Decreased susceptibility to false memories from misinformation in hormonal contraception users

Abstract

Sex hormones are increasingly implicated in memory formation. Recent literature has documented a relationship between hormones and emotional memory and sex differences, which are likely related to hormones, have long been demonstrated in a variety of mnemonic domains, including false memories. Hormonal contraception (HC), which alters sex hormones, has been associated with a bias towards gist memory and away from detailed memory in women who use it during an emotional memory task. Here, we investigated whether HC was associated with changes in susceptibility to false memories, which may be related to the formation of gist memories. We tested false memory susceptibility using two well-validated false memory paradigms: the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) task, and a story-based misinformation task. We found that hormonal contraceptive users were less susceptible to false memories compared to non-users in the misinformation task, and no differences were seen between groups on the DRM task. We hypothesise that the differences in false memories from the misinformation task may be related to hormonal contraceptive users' memory bias away from details, towards gist memory.

Keywords:

• False memory
• Memory distortion
• Misinformation
• Hormonal contraception

Many thanks to Elizabeth Loftus, Craig Stark, Yoko Okado, Steven Frenda and Rebecca Nichols for their help related to memory distortion materials and to all the research assistants, including Fellows of University of California at Irvine's Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program.

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (LP), and a Sigma-Xi Grant-in-aid (LP).

Many thanks to Elizabeth Loftus, Craig Stark, Yoko Okado, Steven Frenda and Rebecca Nichols for their help related to memory distortion materials and to all the research assistants, including Fellows of University of California at Irvine's Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program.

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (LP), and a Sigma-Xi Grant-in-aid (LP).