Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Fairfield University, 1073 North Benson Road, Fairfield, CT, 06824, USA.
Department of Psychology, Tufts University, 419 Boston Ave, Medford, MA, 02155, USA.
Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2024 Jun;24(3):440-452. doi: 10.3758/s13415-024-01183-y. Epub 2024 Mar 19.
Exposure to misleading information after witnessing an event can impair future memory reports about the event. This pervasive form of memory distortion, termed the misinformation effect, can be significantly reduced if individuals are warned about the reliability of post-event information before exposure to misleading information. The present fMRI study investigated whether such prewarnings improve subsequent memory accuracy by influencing encoding-related neural activity during exposure to misinformation. We employed a repeated retrieval misinformation paradigm in which participants watched a crime video (Witnessed Event), completed an initial test of memory, listened to a post-event auditory narrative that contained consistent, neutral, and misleading details (Post-Event Information), and then completed a final test of memory. At the behavioral level, participants who were given a prewarning before the Post-Event Information were less susceptible to misinformation on the final memory test compared with participants who were not given a warning (Karanian et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 117, 22771-22779, 2020). This protection from misinformation was accompanied by greater activity in frontal regions associated with source encoding (lateral PFC) and conflict detection (ACC) during misleading trials as well as a more global reduction in activity in auditory cortex and semantic processing regions (left inferior frontal gyrus) across all trials (consistent, neutral, misleading) of the Post-Event Information narrative. Importantly, the strength of these warning-related activity modulations was associated with better protection from misinformation on the final memory test (improved memory accuracy on misleading trials). Together, these results suggest that warnings modulate encoding-related neural activity during exposure to misinformation to improve memory accuracy.
目击事件后接触到误导性信息会损害对该事件的未来记忆报告。这种普遍存在的记忆扭曲形式，称为错误信息效应，如果个体在接触误导性信息之前被警告过事件后信息的可靠性，那么可以显著减少。本 fMRI 研究调查了这种预先警告是否通过影响接触错误信息时的编码相关神经活动来提高后续记忆准确性。我们采用了重复检索错误信息范式，参与者观看犯罪视频（目击事件），完成初始记忆测试，听取包含一致、中立和误导性细节的事后听觉叙述（事后信息），然后完成最终记忆测试。在行为层面，与未收到警告的参与者相比，在收到事后信息前收到警告的参与者在最终记忆测试中对错误信息的敏感性较低（Karanian 等人，美国国家科学院院刊，117，22771-22779，2020）。这种对错误信息的保护伴随着在误导性试验中与来源编码（外侧 PFC）和冲突检测（ACC）相关的额区活动增加，以及在所有事后信息叙述试验中（一致、中立、误导）听觉皮层和语义处理区域（左侧额下回）的活动整体减少（Karanian 等人，美国国家科学院院刊，117，22771-22779，2020）。重要的是，这些与警告相关的活动调节的强度与最终记忆测试中错误信息保护的改善有关（在误导性试验中提高记忆准确性）。这些结果表明，警告在接触错误信息时调节编码相关的神经活动，以提高记忆准确性。
