Armadilhas cognitivas : a construção de memórias verdadeiras e falsas durante a leitura.

Abstract

There is a growing interest in the study of memory falsification – the capacity of recalling events that did not actually occur. When we talk with people, hear inducing questions, read or hear media coverage about events, or even when we experience strong emotions, we are subject to false information with the potential to interfere in our memories. Up to what extent can we trust our memories built from readings? This research seeks to investigate how false memories can be created from reading and their relation with the reader’s previous knowledge. Data were collected from two groups: one made up of twenty college students majoring in languages, and the other made up of young adults getting their late elementary education. The subjects read a text, performed a distracting activity, and immediately after were submitted to a memory quick recollection test made up of multiple-choice (ME) and false vs. true (VF) questions referring to target items (AL), critical distracting items (DC), and unrelated distracting items (DNR). The data collected were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively through ANOVA. The results show differences in the false memory levels across the groups and kinds of activities proposed. The average acceptance of AL items in ME questions was similar for CP- (level of previous knowledge for subjects without college education) and CP+ (level of previous knowledge for subjects with college education). The average acceptance of DC in the CP+ group was well above that of the CP-. This means that there were more false memories in the CP+; the DNR acceptance average in the CP- group was significantly higher. In VF questions the average AL acceptance is similar for the two groups; but for DC acceptance the false memories average drops in the CP+ group and increases in the CP- group. In addition, the DNR acceptance average increases in the CP+ group. Therefore, in these activities CP+ demonstrated a higher average of answers without mnemonic basis than the other group. We conclude that the reader's previous knowledge seems to interfere in the emergence of false memories in a higher or lesser degree, depending on how related this previous knowledge is to the subject of the text.