Effects of reliability against others on generation of false memory.

Abstract

False memory is a phenomenon of ”remembering what has not happened” or ”remembering what quite differently from the way they happened ”. In many studies with DRM paradigm which easily generates this phenomenon, the experimental participants perform the cognitive tasks alone. In this study, we analyzed an influence of relationships with others in conversation on the generation of false memories. Participants in this experiment memorized words selected based on the DRM paradigm and shared the information about the words with the agent with text-to-speech software through an online conferencing system. We analyzed the influence of explicit information on the reliability of the agent by indicating the reliability in % of the agent, the influence of the impression factor of others by changing the gender of the text-to-speech software, and the influence of confirming the relationship through courtesy by instructing the participants to bow to the agent. As a result of the experiment, the rate of false memory increased when the explicit reliability level matched the perceived reliability level of the participants, and the rate of false memory generation for male agents was higher than for female one. The results also indicated that the rate of false memory generation increased when the participants performed polite behavior. Less activation of working memory activity was observed, suggesting that the interaction with an agent has inhibitory effects on the generation of false memories.