Do we prioritise memory for cheaters? Rebuttal evidence from old/new effects in episodic memory

ABSTRACT

Behavioural investigations concerning the influence of cooperation and cheating on the two sub-types of episodic memory (i.e. item memory and source memory), especially on source memory, have shown inconsistent patterns. Besides, the sensitivity of retrieval-relevant neural activities to cooperation and cheating is rarely explored. To delve into these issues, the current study investigated how cooperation and cheating affected old/new effects in item memory and source memory. The results demonstrated that both types of memory elicited four-stage retrieval-relevant processes, indexed by FN400, LPC, LPN, and RFE, respectively. There was moderate to strong evidence that LPC, LPN, and RFE were insusceptible to cooperation and cheating. For the familiarity-based FN400, in item memory, the effect was only identified in the cooperative condition, while in source memory, there was moderate evidence that the effect was comparable between the cooperative and the cheating circumstances. The above data provide no psychophysiological evidence for the cheater-detection strategy.

KEYWORDS:

• Item memory
• source memory
• old/new effect
• social interaction
• emotion

Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number LY21C090002), of Zhejiang Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences Circles (grant number 2021N78), of Humanities and Social Sciences, Ministry of Education of China (grant number 17YJA190010), of National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number 31300831), and of the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by the Projects of Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number LY21C090002), of Zhejiang Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences Circles (grant number 2021N78), of Humanities and Social Sciences, Ministry of Education of China (grant number 17YJA190010), of National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number 31300831), and of the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities.