We then interviewed participants immediately after the film regarding what they had seen: this 'direct examination' included free recall, cued recall and yes/no questions, some of which were misleading. Then, 48 hours later, a second interviewer cross-examined participants. Contrary to our predictions, neither manipulation of the film's temporal organisation, nor participants' self-reported feelings of event disorganisation significantly affected their accuracy of the film during direct or cross-examination nor their recognition memory of the film. Instead, we found that regardless of whether participants' memories were distorted by the direct examination, the suggestive nature of the cross-examination introduced sufficient doubt that participants were willing to change their answers. We conclude that traumatic memories are vulnerable to suggestive questioning and, unfortunately, cross-examination is not the legal system's fail-safe corrective influence.

Trauma-related versus positive involuntary thoughts with and without meta-awareness.

In earlier work, we asked subjects to report involuntary thoughts relating to a trauma film and also probed subjects periodically. Subjects often reported involuntary thoughts in response to probes, suggesting they lacked meta-awareness of those thoughts. But it is possible that some or all probe-detected thoughts were continuations of thoughts subjects had spontaneously reported, leading us to overestimate involuntary thoughts lacking meta-awareness. It is also unclear whether failures in meta-awareness occur for other emotional events. We exposed subjects to a negative or positive film. Subsequently, they reported involuntary film-related thoughts and responded to probes that distinguished new from continuing thoughts. Many (54%) but not all probe-caught thoughts were thought continuations. This result supports our earlier finding that people can lack meta-awareness for trauma-related thoughts, but suggests caution in how meta-awareness is assessed. We also found that self-caught negative and positive involuntary thoughts occurred at a similar frequency, with different characteristics.

Unfair Lineups Make Witnesses More Likely to Confuse Innocent and Guilty Suspects.

Eyewitness-identification studies have focused on the idea that unfair lineups (i.e., ones in which the police suspect stands out) make witnesses more willing to identify the police suspect. We examined whether unfair lineups also influence subjects' ability to distinguish between innocent and guilty suspects and their ability to judge the accuracy of their identification. In a single experiment (N = 8,925), we compared three fair-lineup techniques used by the police with unfair lineups in which we did nothing to prevent distinctive suspects from standing out. Compared with the fair lineups, doing nothing not only increased subjects' willingness to identify the suspect but also markedly impaired subjects' ability to distinguish between innocent and guilty suspects. Accuracy was also reduced at every level of confidence. These results advance theory on witnesses' identification performance and have important practical implications for how police should construct lineups when suspects have distinctive features.

Memory amplification for trauma: Investigating the role of analogue PTSD symptoms in the laboratory.

Victims of trauma often remember their experience as being more traumatic later, compared to immediately after, the event took place. This finding-the "memory amplification effect"-is associated with increased re-experiencing symptoms. However, the effect has been found almost exclusively in field-based studies. We examined whether the effect could be replicated in the laboratory. In two studies, we exposed participants to negative photographs and assessed their memory for the photographs and analogue PTSD symptoms on two occasions. In Study 1, analogue symptoms at follow-up were positively associated with remembering more negative photos over time. In Study 2, we focused on "memory amplifiers": people whose memory of the photos amplified over time. Consistent with field research, analogue re-experiencing symptoms were associated with memory amplification. Overall, our findings confirm that analogue PTSD symptoms are also associated with an amplified memory for a trauma analogue.

Encoding disorganized memories for an analogue trauma does not increase memory distortion or analogue symptoms of PTSD.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Empirical studies with objective measures and control conditions have failed to demonstrate disorganization; yet people tend to self-report disorganization in their trauma narratives, which may have other effects. Thus, we investigated whether a disorganized trauma memory produces more analogue PTSD symptoms and memory distortion, compared to an organized memory. METHODS: Participants watched a traumatic film with missing scenes. Some saw the scenes in their correct temporal sequence; others saw a random sequence; thus for some participants we implanted a disorganized memory. We also told some participants to focus on the meaning of the event (conceptual), some on the sensory details (data-driven), and some received no instruction (control). Participants recorded their intrusions for a week. Then, they reported analogue symptoms and we tested their memory for the film and their confidence in what they remembered. RESULTS: Analogue symptoms and number of reported intrusions did not differ across conditions, nor did the degree of memory distortion or confidence in those memories. However, participants who self-reported feeling more memory disorganization reported more avoidance symptoms and more memory distortion. LIMITATIONS: We did not measure memory for real trauma, nor did we assess for a history of PTSD. Our results may also be restricted to temporal disorganization. CONCLUSIONS: Although objective assessments of disorganization do not appear important, people's feelings regarding the disorganization of their memories not only affect their assessment of the severity of their PTSD symptoms, but also the kinds of memory errors they make.

Meta-awareness and the involuntary memory spectrum: Reply to Meyer, Otgaar, and Smeets (2015).

In their commentary, Meyer, Otgaar, and Smeets (2015) raise several important issues about the definitions, characteristics and applications of various involuntary cognitive phenomena. Here we respond to the comments of Meyer et al. in ways that we hope will advance understanding of these issues, and inform future research. In particular, we have focused on the characteristics of involuntary phenomena-particularly in relation to meta-awareness-and the clinical relevance of mind-wandering.

False memories for dissonance inducing events.

Memories serve as a "database" of the self and people often produce distorted memories that support their self-concepts. One, surprisingly untested, possibility is that cognitive dissonance may be one mechanism by which people may misremember their past. We tested this hypothesis using an induced-compliance paradigm: participants either chose or were forced to write a counterattitudinal essay supporting a tuition increase and were afforded the opportunity to reduce dissonance via attitude shift or denial of responsibility. They then reported their memories for the experimental instructions and their initial attitudes (assessed two days prior to the laboratory session). Participants who chose to write the essay exhibited the predicted attitude-shift effect, and were more likely to misremember their initial attitudes and the experimental instruction than those who were forced to write the essay. Overall, our results provide evidence that cognitive dissonance may yield memory distortion, filling a significant gap in the motivated cognition and memory literatures.

Event familiarity influences memory detection using the aIAT.

The developers of the autobiographical Implicit Association Test (aIAT) describe it as a possible memory detection tool. This claim rests on the assumption the aIAT can reliably and automatically detect the accuracy of autobiographical events. However, the aIAT may be susceptible to factors that affect the assessment of truth vs. falseness, such as the relative familiarity of those events. We compared aIAT performance when participants reported recent vs. childhood autobiographical events, and when participants imagined vs. did not imagine a fabricated autobiographical event. The aIAT was less effective at distinguishing between real and fabricated events from childhood, compared to recent real and fabricated events. Imagining a fabricated event did not affect aIAT performance; however, there was a trend in the data suggesting imagination may have reduced the effect of event recency. Our results provide further evidence that reducing or enhancing source confusion-via familiarity-can influence the predictive value of the aIAT.

Investigating the variability of memory distortion for an analogue trauma.

In this paper, we examine whether source monitoring (SM) errors might be one mechanism that accounts for traumatic memory distortion. Participants watched a traumatic film with some critical (crux) and non-critical (non-crux) scenes removed. Twenty-four hours later, they completed a memory test. To increase the likelihood participants would notice the film's gaps, we inserted visual static for the length of each missing scene. We then added manipulations designed to affect people's SM behaviour. To encourage systematic SM, before watching the film, we warned half the participants that we had removed some scenes. To encourage heuristic SM some participants also saw labels describing the missing scenes. Adding static highlighting, the missing scenes did not affect false recognition of those missing scenes. However, a warning decreased, while labels increased, participants' false recognition rates. We conclude that manipulations designed to affect SM behaviour also affect the degree of memory distortion in our paradigm.

Self-report may underestimate trauma intrusions.

Research examining maladaptive responses to trauma routinely relies on spontaneous self-report to index intrusive thoughts, which assumes people accurately recognize and report their intrusive thoughts. However, "mind-wandering" research reveals people are not always meta-aware of their thought content: they often fail to notice shifts in their attention. In two experiments, we exposed subjects to trauma films, then instructed them to report intrusive thoughts during an unrelated reading task. Intermittently, we asked whether they were thinking about the trauma. As expected, subjects often spontaneously reported intrusive thoughts. However, they were also "caught" engaging in unreported trauma-oriented thoughts. The presence and frequency of intermittent probes did not influence self-caught intrusions. Both self-caught and probe-caught intrusions were related to an existing tendency toward intrusive cognition, film-related distress, and thought suppression attempts. Our data suggest people may lack meta-awareness of trauma-related thoughts, which has implications for theory, research and treatment relating to trauma-related psychopathology.

Emotional impact feedback affects how people remember an analogue trauma event.

Do external motivational processes-in the form of social influences-shape people's memories for trauma? In this experiment, we examined the effects of social influence on memory and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptomology for an analogue traumatic event. Seventy-two participants watched a distressing film; some received feedback about others' reactions to the film that either emphasised or downplayed the distressing nature of the film; control participants received no feedback. A week later, participants reported their symptoms, rated their memory on a number of characteristics and we tested their memory for the film's content. Participants who received feedback downplaying the film reported fewer PTSD-related analogue symptoms and weaker memory characteristics than their counterparts. The results suggest that people's memory phenomenology and analogue symptoms are influenced by others' feedback, but only when others' reactions downplayed the distressing nature of the film.

Source confusion influences the effectiveness of the autobiographical IAT.

We examined the claim that the autobiographical Implicit Association Test (aIAT) can detect concealed memories. Subjects read action statements (e.g., "break the toothpick") and either performed the action or completed math problems. They then imagined some of these actions and some new actions. Two weeks later, the subjects completed a memory test and then an aIAT in which they categorized true and false statements (e.g., "I am in front of the computer") and whether they had or had not performed actions from Session 1. For half of the subjects, the nonperformed statements were actions that they saw but did not perform; for the remaining subjects, these statements were actions that they saw and imagined but did not perform. Our results showed that the aIAT can distinguish between true autobiographical events (performed actions) and false events (nonperformed actions), but that it is less effective, the more that subjects remember performing actions that they did not really perform. Thus, the diagnosticity of the aIAT may be limited.