This document discusses false memories and how they can be influenced by emotions. It provides several key points: 1) Semantic memory activation can lead to false recall of related words that were not presented due to spread of activation between similar concepts. 2) Both episodic and semantic memories are susceptible to spread of activation which can result in priming of related information and false memories. 3) Positive emotions tend to encourage relational processing and semantic activation, making critical lures more likely to come to mind, while negative emotions reduce semantic activation and encourage item-specific processing, making critical lures less likely. 4) However, the severity of emotions can also impact memory accuracy - very high stress or emotional

1. Why do we have
False
Memories?
Lau Ying Yu 14208822
Wong Cheuk Yin 14215845
Poon Yi Ting 13211293
Tang Chi Ho 14212676
Cheng Wai Kwan 15226069
To Chun Yin 15201309

2. Long term memories & human

3. Why do we need good memories?

4. How do human dominate the earth?
Memories keep us away from
dangers

5. How do human dominate the earth?
Memories enable languages
& communication

6. False Memory

7. Last Tutorial
Why do we remember word that don’t
exist in the list?
Semantic Memory spread activation
1. Words have similar concepts
2. Activate similar knowledge
↑Words → ↑Association → ↑False Recall
(Roediger III et al., 2001)

8. False Memories in personal life/events

9. Spread Activation in Episodic Memories
Experiment (Balota & Duchek, 1989)
found:
Episodic Memory Spread Activation
1. Near & far memories can prime
target words
2. Age → response time + accuracy
3. Episodic activation →
↑facilitation to non-studies
target (related/not related)

10. What does that mean imply?
Life = linked experiences. Linked with each others, spreadable memories
Older → more memory→ More False recall
Different Episodic Spread → false memory ~ (non-studies targets)

11. Emotions & False Memory

12. Mood and Memories
❖ Negative events tend to be remembered more accurately
❖ Affect-as-information hypothesis
➢ Affective cues: trigger for item-specific / relational processing
Encouraged by
negative
affective cues
Encouraged by
positive
affective cues

13. Experiment
Music was used to induce positive or
negative moods of participants
Participants were shown to a list of
words and asked to recall the words
The negative-mood group recalled a
less number of critical lures than the
positive-mood group
Semantic activation

14. Positive emotions
Relational processing
❖ More likely to rely on general knowledge
❖ Promote semantic activation
❖ Process incoming information in relation to
currently accessible concepts
➢ Critical lures are more likely to come to
mind

15. Negative emotions
Item-specific processing
❖ More likely to focus on local information
specific to the situation at-hand
❖ Reduce semantic activation
❖ Process incoming information independently
of currently accessible concepts
➢ Critical lures are less likely to come to
mind

16. However,
Severity of emotion affects accuracy
of memory even when we were in
negative mood

17. Severity of emotions
In an experiment,
Over 800 military personnel were sent
to a survival camp
Under stressful interrogation
→ more than half, failed to identify
Interrogator
(Morgan, Southwick, Steffian, Hazlett, &
Loftus, 2013)

18. Severity of emotions
Under severe emotional arousal,
people pay full efforts on survival and regulate
emotions
→ Narrow attentional focus
→ Poor memory
→ Highly susceptible to misinformation
↑ Severity of emotional arousal,
↑ False memories

19. References
Roediger III, H. L., Balota, D. A. & Watson, J. M. (2001). Spreading activation and arousal of false memories. The Nature of Remembering: Essays
in Honor of Robert G. Crowder. P. 95 -115.
Balota, D. A. & Duchek, J. M. (1989). Spreading activation in episodic memory: Further evidence for age independence. The Quarterly Journal of
Experimental Psychology, 41A (4). 849-876.
Storbeck, J., & Clore, G. L. (2011). Affect Influences False Memories at Encoding: Evidence from Recognition Data. Emotion (Washington, D.C.),
11(4), 981–989. http://doi.org/10.1037/a0022754
Kaplan, R. L., Damme, I. V., Levine, L. J., & Loftus, E. F. (2015). Emotion and False Memory. Emotion Review, 8(1), 8-13.
doi:10.1177/1754073915601228
Storbeck, J., & Clore, G. L. (2005). With Sadness Comes Accuracy; With Happiness, False Memory: Mood and the False Memory Effect.
Psychological Science, 16(10), 785-791. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2005.01615.x
Thompson, A. (2007, September 05). Bad Memories Stick Better Than Good. Retrieved March 24, 2018, from
https://www.livescience.com/1827-bad-memories-stick-good.html
Aydin, C., Brainerd, C. J., & Reyna, V. F. (n.d.). Emotion and false memory. PsycEXTRA Dataset. doi:10.1037/e527352012-644