Department of Psychology, School of Social Sciences, University of Mannheim, 68131 Mannheim, Germany.
Mem Cognit. 2013 Feb;41(2):176-86. doi: 10.3758/s13421-012-0251-z.
Two theoretical frameworks have been proposed to account for the representation of truth and falsity in human memory: the Cartesian model and the Spinozan model. Both models presume that during information processing a mental representation of the information is stored along with a tag indicating its truth value. However, the two models disagree on the nature of these tags. According to the Cartesian model, true information receives a "true" tag and false information receives a "false" tag. In contrast, the Spinozan model claims that only false information receives a "false" tag, whereas untagged information is automatically accepted as true. To test the Cartesian and Spinozan models, we conducted two source memory experiments in which participants studied true and false trivia statements from three different sources differing in credibility (i.e., presenting 100% true, 50% true and 50% false, or 100% false statements). In Experiment 1, half of the participants were informed about the source credibility prior to the study phase. As compared to a control group, this precue group showed improved source memory for both true and false statements, but not for statements with an uncertain validity status. Moreover, memory did not differ for truth and falsity in the precue group. As Experiment 2 revealed, this finding is replicated even when using a 1-week rather than a 20-min retention interval between study and test phases. The results of both experiments clearly contradict the Spinozan model but can be explained in terms of the Cartesian model.
笛卡尔模型和斯宾诺莎模型。这两种模型都假设在信息处理过程中，会存储信息的心理表示，以及一个表示其真值的标签。然而，这两种模型在这些标签的性质上存在分歧。根据笛卡尔模型，真实的信息会被打上“真”的标签，而虚假的信息会被打上“假”的标签。相比之下，斯宾诺莎模型则声称只有虚假的信息会被打上“假”的标签，而未标记的信息则会被自动视为真实的。为了检验笛卡尔模型和斯宾诺莎模型，我们进行了两个来源记忆实验，在这些实验中，参与者从三个不同可信度的来源学习真实和虚假的琐事陈述（即，呈现 100%真实、50%真实和 50%虚假、或 100%虚假陈述）。在实验 1 中，一半的参与者在学习阶段之前被告知了来源可信度。与对照组相比，这个预提示组对真实和虚假陈述的来源记忆都有所提高，但对有效性状态不确定的陈述则没有提高。此外，在预提示组中，记忆对真实和虚假的区别并不明显。正如实验 2 所揭示的，即使在学习和测试阶段之间使用 1 周而不是 20 分钟的保留间隔，也可以复制这一发现。这两个实验的结果清楚地反驳了斯宾诺莎模型，但可以用笛卡尔模型来解释。
