MA, Kent State University, 2024, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Psychological Sciences

This study examined the underlying mechanisms of false memories observed in the classic Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) paradigm. Previous work indicates that greater working memory capacity and inhibition are associated with lower susceptibility to such false memories. We hypothesized that this may be, due to the closely related construct of attention control. We examined if individual differences in attention control accounted for variance in susceptibility to false memories, above and beyond inhibition and WMC alone. We used a standard DRM procedure in an individual differences approach to examine how working memory, inhibition, and attention control contribute to false memories as indicated by false word recall on the DRM task. Our results indicate that not only does attention control account for unique variance in susceptibility to the false memories, but it also may mediate the relationship between working memory capacity and DRM performance to a degree to which working memory becomes non-significant.

Committee: Christopher Was (Advisor); Maria Zaragoza (Committee Member); Jeffrey Ciesla (Committee Member); Dana Miller-Cotto (Committee Member); Philip Hamrick (Committee Member) Subjects: Cognitive Psychology; Psychology

PHD, Kent State University, 2017, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Psychological Sciences

Can an individual that lies come to believe their own lies were true? The goals of this dissertation were to (1) investigate whether lying might lead to false memories wherein the individual that lies can come to misremember their own lies as the truth and (2) whether lying repeatedly may exacerbate the development of these false memories. In three experiments, participants viewed an eyewitness event and were then asked to lie about having seen details and events that they never witnessed. Participants were asked to lie about some details once and to consistently lie about other details three times. Memory for the originally witnessed event was assessed following a 4-week retention interval with both free recall and yes/no recognition. Experiment 1 demonstrated that lying once or repeatedly resulted in false memories wherein participants falsely recalled details they earlier fabricated as part of the witnessed event as well as falsely assented to having seen the details they earlier fabricated. Repeated lying resulted in fewer false assents to having seen their previous fabrications, whereas the opposite pattern was observed in free recall. Experiment 2 tested whether the timing and the number of repetitions impacted the rate of false memories. Whereas, there was no difference in the rate of false memories for lies that were repeated during the same session relative to those repeated two days apart, consistent with Experiment 1, repeatedly lying decreased the rate of false assents to having seen their lies, but produced an inverse pattern in free recall. Experiment 2 also demonstrated that repeated lying improved memory for having previously lied. If the individual that lies can remember having lied, they are unlikely to believe their lies to be true. Thus, I hypothesized that the degree to which lies result in false memories on both measures was dependent on the how readily participants could remember the source of their lies (i.e., having li (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Maria Zaragoza Ph.D. (Advisor); Katherine Rawson Ph.D. (Committee Member); Yossef Ben-Porath Ph.D. (Committee Member); Bradley Morris Ph.D. (Committee Member); Ryan Claassen Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology