Department of Psychological Sciences, Kent State University, P.O. Box 5190, Kent, OH, 44242, USA.
University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, Oshkosh, WI, USA.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2017 Oct;24(5):1413-1425. doi: 10.3758/s13423-016-1201-8.
In a recent paper, Chrobak and Zaragoza (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 142(3), 827-844, 2013) proposed the explanatory role hypothesis, which posits that the likelihood of developing false memories for post-event suggestions is a function of the explanatory function the suggestion serves. In support of this hypothesis, they provided evidence that participant-witnesses were especially likely to develop false memories for their forced fabrications when their fabrications helped to explain outcomes they had witnessed. In three experiments, we test the generality of the explanatory role hypothesis as a mechanism of eyewitness suggestibility by assessing whether this hypothesis can predict suggestibility errors in (a) situations where the post-event suggestions are provided by the experimenter (as opposed to fabricated by the participant), and (b) across a variety of memory measures and measures of recollective experience. In support of the explanatory role hypothesis, participants were more likely to subsequently freely report (E1) and recollect the suggestions as part of the witnessed event (E2, source test) when the post-event suggestion helped to provide a causal explanation for a witnessed outcome than when it did not serve this explanatory role. Participants were also less likely to recollect the suggestions as part of the witnessed event (on measures of subjective experience) when their explanatory strength had been reduced by the presence of an alternative explanation that could explain the same outcome (E3, source test + warning). Collectively, the results provide strong evidence that the search for explanatory coherence influences people's tendency to misremember witnessing events that were only suggested to them.
在最近的一篇论文中，Chrobak 和 Zaragoza（《实验心理学杂志：综合》，142（3），827-844，2013）提出了解释作用假说，该假说假设人们产生错误记忆的可能性与建议所起的解释作用有关。为了支持这一假设，他们提供了证据表明，当参与者的编造有助于解释他们所目睹的结果时，他们特别有可能对他们的强制编造产生错误记忆。在三个实验中，我们通过评估该假说是否可以预测（a）由实验者提供的事后建议情境（而不是参与者编造的）中的暗示易感性错误，以及（b）在各种记忆测量和回忆体验测量中的暗示易感性错误，来检验解释作用假说作为目击者暗示易感性的机制的普遍性。支持解释作用假说，当事后建议有助于为目击结果提供因果解释时，参与者更有可能随后自由报告（E1）并将建议回忆为目击事件的一部分（E2，来源测试），而当建议不具有解释作用时，参与者不太可能将建议回忆为目击事件的一部分（在主观体验的测量上）。当替代性解释可以解释相同的结果时，参与者对建议的解释力就会降低（E3，来源测试+警告），他们也不太可能将建议回忆为目击事件的一部分（在主观体验的测量上）。总的来说，这些结果有力地证明了寻找解释一致性会影响人们错误记忆目击事件的倾向，即使这些事件只是被暗示给他们的。
