Mood impedes monitoring of emotional false memories: evidence for the associative theories

ABSTRACT

In the present experiment, we investigated whether warnings provided at the time of retrieval would reduce emotional false memories in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. The provision of retrieval warnings allowed us to test specific predictions based on the associative theories (e.g., Activation-Monitoring Theory; AMT) and Fuzzy-Trace Theory (FTT) that have been used to account for false memories in the DRM paradigm. Participants were randomly assigned to either a no-warning group or a retrieval-warning group. In each group, mood-induction procedures were used to elicit a positive, negative, or neutral mood and participants were then presented with word lists comprised of positive, negative, or neutral words. Retrieval warnings reduced false recognition, regardless of the valence of the to-be-remembered information or participants’ mood. Consistent with the associative theories’ predictions, within the warning condition, positive moods yielded greater false recognition for positive critical lures, and negative moods yielded greater false recognition for negative critical lures, compared to neutral moods. These findings have important practical implications for our understanding of the effect of mood on memory.

KEYWORDS:

• False memories
• DRM paradigm
• warnings
• mood
• emotional word lists

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The data are available via https://osf.io/5vqxm/?view_only=75fde9fecc074e17828f9d7ee2b64401

Additional information

Funding

The research was funded by a Marsden grant (15-UOO-061) from the Royal Society of New Zealand to HH and JG, and by a University of Otago Postgraduate Publishing Bursary (Doctoral) to WZ.