False Memories of Scripted Actions: Comparison Between Enactment and Imagery Encoding

EasyChair Preprint no. 8420

Abstract

The standard DRM task (Roediger & McDermott, 1995) has been adapted in order to generate memory errors for everyday life action lists. Therefore, the associated word lists have been replaced with thematically-related action lists. Each action list refers to a temporally-connected action routine, i.e. a script. In addition, we examined the effects of enactment and motor imagery encoding on false memories. Compared to the numerous studies on imagination effects on false memories, the enactment effect on the creation of false memories of thematically-related actions has not yet been tested. Therefore, we compared three experimental conditions: (1) a control condition, in which participants were asked to listen to all lists attentively; (2) an imagery condition, where participants were instructed to visualize themselves performing each action, presented orally; (3) an enactment condition, in which participants had to mime each action heard as if they were really performing it. The results confirmed the creation of false memories for associated action lists (scripted actions). Nevertheless, false memories were high and of the same magnitude under all encoding conditions. These findings are discussed in the light of the classical models of memory and embodied cognition theory.

Keyphrases: actions, enactment, false memories, script, visual imagery

@Booklet{EasyChair:8420,
  author = {Frederique Robin and Canelle Garnier},
  title = {False Memories of Scripted Actions: Comparison Between Enactment and Imagery Encoding},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint no. 8420},

  year = {EasyChair, 2022}}