Faculty of Law and Criminology, Leuven Institute of Criminology, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
Forensic Psychology Section, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands.
Memory. 2022 Oct;30(9):1158-1171. doi: 10.1080/09658211.2022.2094964. Epub 2022 Jul 4.
False denials are sometimes used to cope with traumatic experiences. We examined whether false denials can affect true and false memory production for a traumatic event and conversations surrounding the trauma. One hundred and twenty-six participants watched a trauma analogue video of a car crash before being randomly asked in a discussion with the experimenter to (1) respond honestly or (2) falsely deny that certain details happened in the video. After one week, all participants received misinformation about the discussion with the experimenter and the car crash. Finally, all participants were instructed to respond truthfully in a source memory task. Participants who falsely denied information during the first session were statistically significantly more prone than honest participants to omit details they denied and to report misinformation about what was discussed in the first session. Our work suggests that false denials of a traumatic experience might lead to both forgetting and increased false memory levels for earlier conversations about the event.
有时人们会使用虚假否认来应对创伤性经历。我们研究了虚假否认是否会影响对创伤性事件和相关谈话的真实和虚假记忆的产生。126 名参与者观看了一场车祸的创伤模拟视频，之后他们在与实验者的讨论中被随机要求（1）诚实地回答，或（2）虚假否认视频中发生的某些细节。一周后，所有参与者都收到了关于与实验者讨论和车祸的错误信息。最后，所有参与者都被指示在源记忆任务中诚实地回答。在第一个环节中进行虚假否认的参与者比诚实的参与者更有可能遗漏他们否认的细节，并报告有关第一个环节中讨论内容的错误信息。我们的工作表明，对创伤性经历的虚假否认可能会导致对事件相关早期谈话的遗忘和虚假记忆水平的增加。
