Abstract
Trauma victims often come to remember experiencing more trauma than they initially reported. Our experiments are the first to investigate a plausible mechanism for this memory amplification, namely, that people incorporate new details contained in post-event information (PEI) into their event memory. In Experiment 1, participants viewed traumatic photographs, and completed recognition memory tests before and 24-h after PEI exposure. As predicted, PEI distorted traumatic memory. In Experiments 2 and 3, we found that encouraging source monitoring reduced PEI-related errors regardless of whether the delay period between memory tests was shorter (24 h; Experiment 2) or longer (1 week; Experiment 3). Our results suggest that evaluating the source of traumatic photos increases source monitoring, making people resistant to inaccurate PEI.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 318-331 |
Number of pages | 14 |
Journal | Applied Cognitive Psychology |
Volume | 36 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Mar 2022 |
Keywords
- false memory
- memory
- source-monitoring
- trauma