Garry, M., & Wade, K. A. (2005).
Actually, a picture is worth less than 45 words:
Narratives produce more false
memories than photographs do. Psychonomic
Bulletin & Review, 12, 359-366.
Introduction:
A recent study has shown that doctored photos mixed in with real photos of life events could cause people to falsely remember the event. This effect occurred with half of the participants forming false memories while implantation studies with narratives only produce false memories in 31% of participants. Other surveys and studies show that people think that photographs help jog their memory better and also help in visualizing an event. Also, people are more likely to place credibility in a photograph rather than a narrative. However, the context of narratives plays a role in increasing the fluency of a memory. Narratives allow participants to freely generate their own details and visualizations of an event.
Method:
Participants ranged from 18 to 30 years old and were randomly shown a false photo or a false narrative, which was specific to the individual. The information and photographs to be doctored were gathered by using confederates. The false event was a balloon ride between the ages of 4 and 8. In each case there were three true events and the false balloon event. The false event was always in the third position. The other events were randomly narratives or photographs (as seen in figure 1). Judges were used to create descriptions of the balloon event by telling what details they thought stood out in the undoctored balloon photo. There were three interviews where the participants were asked recall the events and then to review their portfolio when they were at home. Participants were also asked during interviews to rate their confidence on 7 qualitative aspects of the memories. On the last interview, participants were asked questions about how many times they thought about the events, whether they discussed the events with others, and which medium preferred. Interviews 1 and 3 were tape-recorded.
Results and Discussion:
Three judges were asked to rate the false event recalls with the following criteria: no images, images only, or memories. Images only showed that the participant visualized the event, but did not remember it. The memory criteria required subjects to report remembering the event with details. Judges were not able to tell if the participants received the photograph or the narrative. Figure 3 shows that the narrative condition participants were more likely to generate some false information about the event than the photograph condition. Eighty-two percent of the narrative condition reported information about the balloon ride compared with 50% in the photo condition. The false recall rate was higher than any other memory-implantation study. The narrative participants also were more likely to change their memory criteria across interviews than photograph participants. These findings suggest that narratives are better than photographs at eliciting false memories. As for the qualitative experience of the memory, more narrative participants increased memory quality than did photograph participants (figure 4). Narrative participants were also more likely to provide details (e.g. location) in their memories of the false event. If details were given about the false event, then confidence of it occurring increased regardless of media. The results show that there wasn’t a difference in the amount of memory rehearsal at home between the two media. Finally, people in the narrative condition thought that pictures were better at jogging memory, while people in the photo condition thought that narratives worked better. Fluency was concluded to be the explanation of why narratives caused more false memories than photographs. This is because narratives demand more kinds of behaviors that increase fluency.
Important Legal
Disclaimer: The preceding are articles we read together in the Lampinen Lab
Fall 2005 false memory reading group. By clicking on the button next to the
article you can see the summary of that article. The summary was prepared by
the student presenting that article and it is of course the case that the views
expressed in the summary do not necessarily represent the views of the reading
group as a whole, Dr. Lampinen, the Lampinen Lab, Hugo's, the University of
Arkansas, the Razorback Football or Basketball teams (although we're not sure
about cross country), people living down the street from us, Bob Dylan, Jack
Fate, our extended families, or anyone else for that matter except for the
student who wrote the summary (and they don't necessarily believe what they
wrote either).