Leuven Institute of Criminology, Faculty of Law and Criminology, Catholic University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
Forensic Psychology Section, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands.
Psychol Res. 2023 Apr;87(3):816-825. doi: 10.1007/s00426-022-01695-7. Epub 2022 Jun 25.
We examined the mnemonic effects of falsely denying a self-performed action. Specifically, participants (N = 30) performed, imagined, or received no instruction about 24 action statements (e.g., "cross your arms"). Next, their memory for whether they had performed, imagined, or did nothing (i.e., received no instructions) with these actions was tested. Subsequently, participants were instructed to repeatedly deny an action they had performed (false denial) and to repeatedly claim to have performed an action they had only imagined (false admission). In a final sorting memory task, 54% (n = 16) of participants erroneously indicated, after false admissions, that they had performed the imagined action. None of the participants indicated that they had only imagined an action after false denials, showing that it might be difficult to forget a performed action, even after repeatedly denying it. The current experiment sets the stage for future research to investigate why it seems to be difficult to forget performed actions.
我们研究了错误否认自己执行过的行为的助记效果。具体来说，参与者（N=30）执行、想象或未对 24 个行为陈述（例如“交叉双臂”）进行任何说明。接下来，他们对自己是否执行、想象或不执行（即未收到说明）这些行为的记忆进行了测试。随后，参与者被指示反复否认自己执行过的行为（虚假否认），并反复声称自己执行了他们仅想象过的行为（虚假承认）。在最后的分类记忆任务中，54%（n=16）的参与者在虚假承认后错误地表示他们执行了想象中的行为。没有参与者表示他们仅在虚假否认后想象了一个行为，这表明即使反复否认，也很难忘记执行过的行为。目前的实验为未来的研究奠定了基础，以研究为什么似乎很难忘记执行过的行为。
